Request

What is Request?

Request is an open-source crypto payment-request and reconciliation protocol that lets a business or user create a signed invoice-like payment request, store the request data in decentralized infrastructure, and match subsequent on-chain payments to that request without giving custody of funds to a payment processor. Its core problem is not “moving tokens” in the abstract, which many wallets and payment gateways already do, but creating a verifiable accounting object around the payment: who requested it, what amount was due, what currency or unit of account was used, where settlement occurred, and whether the payment can be detected and reconciled automatically.

The protocol’s practical moat is therefore workflow integration rather than base-layer consensus: Request combines signed payment requests, IPFS storage, on-chain CID anchoring, payment-reference events, webhooks, API tooling, and multi-chain payment routing into a finance back-office primitive, as described in the Request Network documentation and its protocol overview. docs.request.network

Request is not a dominant Layer 1, a rollup, or a large DeFi money market; it is a niche payments and developer-tools application layer built around crypto invoicing, payment detection, and reconciliation.

As of late May 2026, market-data providers placed REQ in the small-to-mid-cap token universe rather than among systemically important crypto assets: CoinMarketCap showed Request near rank #384, while CoinGecko and DeFiLlama reported market capitalization figures that varied materially because of different circulating-supply methodologies and timing. For this type of protocol, TVL is a limited metric: DeFiLlama’s Request Network page reports treasury and token-market data rather than a conventional lending/AMM TVL figure, which is consistent with Request’s role as payment infrastructure rather than a pool of user deposits. Its more relevant scale indicators are payment volume and processed business activity; the foundation’s website claims more than $2 billion in processed volume and broad stablecoin coverage, while the community-run Request Activity Dashboard tracks daily payments and payment volume but does not provide a clean DAU/MAU user cohort comparable to consumer wallets or exchanges. (coinmarketcap.com)

Who Founded Request and When?

Request was founded in 2017 by Christophe Lassuyt and Etienne Tatur, both associated with the earlier fintech project MONEYTIS; Y Combinator lists Request Network as a Winter 2017 company based in Paris with Lassuyt as Founder/CFO and Tatur as Founder/CTO. The launch context matters: REQ emerged during the 2017 ICO cycle, when many projects attempted to generalize Ethereum beyond token transfers into accounting, commerce, and business automation. Historical ICO databases place the token sale in October 2017, with an initial token supply of roughly one billion REQ, although current supply is lower after burns and token-accounting changes. That vintage creates both an advantage and a burden: Request has survived several market cycles and retained working software, but it also carries the reputational overhang common to 2017-era utility-token projects whose early narratives often exceeded near-term adoption. (ycombinator.com)

The project’s narrative has narrowed over time.

The original framing was a broad decentralized payment network for invoices, audit trails, trade-law compliance, and global payment requests; the current product emphasis is more operational and less ideological, centered on API-based crypto payments, on-chain invoicing, payment detection, cross-chain routing, batch payments, recurring payments, and reconciliation.

That evolution is visible in the foundation’s 2025 updates: Request released API V2, partial payments, enhanced webhooks, crypto-to-fiat workflows, batch payments, and cross-chain payment functionality rather than trying to become a new general-purpose blockchain. In institutional terms, the pivot is from “PayPal on blockchain” toward middleware for finance teams, payment service providers, and crypto-native businesses that need structured payment records across multiple chains. request.network

How Does the Request Network Work?

Request does not have its own proof-of-work, proof-of-stake, DAG, validator set, sequencer, or rollup consensus mechanism. It is a hybrid off-chain/on-chain protocol that persists most request contents to IPFS, anchors the IPFS content identifier on-chain, and processes payments through smart contracts on supported settlement chains.

