Request

About Request (REQ)

What Is Request (REQ)?

Request is an open-source, non-custodial payment protocol for invoicing and settling stablecoin payments. A payee creates a request specifying the amount, destination chain and token, shares a link, and the payer settles it wallet to wallet with no intermediary holding funds. It supports major EVM chains including Ethereum, Arbitrum, Base, Polygon and BNB Chain, plus Tron, and routes automatically when the payer's chain or token differs. REQ is the native token, used for governance and burned when a transaction is stored on-chain.

Official resources:

• Website: https://request.network
• Documentation: https://docs.request.network/
• REQ token page: https://request.network/req-token/
• GitHub: https://github.com/RequestNetwork

Who Founded Request? (History)

Request was founded in 2017 by Christophe Lassuyt and Etienne Tatur, who had previously co-founded Moneytis, a cross-border money transfer comparison service. Lassuyt took the finance role and Tatur the technical one. The original framing was a decentralized invoicing layer on Ethereum in which a payee pushes a request to a counterparty rather than a merchant pulling from a stored credential. The project later expanded across chains and now describes itself as a community-owned foundation funded by its community, not venture capital.

How Request Works

The model is a push payment rather than a pull payment. A payee creates a request carrying the amount, accepted currency, destination address and optional terms, which makes it closer to an invoice than a bare transfer request, and the payer settles it in one action from their own wallet. Settlement is non-custodial, so the protocol's job is to make the payment identifiable: requests and payment references are recorded so both sides, and any accounting system reading the chain, can match a transfer back to the invoice it settles. The product layer adds cross-chain routing, so a payer can settle in a different stablecoin on another chain while the payee receives the asset they nominated.

Key Ecosystem Components

• The Request protocol, deployed across EVM chains and Tron.
• The Dashboard, where a business configures payment destinations.
• The Request foundation and its governance forum.

REQ Token Utility

REQ has two documented roles. It is consumed by usage, since the project states that REQ is burned each time a transaction is stored on-chain, tying supply reduction to real activity. And it carries governance rights over the protocol and the foundation that stewards it. Supply is a fixed one billion REQ with no inflation and no new issuance, distributed at genesis with no vesting outstanding, so there is no unlock overhang to model. No staking rewards program is described.

What Makes Request Unique?

Request has stayed on one problem for a long time: making a crypto payment reconcilable to an invoice. Where most payment tooling optimizes for the transfer, Request optimizes for what accounting needs afterward: a durable link between a request, a payment and a counterparty.

How Request Differs from Similar Projects

Payment-focused chains such as Celo, Stellar and Nano compete on the transfer layer itself. Request sits above it and is chain-agnostic, treating those networks as rails. Against custodial payment processors, funds never touch an intermediary balance sheet, which removes counterparty risk but also means no chargebacks.

Use Cases of Request

• Freelancers invoicing in crypto without sharing bank details.
• Businesses accepting stablecoin payments from customers holding a different token.
• Platforms embedding crypto checkout through the API.

How Request Is Secured

REQ is an ERC-20 token, so the contract inherits Ethereum's security. Payments are non-custodial, which removes the largest failure mode in payments, an intermediary holding pooled customer funds. Residual risk sits in the protocol contracts, in bridging paths, and in integrators' handling of API credentials and webhook secrets, which the documentation warns must never be exposed client-side.

Risks and Considerations

Crypto invoicing is small relative to conventional payments, and volume must be won from incumbent processors and newer stablecoin providers alike. The burn reduces supply only in proportion to real usage, so it is not a floor. Non-custodial settlement means mistaken payments are not reversible, and cross-chain routing adds dependency on bridges, historically among the more exploited parts of the stack.

Why Request Matters

Business-to-business stablecoin settlement is one of the few crypto use cases with clear, non-speculative demand, and what has held it back is the paperwork rather than the transfer: who was paid, for what invoice, on which chain. Request has been building that reconciliation layer since 2017.

Where Can You Buy Request (REQ)?

REQ trades on centralized exchanges and, as an ERC-20 token, on Ethereum decentralized exchanges, with a bridged version on Polygon. On a decentralized exchange, confirm the contract address against the project's official pages and select the right network, because the two versions are distinct contracts.

Storage Options After Purchase

REQ is a standard ERC-20 token, so any Ethereum-compatible wallet can hold it, including hardware devices such as Ledger or Trezor, which are the sensible default for balances you do not move often. If you hold the Polygon version, set your wallet to that network before sending, since sending to the wrong chain is a common and generally unrecoverable mistake.

Related Coins

• Celo (CELO)
• xMoney (UTK)
• Telcoin (TEL)
• COTI (COTI)
• Nano (XNO)