Solana’s “million-payments-a-second” AI system can leave sellers unpaid even after they deliver

A customer using a Solana payment channel can stop buying AI services before the channel has finished paying for them. If the operator goes silent in between, the customer needs a way to recover the remaining deposit, while the merchant needs its last bill to reach the blockchain before the recovery window closes.That division of risk sits behind Solana Foundation’s Sept. 3 payment-channel announcement, which reported more than one million payments per second through a proxy using 100,000 unique wallets. The system lets agents spend against a prepaid ceiling through signed messages, reducing the need for a separate blockchain transaction for every delivery.The customer funds the channel, the merchant supplies the service, and the operator runs the payment process. Each finances a different part of the interval between authorization and collection: customer deposits, operator advances of SOL for fees and refundable account rent, and merchant service awaiting on-chain payment.A warning in the Foundation-linked benchmark template makes that interval consequential: restarting its default in-memory store can forfeit vouchers accepted but not yet settled.The benchmark template reports ab...