Request Network

Request Network is a community-owned, open-source protocol for creating, settling, and reconciling cryptocurrency payments without custodial intermediaries. Founded in July 2017 by Christophe Lassuyt and Etienne Tatur—YCombinator alumni who previously co-founded the cross-border payment startup Moneytis—the project raised approximately $33.6 million through a public token sale in October 2017 and launched on Ethereum mainnet in 2018. The foundation describes itself as deliberately VC-free, operating as community-governed infrastructure rather than an equity-backed company.

The core primitive is a "request": a verifiable, on-chain record of an amount owed between two parties, denominated in a specific currency, that gets settled when the corresponding payment arrives. This creates a native audit trail for every invoice and eliminates the manual reconciliation that burdens traditional accounts payable workflows. Payments flow directly from payer wallet to recipient wallet with no custodial hand-off in between, which means Request Network operates outside the licensing and VASP registration requirements that apply to custodial payment processors—a meaningful regulatory distinction as governments tighten oversight of crypto payment services.

Protocol Architecture

The protocol stack consists of four layers. Smart contracts hold the core payment logic on each supported chain and enforce protocol rules, including exact-amount validation that blocks both overpayments and underpayments by design. Request Nodes abstract on-chain complexity, batching storage operations for efficiency. Payment Processors monitor supported blockchains and match incoming transactions against open requests. IPFS integration provides distributed, permissionless storage for invoice metadata, keeping the ledger independent of any single infrastructure provider.

Cross-chain routing is built into the protocol. A recipient can specify their preferred settlement currency and network, and the protocol handles conversion and bridging automatically so the payer can send from whatever chain and token they hold. A business invoicing in USDC on Base can accept payment from a counterparty paying in ETH on Ethereum mainnet without either party managing the swap manually. The protocol currently covers over 25 networks and encompasses approximately 95 percent of global stablecoin supply by volume.

Products

Request Network ships three distinct access points. The Dashboard is a no-code interface for creating invoices, managing incoming requests, and running payouts without writing any code. The Secure Payment Page provides a hosted, shareable link that handles cross-chain swaps, wallet screening, and payment confirmation in a single flow—a checkout experience suited for businesses wanting Stripe-like simplicity in crypto. The API enables programmatic access to all protocol functions, including batch payouts, webhook notifications on settlement, and full invoice lifecycle management.

An optional compliance layer performs wallet screening against sanctions and AML databases at the time of each transaction. Unlike many enterprise-grade compliance offerings, this is included in the base protocol fee rather than priced separately. Pricing is flat at 0.9 percent per transaction, capped at $500, with no setup fees or monthly minimums.

REQ Token

REQ is the protocol's native token with a fixed maximum supply of one billion units. Approximately 796.7 million REQ were in circulation as of mid-2026, down from the genesis distribution due to ongoing burns. The burn mechanism is embedded in protocol usage: each time a transaction is stored on-chain, a portion of REQ is destroyed, creating a deflationary link between network activity and circulating supply. Over 582,000 REQ have been removed from circulation through this mechanism to date.

REQ also functions as a governance token. Holders vote on protocol direction and upgrade proposals through the Request Foundation's governance process. The token's economic model is built entirely around the burn-and-governance combination, with no staking rewards mechanism. REQ has a current market capitalization of approximately $44 million and trades around $0.055—well below its all-time high of $1.06 reached in January 2018 during the ICO cycle.

Adoption and Volume

Request Network has processed over $2 billion in settled transaction volume across its history, with more than 3,000 companies using the protocol and approximately 30,000 transactions processed monthly. Adopters include Allora, Blockscout, and 0finance. The protocol's open-source, non-custodial architecture has made it a natural fit for crypto-native businesses, DeFi teams managing recurring payments, and DAOs running payroll or treasury disbursements.

When Coinbase Commerce announced its shutdown in early 2026, Request Network explicitly positioned itself as a migration destination, emphasizing its non-custodial model as a structural advantage over hosted alternatives that carry dependency on a single company's continued operation.

Recent Developments

Several significant updates shipped in 2025 and 2026. In June 2026, Request Network launched cross-chain mass payouts—one-click batch disbursements across EVM chains and Tron with integrated wallet screening via a Merkle Science partnership. This directly targets payroll providers, DAO treasuries, and gaming platforms making high-frequency multi-recipient payments. In July 2026, the protocol added support for USDT transfers on Tron without requiring either party to hold TRX for gas, removing a persistent friction point for Tron users. In August 2026, the team integrated Safe Smart Accounts, enabling multi-signature approval workflows and batched payment execution for organizations requiring institutional controls.

The protocol is running a $600,000 initiative to incentivize developers building web3 invoice factoring solutions on top of Request Network infrastructure. Invoice factoring—where a business sells outstanding invoices to a third party in exchange for immediate liquidity—is a substantial market in traditional finance that has had limited crypto-native representation. A partnership with Huma Finance has been announced to bring this capability on-chain, pairing Request Network's payment rails with Huma's receivables financing infrastructure.

AI agent payments have also become an explicit strategic focus. As autonomous software agents increasingly need to pay for APIs, data feeds, and compute resources, their ability to hold accounts at custodial providers is constrained by KYC requirements. Request Network's non-custodial payment requests are designed to work with wallet-bearing agents directly, and the team has published positioning work on this use case as a meaningful growth vector for the protocol.

On the infrastructure side, a Meta Payment Network update in mid-2024 introduced the ability for a single payment request to accept multiple currencies across chains simultaneously, replacing the prior single-network limitation. Lit Protocol integration in late 2024 added support for encrypted payment requests, enabling confidential invoicing for business contexts where payment details cannot be publicly broadcast.

Foundation and Status

The Request Foundation, established after the 2017 token sale, governs protocol development and the foundation treasury. The team operates as community-owned rather than VC-backed, a model that shapes both governance and the absence of equity-driven growth pressure. The GitHub organization maintains 62 repositories with activity as recent as August 2026, indicating active protocol development. Request Network is a long-running protocol with nearly nine years of mainnet operation, consistent product iteration, and a growing ecosystem of builder initiatives around invoice factoring and AI agent payments.