"Payments Grade" Onchain Rails | Peter Watts (Relay) at ETHConf

Sun, Aug 2, 2026, 12:00 AM

In this talk, Peter Watts from Relay makes the case that interoperability and exchange are the biggest barriers standing between onchain payments and true "payments grade" quality that can compete with traditional money rails. He opens by framing why onchain payments are compelling: permissionless global access, instant settlement without reconciliation across ledgers, a single shared ledger, and the programmability of open rails that make money as open as the internet. But the bar is high, since credit cards and emerging instant transfer rails already work simply, quickly, and reliably every time. Payments grade means an experience where you just tap, it's fast, it's a synchronous confirmation, and it works every time regardless of which bank a merchant uses or which country you're in. He acknowledges that onchain rails have come a long way with fast low cost blockchains, a mix of regulated and yield bearing stablecoins, and improved on-ramps. Peter argues the core unsolved problem is that there will never be a single chain or single stablecoin. Even within USD there are multiple prominent stablecoins (people use Tron USDT whether you like it or not), foreign currency stablecoins are emerging as people want to be paid locally, and USDC alone exists on around 50 chains. Once you introduce exchange between all these assets, keeping payments simple, fast, and reliable gets much harder, and existing infrastructure doesn't fit. Bridges are deliberately slow and expensive and shouldn't be rushed, while traditional DEXs and AMMs are built for trading, introducing slippage and lacking exact output support that payments require. He outlines what a new payments liquidity layer needs: broad asset support without fragmenting liquidity across pairs and chains, instant cross chain movement via a fast layer of solvers taking finality risk on top of the slow secure base layer, and always available liquidity that works every time even under market stress (unlike mercenary prop AMMs). He explains that liquidity alone isn't enough and an orchestration layer is needed for routing, gas and nonce handling, and rethought UX like universal deposit addresses instead of wallet connections. He closes on pricing guarantees, noting stablecoins don't actually trade at exactly a dollar (USDT recently traded 10 bps below USDC), and predicting applications will subsidize one to one experiences the way merchants subsidize credit card fees, revealing that solving exchange and interop is exactly what Relay is building. 00:00 Introduction 00:12 Why Onchain Payments Are Interesting 00:37 Instant Settlement and a Single Shared Ledger 01:00 Making Money as Open as the Internet 01:22 Why the Bar for Payments Is High 01:44 What Payments Grade UX Means 02:06 Reliability and Working Every Time 02:28 How Far Onchain Rails Have Come 02:53 Why Interop Is the Biggest Barrier 03:22 The Reality of Tron USDT and Local Currencies 03:44 USDC Across 50 Different Chains 04:08 Why Businesses Choose Different Chains 04:32 Why Exchange Makes Everything Harder 04:59 The Need for a New Liquidity Layer 05:25 Why Bridges Aren't Built for Payments 05:58 Why DEXs and Slippage Don't Fit Payments 06:22 The Problem of Broad Asset Support 06:47 How Pairs and Pools Fragment Liquidity 07:17 Moving Across Chains Instantly 07:51 Designing Liquidity That Is Always Available 08:37 The Orchestration Layer on Top 09:05 Routing, Gas, and Nonce Handling at Scale 09:30 Rethinking Payments UX Beyond Wallet Connect 09:53 Universal Deposit Addresses on Any Chain 10:18 Pricing Guarantees and the Dollar Myth 10:44 How Applications Will Subsidize One to One Rates 11:18 The Credit Card Subsidy Analogy 11:49 Summary: We Are Close 12:17 What Relay Is Building 12:17 Closing _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ *ETHConf 2026* ETHConf is a 3 day event for founders, industry leaders, and builders who are excited about the possibilities of building on top of Ethereum. Connect with 2,000+ top innovators in crypto, finance, technology, and policy at our inaugural three-day event packed with showcases, demos, partnerships, and conversations shaping the future of the global economy. _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ ✅ *Follow ETHConf* X: https://x.com/ethconf Website: https://ethconf.com _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ 🎟️ Get your early bird tickets for ETHConf 2027: https://ethconf.com/2027#tickets 🎤 View the full ETHConf 2026 Speaker Schedule: https://ethconf.com/schedule _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _