"Payments Grade" Onchain Rails
summary
Argues that the missing piece for onchain payments is exchange and interoperability, not base chains or onramps; cites USDC on ~50 chains and price divergence like USDT 10 bps below USDC as concrete constraints. Proposes a new payments liquidity layer with fast solver layer taking finality risk for instant cross-chain movement, always-available non-mercenary liquidity, and an orchestration layer for routing, gas and nonce handling plus universal deposit addresses; Relay is building this and the system is close but not yet solved.
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chapters (29)
- 0:00Introduction
- 0:12Why Onchain Payments Are Interesting
- 0:37Instant Settlement and a Single Shared Ledger
- 1:00Making Money as Open as the Internet
- 1:22Why the Bar for Payments Is High
- 1:44What Payments Grade UX Means
- 2:06Reliability and Working Every Time
- 2:28How Far Onchain Rails Have Come
- 2:53Why Interop Is the Biggest Barrier
- 3:22The Reality of Tron USDT and Local Currencies
- 3:44USDC Across 50 Different Chains
- 4:08Why Businesses Choose Different Chains
- 4:32Why Exchange Makes Everything Harder
- 4:59The Need for a New Liquidity Layer
- 5:25Why Bridges Aren't Built for Payments
- 5:58Why DEXs and Slippage Don't Fit Payments
- 6:22The Problem of Broad Asset Support
- 6:47How Pairs and Pools Fragment Liquidity
- 7:17Moving Across Chains Instantly
- 7:51Designing Liquidity That Is Always Available
- 8:37The Orchestration Layer on Top
- 9:05Routing, Gas, and Nonce Handling at Scale
- 9:30Rethinking Payments UX Beyond Wallet Connect
- 9:53Universal Deposit Addresses on Any Chain
- 10:18Pricing Guarantees and the Dollar Myth
- 10:44How Applications Will Subsidize One to One Rates
- 11:18The Credit Card Subsidy Analogy
- 11:49Summary: We Are Close
- 12:17What Relay Is Building
