Stripe and Paradigm have launched Tempo, a new blockchain built to move stablecoin payments at scale. Announced Sept. 4, the project is incubated inside Stripe with Paradigm as a major backer and a roster of industry partners helping shape the design.
Tempo targets payment rails rather than general-purpose smart contract use. Stripe says the chain is designed to support tens of thousands of transactions per second with sub-second finality to match real-world payout, remittance and microtransaction workloads. Early partners named include OpenAI, Visa, DoorDash, Revolut, Shopify, Deutsche Bank and others.
Technically, Tempo aims for 100,000 transactions per second, lets fees be paid in stablecoins instead of a native token, and includes a built-in automated market maker to keep issuer neutrality. The chain is EVM-compatible and runs on Reth as the Ethereum execution client.
Paradigm CEO Matt Huang is leading an initial team and the project plans to launch with a diverse validator set and move toward a permissionless model over time. Stripe’s Patrick Collison emphasized that Tempo is an independent entity with Stripe and Paradigm as early investors.
Why it matters: stablecoins are already a multi-hundred-billion-dollar asset class and are seen by many as a faster, cheaper alternative to traditional banking rails for global payouts, remittances and tokenized deposits. A payments-focused chain could accelerate merchant and institutional on‑chain adoption.
Risk note: New blockchains introduce operational, security and regulatory risks — from validator centralization to stablecoin issuer compliance — that could affect adoption and throughput in practice.
Source: CoinDesk. Read the original coverage for full details.