What Is Tempo? The Payments and Stablecoin Blockchain Built by Stripe

Stablecoins and payment use cases are exploding in popularity in crypto, drawing major institutional adoption while gaining a regulatory stamp of approval with the passing of the GENIUS Act in July 2025. 

The total stablecoin market cap has grown to more than $300 billion on-chain according to data from DeFi Llama, and U.S. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent has previously said that a $2 trillion market cap is reasonable for the asset class. 

Now, payments giant Stripe is collaborating with crypto venture firm Paradigm to build a blockchain specifically focused on stablecoins and their use in payments. 

Here’s what you need to know. 

Tempo is a new Ethereum Virtual Machine-compatible, layer-1 blockchain developed by Paradigm and Stripe. 

Unlike other layer-1 networks like Ethereum and Solana that are built for a wide variety of crypto activity, Tempo is purposefully designed for stablecoins and payments, banking on the experience Stripe has garnered from its 15 years in the field. 

In addition to promised low fees, the blockchain will operate at around 100,000 transactions per second (TPS) and come with specific features designed to best facilitate real-world payment use cases and help bring more capital on-chain. 

The firm raised a $500 million Series A, valuing it around $5 billion, according to an October report from Fortune.

Tempo is being incubated by crypto venture firm Paradigm and global payments giant Stripe, with early design input from some of the world’s largest companies—like OpenAI, Shopify, Visa, and more. 

The blockchain is initially using a set of independent validators, some run by early design partners, prior to transitioning to an open and permissionless network that enables validation by any interested party.

Additionally, in the early stages of Tempo’s development, it is working with its design partners to test use cases on a private testnet related to real-world payments and stablecoin use, including cross-border payments, remittances, and more.

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

Stripe-acquired stablecoin platform Bridge and wallet infrastructure firm Privy are also included in the list of infrastructure partners. 

In October, the firm poached prominent Ethereum developer Dankrad Feist to help build out its network. 

Tempo’s payments-focused design ensures that it maintains a feature set that’s different from other networks. 

For example, the network allows for batch transfers and its transactions can make use of memo fields. Plus, its reported speeds of more than 100,000 TPS make it much faster than other popular layer-1 networks like Ethereum and Solana, which currently maintain true TPS numbers around 21.8 and 1,344 according to their respective block explorers.

Stripe’s Tempo Blockchain Raises $500 Million, Poaches Prominent Ethereum Dev

Because Tempo is designed specifically for stablecoin use, it also comes equipped with an automated-market maker (AMM) that allows users to pay for gas or transaction fees with any stablecoin on the network. In other words, a user could pay for their transactions on Tempo with Circle’s USDC or Tether’s USDT stablecoin. 

Additionally, while blockchains are lauded for their transparency, Tempo boasts an opt-in privacy feature that allows users to keep select transaction data private while still adhering to typical financial compliance standards. 

Tempo is currently in private testnet, working with global design partners to build out existing payments use cases in a period of priority access. Some of its early design partners are also acting as the network’s validators at present time. 

In the future, though, Tempo aims to be an open, permissionless blockchain, allowing any individuals to use, build, and participate in network validation.