The internet never had a value protocol — in 2026, that finally changes | Opinion

For decades, the internet has been built on universal protocols that determine how every message, file, and request travels across the network. HTTP defined how our content moves, SMTP defined how our messages move, TCP/IP defined how our data moves, and TLS defined how trust moves. These standards ensured that all information could predictably travel across the internet.

What we never gained was a standardised method for moving value. Even today, money still has to pass from institution to institution, with each one performing the same checks and processes worldwide. When every bank, processor, identity provider, and compliance platform maintains its own record of the truth, transfers can only move through chains of intermediaries, creating delays and requiring reconciliation at the end. So, instead of a single, shared network for value, we’ve built a maze of overlapping financial silos, all running the same slow, manual workflows in parallel.

This is the gap that 2026 begins to close. Finally, the core plumbing that moves money — bank ledgers, card networks, payment processors, and settlement systems — is starting to behave like a software layer built for the internet, rather than a haphazard network shaped by geography and legacy infrastructure. It’s a shift already visible in the U.S. and Wyoming’s state-backed FRNT stablecoin that settles digital dollars instantly.

The shortcomings of the old model become obvious the moment you look at how value actually moves today.

A business that wants to move value must still pass through a sequence of providers, each responsible for a single task. One system verifies identity, another guards against fraud, another processes the payment, another settles it, and still others manage currency conversion and auditing. These systems were never designed to work together, so every link has to be built by hand. Each one rebuilds a customer’s profile and repeats checks already completed upstream. Once a payment crosses borders, the chain becomes longer and the final outcome less certain. For users, this appears as a slow and costly movement. For institutions, it becomes an unavoidable operational strain.

New paradigm

But a new and more seamless paradigm is emerging. Wallets are now becoming the universal interface through which users and businesses hold identity, permissions, and payment instruments together. It’s a shift already visible in Stripe’s rollout of onchain payments, where every merchant and customer receives an automatically generated crypto wallet for holding balances and authorising transfers.

Revolut customers in the UK and Europe have already moved more than $690 million in stablecoin transfers on Polygon since launch, with funds arriving in seconds instead of the multi-day delays of traditional cross-border routes.

Stablecoins have quietly become the internet’s first native transport layer for value. Transfers can now settle in seconds, with costs falling to levels that traditional systems cannot match. Each stablecoin transfer includes its own proof, making verification simple and remittances clear long before a bank message reaches its correspondent.

Stablecoin usage has already reached a global scale. USDC (USDC) alone now has a market cap of $75 billion, and on Polygon, more than 153 million transactions were processed in the last 30 days, showing how quickly this technology is becoming part of everyday financial activity.

When millions of users begin relying on a shared settlement environment, the system starts to resemble a protocol rather than a set of siloed arrangements.

The next step in the transformation is that many financial tasks can become automatic once money moves instantly and reliably. A payment can be released the moment a delivery is checked. Staff can be paid gradually rather than in one batch. Finance teams can move funds at any moment instead of planning around fixed cut-off times. As these practices spread, the line between local and overseas payments fades away to reveal an interconnected global environment.

Tokenized assets then complete the picture. When short-term instruments such as treasuries, credit exposures, and invoices live on the same rails as payments, liquidity becomes far easier to manage. Settlement becomes immediate because both sides of a transaction sit in the same environment. This is not speculative. Regulated money market funds are already operating on public ledgers. Municipal authorities are anchoring budget records onchain to increase transparency. Governments in Asia are issuing regulated digital currency instruments with clear legal status. These are practical deployments solving real problems.

Today, more than $1.5 billion in U.S. Treasuries already sit on public blockchains through regulated issuers such as Franklin Templeton and BlackRock, and pilots in Singapore, Hong Kong, and Japan are applying the same model to bonds, foreign exchange, and government instruments.

This convergence — wallets, stablecoins, and tokenized assets living on the same rails — is what makes 2026 the first year finance behaves like a true internet protocol. Each existed before, but we are now at a time when they can operate as one system. The same way an email bundles sender, message, metadata, and security into a single packet, the value protocol bundles identity, permissions, and settlement into each transfer.

There will be no grand, single moment that marks this change. Instead, we will see it through improvements to everyday tasks. Refunds will appear in people’s accounts as soon as they’re approved. Cross-border invoices will settle while teams are still on the call. To the user, it will all feel effortless, yet it relies on a completely new structure beneath it.

Finance is about to become programmable, verifiable, and borderless by default — the way the internet itself already is. The old institution-based model will give way to a protocol that spans the internet. The first iteration of internet-connected information. The second connected people. The next connects value itself – money, assets, and trust – completing the internet’s missing financial layer.