Payment Channels: 1 Million Payments Per Second

Agentic payments face bottlenecks when each transaction requires individual approval and settlement, particularly in high-frequency loops where human intervention slows progress. Payment channels address this by allowing agents to authorize a spending cap upfront, spend against it without repeated onchain calls, and settle the total later. This model mirrors prepaid systems like bar tabs, where usage accumulates before a single settlement occurs. The approach reduces onchain overhead by consolidating multiple transactions into two key steps: opening and settling the channel.

Testing demonstrated the system’s scalability, with a payment channel proxy processing over one million payments per second across 100,000 unique wallets. The estimated cost per payment was $0.000000000776, translating to potential daily throughput exceeding 80 billion transactions. The open-source template and load-testing tools enable developers to replicate these benchmarks independently. Payment channels align with existing open agentic payment standards on Solana, ensuring compatibility with established protocols.

The new primitive targets use cases where frequent, small payments would otherwise incur prohibitive onchain costs or delays. By batching settlements, it minimizes gas fees and computational load while maintaining non-custodial control over funds throughout the process. This design suits scenarios like inference APIs, where agents repeatedly access paid services without manual approvals for each call.

Solana launched payment channels in collaboration with Alibaba Cloud, which has integrated the feature into its API endpoints. Agents can now authorize once and consume these endpoints at scale without per-call setup or approvals. The implementation leverages Solana’s existing agentic payment infrastructure, providing a practical solution for high-volume, low-latency transactions in agent-driven workflows.