What is Tempo? The payment and stablecoin blockchain built by Stripe

While stablecoins and payments use cases are exploding in popularity in the cryptocurrency space and eliciting large-scale institutional adoption, genius act In July 2025.

Stablecoin market capitalization grows to over $300 billion on-chain According to data from DeFi LlamaUS Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent previously said. That a market capitalization of $2 trillion is appropriate. For asset classes.

Currently, payment giant Stripe is partnering with virtual currency venture company Paradigm. Build a blockchain specialized for stablecoins and their use in payments.

Here's what you need to know:

What is tempo?

Tempo is a new Ethereum virtual machine compatible layer 1 blockchain developed by Paradigm and Stripe.

Unlike other layer 1 networks such as Ethereum and Solana, which are built for a wide range of cryptocurrency activities, Tempo is intentionally designed for stablecoins and payments, leveraging Stripe's 15 years of experience in this space.

In addition to the promised low fees, the blockchain operates at around 100,000 transactions per second (TPS) and comes with specific features designed to make real-world payments use cases the easiest and bring more capital on-chain.

company Raised $500 million in Series AAn October report put its value at about $5 billion. luck.

Who is building Tempo?

Tempo is incubated by cryptocurrency venture Paradigm and global payments giant Stripe, with early design input from some of the world's biggest companies, including OpenAI, Shopify, and Visa.

Blockchain initially uses a set of independent validators run by early design partners before transitioning to an open, permissionless network that allows for verification by parties.

Additionally, in the early stages of Tempo's development, we are working with design partners to test use cases related to real-world payments and stablecoin usage, such as cross-border payments and remittances, on a private testnet.

In September, Tempo announced a list of infrastructure partners that will help provide building blocks for the network, including crypto wallets Phantom and MetaMask for wallet services, and protocols such as Across and LayerZero for blockchain interoperability.

Stripe's acquired stablecoin platform Bridge and wallet infrastructure company Privy are also on the list of infrastructure partners.

In October, the company Poaching of prominent Ethereum developer Danclad Feist We help you build your network.

What features does Tempo have?

Tempo's payments-focused design ensures it maintains a feature set that sets it apart from other networks.

For example, the network allows for batch transfers and memo fields are available for those transactions. Additionally, with reported speeds of over 100,000 TPS, it is much faster than other popular layer 1 networks such as Ethereum and Solana. These networks currently maintain true TPS numbers around 21.8 and 1,344, according to their respective block explorers.

Since Tempo is specifically designed for the use of stablecoins, it is also equipped with an Automated Market Maker (AMM) that allows users to pay gas and transaction fees with stablecoins on the network. In other words, users can use Circle's USDC or Tether's USDT stablecoin to pay for transactions on Tempo.

Additionally, while blockchain is praised for its transparency, Tempo boasts opt-in privacy features that allow users to keep selected transaction data private while adhering to common financial compliance standards.

future of tempo

Tempo is currently in a private testnet, working with global design partners to build out existing payment use cases during a priority access period. Some of our early design partners now also serve as network verifiers.

However, in the future, Tempo aims to be an open and permissionless blockchain, allowing any individual to use, build on, and participate in validating the network.