Polygon in 2029: Open Money Stack

Polygon has published a new vision for what it calls the Open Money Stack, a vertically integrated yet open set of rails, services, & coordination layers that aims to move money instantly, reliably, & globally onchain.

The paper frames money as the next major layer of the internet era. Transfers can be slow, expensive, unpredictable, & opaque, especially across borders.

Polygon says the remedy is not a single app or a single chain, but a full stack that makes blockchains invisible to users while giving institutions the controls they need to operate at scale. The bet is that money will not only move onchain, it will stay onchain, becoming programmable & productive by default.

• The Three Year Window That Matters
• What the Open Money Stack Is
• Wallets, Identity & Compliance
• AI Agents as Financial Users

The Three Year Window That Matters

Polygon’s central narrative is urgency. It argues that moments of infrastructure transition are rare, & that winners are decided early.

The paper does not claim mass adoption completes in three years. In Polygon’s telling, the opportunity is enormous because global value transfer is enormous.

With trillions moving daily across payments networks, bank rails, card networks, & correspondent banking systems, even small slices of that flow represent a generational market. This is why incumbents will fight for relevance, invest heavily, & build quickly, the authors argue.

The world has moved on from slow, fragmented infrastructure. Information is now real-time and global. Yet money isn’t.

On @0xPolygon the settlement layer already works at internet scale and we're ready for the next chapter: to move all money onchain.

The Open Money Stack will… https://t.co/ouOH4VdfrC

— John Egan (@john3gan) January 8, 2026

If information became instant & borderless, money becomes the next candidate for that transformation. Polygon started as a scaling story, but this paper is a positioning shift.

It places Polygon not as a single network competing on speed or fees alone, but as a provider of production grade infrastructure used by millions of users, tens of thousands of applications, & a growing list of institutions. The paper highlights that Polygon has seen real value transfer at scale, & that these learnings inform the design of the Open Money Stack.

Polygon’s pitch is that it has already operated at global scale, & now it wants to package those capabilities into one integrated stack that businesses can adopt through a single integration rather than stitching together fragmented components. In other words, it is trying to become a default backend for money movement, not just another chain people bridge to for lower fees.

What the Open Money Stack Is

The Open Money Stack is described as an open & integrated stack of services & technologies designed to move money anywhere & put it to work. The paper names multiple layers that together create an end to end financial experience onchain.

Key components include blockchain rails, onchain orchestration, wallet infrastructure, indexers & RPCs, on ramps & off ramps, offchain orchestration, stablecoin interoperability, compliance, onchain identity, & onchain earning. The intended outcome is that businesses can integrate once & gain a full suite with a choice of compute, wallets that hold customer funds, infrastructure that makes experience seamless, a path to onboard users from fiat to onchain value, plus financial features like yield access & card programs.

With the internet, information became cheap to transmit, fast to reach recipients, & largely independent of geography. The stack aims to deliver the same for money: instant transfer, predictable arrival, transparent outcomes, & reduced dependency on intermediaries.

Polygon argues current systems create real world harm through friction. People worry about when money arrives. Businesses build workflows around settlement delays. International payments incur unpredictable fees, delays, & deductions that create uncertainty for both sides.

The Open Money Stack aims to replace this with a simple recipient driven experience where transfer is near instant & reliable. Once onchain, value can be routed, conditioned, escrowed, or automated.

One of the more ambitious claims is that chains should become invisible. Today, most onchain money still behaves like a detour.

Users bridge assets, do an action, then return offchain to use money in the real economy. Polygon says Open Money Stack changes this by making onchain money usable onchain forever, with supporting rails that make interoperability seamless.

The paper points to interoperability systems such as Agglayer, plus bridges & other crosschain systems, as mechanisms to make the user experience feel unified. The goal is that people, businesses, & AI agents send & receive money as if everyone were on the same chain using the same wallet.

Wallets, Identity & Compliance

Wallets sit at the center of the stack. Polygon describes wallets that make sending & receiving money as easy as one tap, abstracting fees, wallet creation, & orchestration.

Recoverability is explicitly called out, suggesting account recovery methods that reduce the risk of permanent loss. Custody preference is also included, with an option for users who want to self custody.

Beyond usability, the stack includes identity & compliance elements. This is a telling inclusion. It suggests Polygon expects significant institutional & enterprise use cases where compliance is non negotiable.

Bringing identity onchain is framed as an enabler not only for compliance but also for unlocking yields & products that have traditionally existed offchain. In practice, this means the Open Money Stack is not marketed as a purely permissionless consumer tool.

It is marketed as a flexible infrastructure that can support different risk profiles, regulatory needs, & business models. A major promise is that idle money should earn yield by default.

Polygon argues that whether money sits for minutes or years, onchain money should have access to open earning opportunities across assets, risk profiles, & preferences. This is part of the larger claim that onchain money is more versatile: it can move instantly & it can be productive while waiting.

Polygon says the stack can unlock yields that have traditionally only existed offchain, potentially offering returns as good or better than current options. If the stack succeeds, the difference between a payment balance & an earning balance may blur.

Users may not need to move funds into separate products. The financial experience becomes continuous.

Polygon repeatedly signals that institutions matter. It frames the Open Money Stack as a path to bring more institutions & enterprises onchain, & it highlights its history of use by large organizations.

AI Agents as Financial Users

One of the more forward looking lines in the vision is the inclusion of AI agents as first class users of money rails. The paper suggests that AI agents should not require bespoke logic or manual intervention to manage settlement, reconcile transfers, or handle exceptions. Instead, money should move instantly & reliably, making automation straightforward.

This matters because it expands the market beyond humans. If software agents can hold & move money safely within defined permissions, they can execute tasks like recurring payments, payroll distributions, supplier settlements, micro procurement, or treasury rebalancing.

That turns financial operations into programmable workflows. Polygon’s framing implies a future where businesses delegate more financial actions to software, & the rails must be reliable enough that humans are not constantly pulled into exceptions.

Polygon says it will move from vision to execution in the coming weeks, promising several initiatives that expand capabilities across payments, orchestration, compliance, & onchain money primitives.

Businesses may integrate a single money layer that supports onboarding, compliance, stablecoin settlement, & yield on idle balances. Institutions may use tokenized deposits or stablecoins without forcing end users to learn the difference.

If you find any issues in this blog or notice any missing information, please feel free to reach out at yash@etherworld.co for clarifications or updates.

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