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, delayed capture, rewards and tax adjustments. These create race conditions between checkout, settlement, and fulfillment - something on-chain systems aren’t natively built to handle.

However, a new wave of protocols are tackling this, delivering the essential features of traditional card networks by replicating their core structure. The Coinbase Commerce Payments Protocol is the first example 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 next-gen rail that is game-theoretically designed to maximize 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

The Coinbase protocol introduces the role of Operator to facilitate movement of funds between the transacting parties. The Operator ingests each shopper’s transaction, runs the checks (KYC/KYB, velocity limits, sanctions screening, refund windows,..etc.), 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, unmediated relationship with their customers).

Token collectors

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:

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

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

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

The point is: there’s no universal EVM standard, and these methods keep evolving.

Built to be collector-agnostic, the Commerce Payments Protocol imposes no single approval flow. Operators select or supply the right module, keeping the system 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 this 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.

• Our protocol is permisionless meaning any job platform app can run the protocol and set its own fees and policies (i.e. be an operator). And because every app writes to the same shared payments-and-reputation ledger, workers and recruiters can switch between competing apps and carry their hard-earned reputation with them.

• Our B2B payment rail uses 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.

• We’re building on Solana, which standardises all fungible assets under the SPL-Token program, meaning every token account already exposes the same built-in instructions—transfer, approve, revoke, and so on. In other words, the Solana network directly supplies the common “language” that collectors were invented to solve on EVM chains, so we don’t need a token collector.

Conclusion

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

End users 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.