The documentation states that requests are created by storing CIDs on Gnosis Chain, while payments can occur on more than 20 supported EVM-compatible chains or NEAR; the request balance is then calculated by indexing on-chain payment events associated with a derived payment reference. In technical terms, Request is an application-layer protocol and developer API that inherits liveness and finality from external networks such as Gnosis, Ethereum, Base, Arbitrum, Optimism, Polygon, and others, rather than providing its own base-layer security budget. docs.request.network

The protocol’s distinctive mechanism is the payment reference. In the recommended reference-based model, a unique identifier derived from the request data links a blockchain payment to the underlying invoice or payment request; proxy contracts forward funds to the recipient and emit events containing the payment amount and reference, while subgraphs index those events for later reconciliation.

The system does not use sharding or ZK-rollups as native scaling primitives, and its verification model is closer to event-indexed settlement plus signed request metadata than cryptographic rollup proof verification. Request Nodes provide a gateway across IPFS, smart contracts, and The Graph; the foundation operates nodes for developer convenience but advises production builders to run their own node, which is important because reliance on foundation-hosted gateways and APIs is a centralization vector even if the underlying request data and contracts are open-source.

Private requests add asymmetric and AES encryption: request contents are encrypted with an AES key, and that key is encrypted for each stakeholder’s public key before being persisted to IPFS. docs.request.network

What Are the Tokenomics of req?

REQ is an ERC-20 token originally launched with approximately one billion units, and its supply profile is best understood as mostly fixed with a modest burn mechanism rather than as an inflationary emissions asset. As of late May 2026, Etherscan listed the ERC-20 token contract at 0x8f8221afbb33998d8584a2b05749ba73c37a938a with a max total supply of about 999.416 million REQ, while CoinMarketCap reported circulating supply around 796.7 million REQ and CoinGecko showed a different circulating-supply figure, underscoring that “circulating” supply depends on how reserves, bridges, and inactive balances are classified.

The community dashboard reported roughly 583,000 REQ burned, a small fraction of the original supply, so the deflationary effect exists but is not large enough by itself to be the central investment thesis. (etherscan.io)

REQ’s value accrual is indirect and should be treated cautiously.

The documentation identifies REQ token and burn-mechanism contracts that can lock, bridge, and burn REQ when requests are stored, while the API documentation describes a 5-basis-point protocol fee on payments processed through the API, capped around $25 or €25 for major USD- and EUR-backed stablecoins.

Those are not the same as a conventional PoS staking yield, and Request is not secured by REQ staking in the way Ethereum is secured by ETH validators. Some third-party descriptions describe REQ utility in terms of anti-spam, governance, staking, discounts, and independence, but current official technical documentation does not present a large liquid staking market, validator reward schedule, or recurring emissions program for REQ holders.

The most defensible tokenomics reading is therefore that REQ is a legacy utility/governance-style token with a capped supply and usage-linked burn elements, while most near-term protocol usage may accrue more directly to the product layer and foundation-operated API services than automatically to passive token holders. docs.request.network

Who Is Using Request?

The difference between speculative REQ trading and actual Request Network utility is material. Token volume on exchanges reflects market liquidity and investor rotation, while protocol usage is better measured by created requests, detected payments, payment volume, API adoption, and integration into finance workflows.

Request’s own May 2025 ecosystem update explicitly moved its reporting emphasis from generic transaction counts to “number of payments,” because invoice creation, approval, rejection, and other actions can inflate transaction metrics without representing real settlement activity.

The community dashboard also reports payment volume and payment counts across supported chains, but these are volatile daily indicators and should not be interpreted as stable active-user numbers. Sector-wise, Request sits at the intersection of crypto payments, stablecoin settlement, invoicing, payroll, accounting, and treasury operations rather than DeFi liquidity, gaming, or NFT speculation. request.network

The strongest adoption evidence is integrations with identifiable finance or crypto-operations products, not anonymous wallet counts. Request’s 2025 ecosystem updates named active builders including Animal Social Club, intrXn, 0 Finance, Allora, and Request Finance, while earlier updates also referenced Huma Finance, BSOS, Joba Network, and other ecosystem participants.

