The stakes keep rising as the connective tissue grows; Mordor Intelligence values the global embedded finance market, finance distributed through other companies’ networks, at 125.95 billion dollars in 2025, projecting 375.68 billion dollars by 2030. Honor-all-cards requirements, dispute procedures, data standards, and settlement guarantees are what participants actually buy when they join a financial network. Critical mass: the cold start and its escapesBelow a density threshold, a financial network is worthless; above it, self-sustaining. Whether multihoming is easy is therefore the single best predictor of how concentrated a financial network market becomes. Reading a financial network like an analystFour questions reveal most of the structure.