Future tech will require IPv6, experts urge Internet upgrade

It’s time for the world to take the plunge and upgrade the protocol that drives the Internet. IPv6, the next-generation version, opens a treasure chest of economic potential for new technologies like blockchain, artificial intelligence (AI), 6G, Internet of Things (IoT), and peer-to-peer (P2P) communications. But continued hesitance to fully embrace the future is costing enterprises and governments time, effort, and money, as they maintain dual-stack deployments to support the legacy IPv4 infrastructure. In 2025, several major countries have now crossed the 51% threshold for IPv6 adoption, with some at 75%, and experts are calling for leadership in moving to IPv6-only as soon as possible. It’s a lot closer than you might think.

The latest is a report from the IPv6 Forum titled “2025 Call for Final Action: Move to Native IPv6-Only.” The 23-page report, published last week, details how this can be accomplished easily while keeping support for legacy IPv4 resources via existing bridging technologies.

CoinGeek spoke to IPv6 Forum President Latif Ladid about the report and why moving to native IPv6-only makes the most sense for enterprises and governments.

“Big countries reaching more than 75% are wasting too much effort having an expensive dual stack, especially with IPv4/NAT/CGNAT, to maintain and manage,” he said. “The proposal I have made is that it’s essentially good to have just the IPv6 stack while still connecting with IPv4 as before, but having a clean IPv6 in-house network—easy to manage and to contain their investment, making it future-proof.”

What’s the big deal with IPv6?

CoinGeek has a detailed explainer and infographic on the benefits of IPv6 vs. IPv4 here. The best-known advantage is IPv6’s near-infinite supply of unique addresses, allowing every Internet-connected device to have its own.

You’ve probably heard the term “IP address,” and the problem with legacy IPv4 is that it ran out of new ones a long time ago. The bolt-on solution to this is network address translation (NAT) routers, which map new address information to data packets while they’re in transit. This works—mostly— but it comes with added complexity and security vulnerabilities, and it was always meant to be a temporary solution.

There are many other benefits, too. IPv6 has end-to-end encryption and data integrity-checking features built in, not just added on.

For blockchain in particular, IPv6 makes IP-to-IP communications much easier and more reliable. Its built-in encryption means a public signature key can be bound to a single IP address, establishing identity and ownership. The ability to “multicast” (a single IP address sending a message to many others simultaneously) would let a user broadcast a transaction to the entire mining network at the same time, instantly. Any address can do this, even if it’s owned by a tiny RFID tag or sensor in some remote location.

Solid P2P communications at scale, key generation, enhanced privacy, per-use services, and as many unique IP addresses as you’d ever want open up a new world of use cases for blockchain. It would finally gain the trust of the financial industry, government services, and other large enterprises for use in distributed applications.

An IPv6-native Internet could benefit any blockchain network. But the Bitcoin developers working on BSV recognized the potential immediately, building IPv6-compatible features into its base code. BSV’s own next-gen node software, Teranode, is designed to work seamlessly with IPv6 to deliver a scalable blockchain network with as much capacity, speed, and security as the Internet itself offers.

Yes, it has taken the world’s large governments and businesses decades to cross the 50% mark in IPv6 adoption. But this is the entire Internet we’re talking about. There’s the natural human reluctance to upgrade something that (mostly) already works, even if it’s not as good. There are countless systems and individual devices to consider. There are new concepts to learn. These kinds of things can take a generation or more to gain acceptance. The good news is that a willingness to embrace IPv6 is ever-growing, while the limitations of IPv4 are making it unfit for purpose in the high-speed digital economy. These factors are driving a building momentum that will see the worldwide adoption of a native, IPv6-only internet become a reality.

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The time is ripe to go all-in on IPv6

The transition to IPv6 on all networks may be slow, but it is inevitable. The benefits are undeniable. So why wait any longer, as the costs in time and money to maintain dual-stack IPv4/IPv6 deployments continue to grow?

These include NAT64 and DNS64, and the report also recommends 464XLAT for anything the other two can’t handle.

“464XLAT is an IPv6 transition mechanism that provides full IPv4 connectivity to IPv6-only clients by performing a two-step translation: first on the client device (CLAT) from IPv4 to IPv6, and then in the network (PLAT) from IPv6 back to IPv4.”

“It is the key technology that makes large-scale, user-friendly IPv6-only networking a practical reality today, by ensuring complete backward compatibility with the entire IPv4 Internet.”

It states that large technology corporations like Google (NASDAQ: GOOGL), Microsoft (NASDAQ: MSFT), Apple (NASDAQ: AAPL), Meta (NASDAQ: META), and Amazon (NASDAQ: AMZN) are using NAT64 and DNS64 in various capacities. Meanwhile, the United States government has issued official mandates and directives to make the IPv6 transition in key departments like the Defense Department, the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST), and the General Services Administration (GSA).

Chinese government departments and China’s large technology players like Alibaba (NASDAQ: BABA), Baidu (NASDAQ: BAIDF), and Huawei, along with local telecoms, have made the country a world leader in IPv6 adoption—the new protocol has around 75% penetration there. Japan and India also have significant plans in place, making Asia home to the world’s largest IPv6-native networks.

The European Commission, along with national governments in several European Union member states, is also prioritizing IPv6 adoption wherever possible, including in critical infrastructure. France, Germany, and the Netherlands have seized the initiative. Elsewhere, Saudi Arabia has made IPv6 a key focus of its National Digital Transformation Strategy and Saudi Vision 2030 plan.

While 51% worldwide IPv6 adoption is a key milestone, Ladid noted that actual usage worldwide is probably much higher.

“Worldwide IPv6 penetration has crossed 60% as China is not included in the Google stats, since Google is not present in China, so some 850 million v6 users are not factored in Google stats: France is at 87%, Germany 75%, India 76%, even Ireland at 39%. China at 75% (not listed on Google).”

His report highlights 464XLAT as the key component in going native IPv6-only. “NAT64/DNS64 has a major limitation: it only works if the IPv6-only client initiates the connection.” This can break things like applications with embedded IP addresses, IPv4 literal addresses, and some NAT traversal techniques.

“464XLAT fixes this by enabling the client itself to initiate communication with an IPv4-only destination, even without DNS.”

The answer is right there in its name: 4-6-4. XLAT stands for translation. NAT64/DNS64 will do some of the heavy lifting between protocols, but 464XLAT solves full backward-compatibility with (what remains of) the entire IPv4 Internet.

IPv6 is set to finally unlock the Internet’s potential, and everything we’ve mentioned here shows there’s no longer any need to cling to the past. New technologies like blockchain and AI (among many others) are waiting in the wings, ready to create new economic opportunities and communication conveniences for all. At some point, you just have to make the hard decision on that upgrade, go native-IPv6, and never look back. Once it’s done, the world will wonder why you’d even want to.

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Watch: Building more trustworthy internet of the future with Metanet

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