Ben Goertzel notes that achieving the necessary scale for blockchains requires overcoming technical hurdles in decentralization, scalability and security. He also emphasizes the need for decentralized AI to compete with larger companies that dominate the field.
Technical challenges and the path to Level 5 trading
In their February 2026 annual letter, financial services platform Stripe co-founders Patrick and John Collison addressed the intersection of artificial intelligence (AI) and cryptocurrency, specifically with regard to “agentic commerce” – the ability of AI agents to independently discover, decide, and execute transactions. While the report is optimistic about the long-term role of crypto, it highlights critical areas where current blockchain infrastructure is “not ready” for the demands of autonomous agents.
Stripe’s founders characterize the current state of crypto for AI as comparable to the internet of the mid-1990s. They see the current restrictions not as “deal breakers,” but as “technical challenges” that must be resolved before the economy can move to “Level 5,” or fully autonomous, agentic trading.
Stripe is investing heavily in this transition, having recently acquired the stablecoin platform Bridge and launched the Agentic Commerce Suite. These steps are intended to help companies prepare for this shift as the underlying blockchain technology matures.
In the report, the founders identified two primary technical bottlenecks that currently prevent blockchains from serving as the primary rails for agentic trading: cost predictability and transaction throughput. From Stripe’s perspective, blockchains need to support 1 million to 1 billion transactions per second (TPS) to make progress.
Ben Goertzel, CEO of the Artificial Superintelligence (ASI) Alliance and CEO of SingularityNET, considers this prediction “completely plausible.” Goertzel notes that standard digital financial transactions already number in the millions during peak hours, even if they are generated primarily by people through intermediaries.
The shift to agentic trading changes the scale by orders of magnitude. “Instead of one person initiating an action, we have a whole team of agents that operate autonomously,” Goertzel explains. “Instead of one entity, we will have a whole team generating transactions.”
Overcoming the Blockchain Trilemma
According to Goertzel, achieving the scale Stripe envisions will require overcoming several fundamental hurdles beyond pure speed. These include balancing decentralization, scalability and security, as well as having agents that are not limited to a single network. Managing the vast amounts of information generated by autonomous squads and enabling instant peer-to-peer settlements and ‘increased decentralized identity’ are some of the capabilities that blockchain aims to achieve.
Goertzel suggests that the solution is not a single, monolithic network, but a system of specialized networks – similar to a modern highway with dedicated lanes for buses, express and freight traffic. “By separating traffic, we avoid gridlock,” said Goertzel. “That’s exactly the kind of scalable architecture we need for agentic commerce: a network of shards, where each part does one thing well and works seamlessly with the rest.”
The high-stakes race for AI supremacy is leading to massive power consolidation. In contrast to the decentralized nature of blockchain, the AI sector is becoming an oligarchy dominated by tech titans investing billions in their own infrastructure. This concentration of influence has prompted research into whether corporate gatekeeping policies will override the public interest.
Nevertheless, a resilient ecosystem of startups is launching a tactical counter-offensive. By leveraging flexibility, niche specialization, and open-source collaboration, these smaller entities are betting that architectural diversity and ethical transparency will disrupt the monolithic status quo.
“We are not approaching Google or Microsoft in size, but we are achieving a scale that allows us to compete more effectively and get closer to the level needed to make decentralized AI the dominant form of AI on the planet. One of our ‘secret sauces’ is the power of diversity. Being decentralized allows us to bring together people, communities, AI algorithms and data sets from all over the world, unlike the monolithic approaches of large centralized entities,” said Goertzel.
He added that this strategic diversity becomes particularly powerful in the current industry context, where many leading researchers are realizing that simply building larger LLMs will not lead to AGI. “This is something we have understood from the very beginning and has guided our Hyperon approach to AGI and superintelligence,” Goertzel added.
To demonstrate his belief in the “cosmopolitan approach,” Goertzel’s SingularityNET, along with AGI Society, organized this year’s AGI-26 conference to explore ways in which different interpretations and approaches to general intelligence exist.
Meanwhile, Goertzel also shared his thoughts with Bitcoin.com News on how stakeholders can minimize the risk of AI being controlled by only a few entities or governments. He said:
“We need open, decentralized, and democratic methodologies across the AI pipeline: deploying and running AI systems at scale, ensuring data is delivered fairly, teaching AI systems broad human values, and making collective decisions about their development.”
According to Goertzel, the combination of open source code with decentralized infrastructure and governance ensures that AI remains transparent, widely accessible and “highly beneficial to humanity and other sentient beings.”
Frequently asked questions ❓
- What is agentic trading? Agentic trading refers to the ability of AI agents to independently discover, decide, and execute trades without human intervention.
- What challenges does current blockchain technology face in AI transactions? Key challenges include cost predictability and the need for transaction throughput of 1 million to 1 billion transactions per second (TPS).
- How is Stripe preparing for the future of agentic commerce? Stripe has acquired stablecoin platform Bridge and launched the Agentic Commerce Suite to help businesses adapt to this transformation.
- What is the significance of the AGI-26 conference? The AGI-26 conference aims to explore diverse approaches to artificial general intelligence (AGI) and promote decentralized methodologies that benefit humanity.