Traditional finance moves fast — Nasdaq processes around 20,000 transactions per second. Now picture this: AI-driven microtransactions, cross-border settlements, and DeFi protocols all running simultaneously. Can current blockchain infrastructure keep up?

Even MegaETH, which claims to be the fastest mainnet-ready Layer 1, only hit roughly 20k TPS during testing. That's impressive for crypto standards, but when AI agents start executing millions of micro-trades and global institutions demand real-time settlement, we're looking at throughput requirements that dwarf anything today's chains were built for.

The bottleneck isn't just about speed anymore. It's about whether decentralized networks can scale to match — or exceed — the demands of AI-powered finance without sacrificing security or decentralization.