Stripe founder warns "Blockchain is too slow": AI agents will take over all transactions, requiring scalability to at least 1 billion TPS per second

Payment giant Stripe founders Patrick and John Collison made a shocking prediction in their latest annual open letter: AI agents will soon become the main force behind online transactions, and blockchain infrastructure will need to support at least 1 billion transactions per second—yet the fastest current chains only just surpass thousands of TPS, a gap of up to a million times.
(Background: Stripe secretly developing a new chain “Tempo,” integrating Bridge and Privy for seamless stablecoin payments)
(Additional context: Stripe announced over 40 upgrades: Open Issuance platform allows companies to issue stablecoins with one click, collaborating with OpenAI to release the ACP protocol)

Table of Contents

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• First, the Numbers: The Million-Fold Gap Between Ideal and Reality
• Lessons from Memecoin: Blockchain Can No Longer Keep Up
• The Five Stages of AI Agent Evolution: From Filling Forms to Decision-Making
• Web3 Insights: Stripe Isn’t Just Talking — They’re Building the Road

Supporting 1 billion transactions per second—this is the ultimate challenge Stripe’s founders set for blockchain. In their annual open letter released Tuesday (the 25th), Patrick and John Collison openly state: as AI agents gradually take over online transactions, the scalability pressure on blockchain infrastructure will reach unprecedented levels. The reality is, no existing chain today can even reach one ten-thousandth of this threshold.

First, the Numbers: The Million-Fold Gap Between Ideal and Reality

To understand how shocking Stripe’s prediction is, let’s look at current blockchain processing capabilities:

According to Chainspect data, only two chains worldwide have actual throughput exceeding 1,000 TPS:

• Internet Computer Protocol (ICP): Actual around 1,196 TPS (historical peak 25,621 TPS, theoretical max 209,708 TPS)
• Solana: Actual around 1,140 TPS (historical peak 5,289 TPS, theoretical max 65,000 TPS)

Even using Solana’s theoretical max of 65,000 TPS, the gap to 1 billion TPS is over 15,000 times. Based on current real-world operation at thousands of TPS, the gap is a staggering million-fold.

Lessons from Memecoin: Blockchain Is Already Struggling

The Collison brothers highlight a vivid example: last year’s Memecoin frenzy nearly crippled a major blockchain, causing payment delays over 12 hours on Stripe’s stablecoin platform Bridge, with single transactions costs soaring 35 times.

They warn that such congestion issues won’t disappear—in fact, they’ll worsen as AI agents become more widespread:

“We believe AI agents will soon handle the vast majority of online transactions. When that happens, blockchain must support over 1 million—possibly 1 billion—transactions per second.”

The Five Stages of AI Agent Evolution: From Filling Forms to Decision-Making

Beyond infrastructure warnings, Stripe’s annual letter also sketches the development path of commercial AI agents, dividing it into five capability levels:

Current basic capabilities (Levels 1-2)

• Level 1 — Form Filling: Automating web forms (checkout, registration)
• Level 2 — Descriptive Search: Finding results through contextual descriptions, not exact keywords (e.g., “Find a dress suitable for a seaside date”)

The Collison brothers say AI agents are currently “hovering at the edge of these two levels.”

Unrealized advanced capabilities (Levels 3-5)

• Level 3 — Persistent Memory: Remembering user preferences and history, no need to start from scratch each time
• Level 4 — Task Delegation: Handling complete tasks (weekly shopping, scheduling)
• Level 5 — Proactive Prediction: Anticipating needs and offering solutions before users ask

They emphasize that all this hinges on “general interoperability”—AI agents must not be confined within closed ecosystems but should be able to roam freely on open protocol highways.

Web3 Insights: Stripe Isn’t Just Talking — They’re Building the Road

The weight of Stripe’s annual letter isn’t just in its bold predictions but also in its concrete investments in this direction.

Over the past year and a half, Stripe’s moves have been clear: in October 2024, they spent $1.1 billion acquiring stablecoin infrastructure firm Bridge; mid-2025, they acquired crypto wallet developer Privy; and rumors suggest a secret partnership with Paradigm to develop their own blockchain “Tempo”—a high-performance chain designed specifically for payments. Plus, last year’s collaboration with OpenAI to launch the ACP (Agentic Commerce Protocol) shows Stripe isn’t just dreaming—they’re actively building.

In other words, when Stripe says “blockchains need 1 billion TPS,” the implied message is: “We know current solutions can’t do it, so we’re building one that can.”

This is both a boon and a warning for existing Layer 1 public chains—on the one hand, Stripe’s backing will push the AI + blockchain narrative into the mainstream; on the other, if chains like Solana and Ethereum can’t scale fast enough, the future “AI agent payment chain” might not be built by decentralized communities but by the payment giants themselves.