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Web3 payment protocols

Streaming or Recurring Payments

Token steaming means sending recurring payments in real time, like water flowing into its target. There are two kinds of payment innovations:

  • Payout, or payer-side innovation: Business owners use it for payroll, subscription, token vesting, corporate treasury, etc. The customer is mostly on the sender side, optimizing how to send out salaries or token equities to your employees securely, cost-effectively, and automatically, like "Workday + Carta + Brex for crypto".
  • Accept payment, or payee-side innovation: Merchants use it to accept payments and allow customers to checkout, like "Stripe for crypto".
ProjectsBlockchainsPayoutAccept PaymentsDifferentiation
SablierEVMprotocol for real-time finance, protocol + app
SuperfluidEVMstream money every second, protocol + app
Roke.toNEARstream money, protocol + app
ZebecSolanamultisig treasury management and streaming payments
StreamflowSolanatoken distribution platform, token vesting and payroll
MeanFiSolanamanage Your Treasury With
Real-Time Finance
calamus.financeMulti-chainreal-time payment and token vesting
llamapayEVMautomate transactions and stream them by the second. salary, vesting, payments.
SuberraEVMaccept crypto for commerce, one-time payments or recurring subscriptions
LoopCryptoEthereum, Polygonpayment links, receipts and reminders, dashboard, web hooks
diagonal.financeEVMnon-custodial - Multiple models fixed, seat, usage-based, or Superfluid streaming
radom.networkNEAR, Aurorapay web2 services with crypto
spritz.financeEVMpay bills with crypto
cask.fiEVMnon-custodial protocol for auto payment
DataMyntMulti-chainfor business, deposit, settlement, payment, invoice
OrbitalMulti-chainweb2 + web3 corporate financial services
Coinbase commerceMulti-chainmerchants accept payments with custodial and non-custodial wallets and allow customers to checkout
wink.financeMulti-chainsimplifies payments and expense management, multisig

Account Abstraction

As of the end of 2022, the most prominent web3 payment protocol is probably EIP-86/EIP-4337 for Account Abstraction. It uses smart-contract wallets to decouple private key ownership from asset account ownership. The protocol is still a work in progress on Ethereum, but Visa has implemented auto payments for self-custodial wallets on Starkware in its internal hackathon.

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