In October 2025, Kryptos announced that it had integrated the Request Network API to power invoicing inside Kryptos Enterprise, with Request providing invoice creation, on-chain settlement, event webhooks, and reconciliation; that announcement also cited Kryptos’ own adoption snapshot of more than 200,000 registered users, more than 50 Web3 businesses onboarded in early phases, and thousands of wallet, CEX, DeFi, and chain integrations. These figures should be read as partner-platform scale rather than direct REQ-holder adoption, but they are still more substantive than unsourced partnership rumors. request.network

What Are the Risks and Challenges for Request?

Regulatory risk for Request is subtler than for an exchange, lending protocol, or privacy mixer, but it is not zero. Public searches and SEC complaint text available through the search results did not show REQ as a named token in the major 2023 SEC Coinbase or Binance complaints, and there is no widely reported active SEC lawsuit specifically against Request Network as of late May 2026.

That does not amount to a regulatory safe harbor. REQ was sold in the 2017 ICO era, it trades on secondary markets, and U.S. regulators have historically scrutinized tokens that were distributed to fund protocol development.

The protocol’s payment business also touches AML, sanctions screening, KYC, stablecoin regulation, money transmission, and tax reporting questions, especially where Request supports crypto-to-fiat settlement, wallet screening, and business invoicing. The centralization risk is also practical rather than theoretical: the foundation-operated API, dashboard, secure payment page, Request Nodes, and payment detection infrastructure can create operational dependency even if the contracts, SDK, and data model remain open-source. sec.gov

Competition is intense because Request’s user-facing problem can be attacked from several directions. Traditional payment processors are adding stablecoin settlement; centralized crypto payment processors can offer compliance, chargeback policy, fiat off-ramps, and merchant dashboards; wallets and exchanges can add payment links directly; and enterprise crypto accounting providers can build invoice reconciliation into their own stacks. Within Web3, Safe, Coinbase Commerce-like products, multisig treasury tools, payroll platforms, stablecoin checkout providers, on-chain accounting dashboards, and cross-chain routing APIs can each absorb parts of Request’s workflow.

The economic threat is that Request’s 5-basis-point fee and REQ burn linkage may be competed down if payment routing and reconciliation become commoditized API features. Its defensibility depends on whether developers treat Request’s invoice object, payment-reference standard, and reconciliation tooling as a durable integration layer rather than a replaceable convenience wrapper. docs.request.network

What Is the Future Outlook for Request?

Request’s near-term roadmap appears focused on product depth rather than consensus-layer reinvention. Verified 2025 and early 2026 documentation points to API V2 migration, cross-chain stablecoin payments, batch payments, partial payments, crypto-to-fiat workflows, recurring payments, fee customization, wallet and network switching improvements, broader payment tracking, and support for 25-plus chains through the API surface. Cross-chain payments are particularly important because they address a real operational pain point: payers may hold USDT on Optimism while invoices request USDC on Base, and finance teams do not want to manage bridges, swaps, gas tokens, and reconciliation manually.

Request's documentation says cross-chain payments support USDC (USDC), USDT (USDT), and DAI (DAI) across Ethereum (ETH), Arbitrum One (ARB), Base, and OP Mainnet (OP), with routes ranked by transaction fees and processing speed; the public cross-chain product page states that Request uses LI.FI routing while keeping unified payment detection and webhook logic. request.network

The structural hurdle is adoption density. Request does not need to beat Ethereum, Visa, Stripe, or every stablecoin processor in a broad sense; it needs enough business applications, accounting products, PSPs, and crypto-native finance teams to standardize around its request-and-reconciliation layer. The bear case is that stablecoin payments become embedded directly into wallets, banks, and exchange APIs, leaving Request as a small developer tool with limited token capture.

The bull case is more restrained than a price narrative: if stablecoin settlement keeps expanding and finance teams require auditable, non-custodial, multi-chain payment records, Request’s combination of signed requests, payment references, webhooks, batch flows, recurring payments, and cross-chain routing could remain viable infrastructure.

The project’s future therefore depends less on speculative REQ demand and more on whether Request can convert its long operating history into durable integrations, transparent usage metrics, and a token model whose economic linkage to real payments is clear enough for institutional users and token holders to underwrite.