The $1 Trillion Race to Tokenized Commerce is going to hit Warp Speed

Anyone who has studied smart-contract documentation knows how easily an ERC-20 or SPL token - the standard wrappers for most stablecoins - can move between wallets. Transfers settle almost instantaneously and cost mere fractions of a cent. So if the mechanics are this fast and cheap, why hasn’t consumer spending already moved on-chain?

Well, on-chain payments work well for peer-to-peer transfers but fall short for real-world commerce, which requires features like refunds, fraud prevention, rewards and tax adjustments. These create race conditions between checkout, settlement, and fulfilment - something on-chain systems aren’t natively built to handle.

However, a new wave of protocols will tackle this, delivering the essential features of traditional card networks by replicating their core structure. The Coinbase Commerce Payments Protocol is the 1st one I’ve seen that does so effectively. In this post, I unpack the protocol and show how Kablio.com (my startup) is adapting a similar core design—then pushing it further—to build a b2b payments-and-reputation layer that is game-theoretically designed to maximise value for our users.

Key Features of Coinbase Commerce Protocol

Auth and Capture

Commerce payments need a reversible buffer between approval and settlement to lock funds, prevent overselling, run fraud checks, calculate taxes, and more—while still allowing either party to back out. Traditional card networks achieve this by splitting authorisation and capture, creating a delay window.

Blockchain transactions, by contrast, are atomic: everything happens in a single step, with no built-in delay or reversibility.

The Coinbase Commerce protocol solves for this introducing a two-step safeguard in its smart contract. The moment a shopper confirms payment, the selected stablecoins move into escrow, freezing the balance. Once the checks are made, the contract performs the capture, releasing the funds to the merchant’s wallet.

Operators

In legacy card rails, every purchase is relayed through merchant acquirers and card networks (Visa, Mastercard, Amex, etc.). First, the merchant’s acquirer captures the authorisation request, performs risk and fraud checks, and fronts the funds to the merchant. It then hands the transaction to the card network which applies scheme rules, assesses interchange, and routes the request to the shopper’s issuing bank for approval before guaranteeing clearing and settlement. 

The Coinbase protocol unifies these functions under a single role: the Operator, who facilitates fund transfers between the transacting parties.

The Operator ingests each shopper’s transaction, runs the risks and fraud checks, and adds their countersignature so the escrow can lock the funds.

The operator also has pricing authority: they can set merchant fees the way acquirers tune a card network’s discount rate, then can funnel part of that revenue into cashback, points, or any other loyalty mechanic. In effect, they can reconstruct an Amex-style incentive and payments engine in smart-contract form.

The protocol is permissionless, and its cryptographic guardrails and enforced fund-flow rules eliminate the need for central authority, keeping operators trust-minimised. That means anyone—even the merchants themselves—can step in as operators (finally forging a direct relationship with their customers).

Token collectors

On legacy card rails, the merchant’s payment gateway/processor can speak directly to your bank card. I.e. it can turn “spend X” into the exact authorisation message each network/issuer expects.

You need a token collector to do this in EVM chains, because, unlike card networks with standardised formats, each token or wallet speaks a different “language” for authorising payments.

A collector is an EVM smart contract whose job is to translate a generic intent (“I want to spend X”) into whatever authorisation call the destination token/wallet requires.

Different tokens have different “languages” for how they accept payment. For instance:

• One might need a special signature that works only once.

• Another might rely on an allowance system, where you pre-authorise how much a contract can spend.

• Others (like smart wallets) may have their own internal controls, such as built-in spending limits.

There’s no universal EVM standard, and these methods keep evolving.

The Commerce Payments Protocol is built to be collector-agnostic and so imposes no single approval flow. Operators can choose any module, keeping the system flexible and future-proof.

So what’s the impact for end users?

Merchants get near-instant, lower-cost settlement and the power to design their own fee structures; consumers get lower prices and higher rewards, all while enjoying the buyer- and seller-protections they’ve come to expect from traditional payment networks.

Add the yield-bearing potential of stablecoins and you get a flywheel that can fund incentives at a scale the TradFi card networks never could. For the first time, on-chain payments aren’t just theoretically better—they can be operationally and commercially superior.

How is the Coinbase protocol relevant to Kablio?

Kablio.com is a jobs marketplace for the built environment. It connects employers with recruiters and workers—so they can find and pay each other. Their payments and reputation will be managed by a permissionless protocol (built by us).

The points below highlight how our protocol mirrors Coinbase’s Commerce Payments Protocol and helps reduce take rates for our end users.

Operators

Our protocol also introduces a permissionless operator role, allowing any other job platform app (i.e. competitor) to run the protocol and set their own fees and policies. Since all apps write to the same shared payments-and-reputation ledger, workers and recruiters can move freely between platforms, taking their hard-earned reputation with them.

Auth & Capture

Our protocol also replicates the authorize-then-capture flow of traditional card networks, letting operators verify milestones and enforce agreements before funds move.

Example:

A recruiter’s fee is split into three tranches that pay out only if the hire they placed stays six months. At checkout, the employer signs SPL-Token::approveChecked, granting a program-derived address (PDA) delegate rights over the full USDC liability. This writes a delegate record in the employer’s token account—no funds move, no escrow is opened.

Our scheduler monitors on-chain events: once the hire is confirmed, it calls TokenProgram::transferChecked as the delegate to capture tranche 1. Solana validates the delegate entry, so no additional employer signature is needed.

The scheduler captures tranche 2 at the 90-day mark and tranche 3 at 180 days, each time reducing the remaining allowance. If the hire leaves early, the employer simply submits revoke, which deletes the delegate record and blocks further pulls. The result is milestone-based capture without upfront escrow, leaving custody—and any yield—on the client side until each condition is met.

Token collectors

We don’t need token collectors because we’re building on Solana, which standardizes token behavior through the SPL-Token program. With native instructions like transfer, approve, and revoke, Solana provides a built-in “language” for payments.

Conclusion

So that’s the future we’re building at Kablio: a payments-and-reputation protocol that any operator (competitor) can run.

Workers and recruiters can confidently invest time and effort in building their reputations, knowing they are fully portable. This portability creates a competitive environment that forces platforms to stay sharp on features and fees—no matter how big they grow.

No memecoins, no token-voting theatrics—just seamless portability and better choices.

If that sounds like a cool vision / have feedback or ideas, reach out to me on LinkedIn. I’d love to hear from you.