Patrick and John Collison are the founders of payments company Stripe. said Social Network X reports that blockchain networks will need to process up to 1 billion transactions per second (TPS) to meet future demands from AI agents. Otherwise, your current infrastructure will not be able to keep up with the proliferation of automated online transactions.
The Collison brothers claim that AI agents will soon become the main participants in most digital transactions, causing unprecedented stress on blockchain systems.
Blockchain infrastructure gap
Stripe’s letter outlines recent examples. Last year, during a memecoin trading frenzy on major networks, payments to Bridge users were delayed for more than 12 hours and transaction costs soared 35 times. This highlights the vulnerability of current systems when faced with sudden spikes in activity.
By the way, the current best performing networks are Solana and Internet Computer, reaching around 1,140 to 1,196 TPS at peak. However, even the theoretical maximum of 65,000 to 209,708 TPS falls far short of the 1 billion TPS needed for AI-scale operations.
Five levels of AI agents
Stripe founders also outlined five levels of AI agent functionality.
- basic automation – Fill out web forms and perform standard online tasks.
- descriptive search – Find results based on a description of the situation rather than specific parameters.
- Save context – Remembering your preferences, information and requirements.
- delegation – Perform tasks on your behalf, such as online shopping.
- expectations – Suggest solutions and schedules without explicit prompting.
Currently, AI agents move between Levels 1 and 2, and the Collisons note that future progress depends on universal interoperability between systems.
The path forward for blockchain
Stripe emphasizes that meeting the demands of AI will likely require a horizontal architecture of multiple interacting chains, rather than a single high-TPS network. Energy efficiency is another concern, as scaling to billions of transactions per second requires a careful balance between decentralization and operational costs.
As AI adoption accelerates, the first blockchain network to achieve these scalability benchmarks may dominate the emerging market for automated digital transactions.