Most blockchains launch with a whitepaper and a promise. Tempo just launched with the entire Fortune 500.
The payments-focused Layer-1 blockchain, built by fintech giant Stripe and crypto venture firm Paradigm, opened its public testnet this week; and the partner roster reads like a Davos guest list. Visa, Mastercard, OpenAI, Deutsche Bank, UBS, Shopify, and Klarna are all actively participating as design partners and validators on the network.
But the headline isn’t just the coalition. It’s the innovation: Tempo has eliminated the biggest barrier to crypto payments adoption by removing volatile gas fees entirely. Users pay transaction fees in stablecoins, dollars on the blockchain not in a native token that could swing 20% overnight.
For an industry that’s spent years trying to convince CFOs and everyday users that crypto is ready for real-world payments, this might be the breakthrough moment.
1. The Gas Problem: Crypto’s Silent Adoption Killer
For years, the biggest friction point in blockchain payments has been deceptively simple: to send a transaction, you need the blockchain’s native token to pay gas fees.
Want to send USDC on Ethereum? You need ETH.
Want to move stablecoins on Solana? You need SOL.
Want to accept crypto payments for your e-commerce store? Your customers need to hold volatile tokens just to complete a transaction.
This creates cascading problems:
- For businesses: Accounting becomes a nightmare when your transaction costs fluctuate with crypto market volatility. How do you budget for payment processing when gas fees can triple during network congestion?
- For consumers: The friction is even worse. Imagine trying to buy coffee with crypto but needing to first acquire and hold a separate volatile token just to pay the transaction fee. It’s like needing to buy gas station tokens before you can pay for groceries.
- For compliance: CFOs don’t want balance sheets exposed to crypto volatility just to process stablecoin payments. Banks don’t want their treasury departments speculating on ETH or SOL prices.
Stripe CEO Patrick Collison articulated the problem in September 2025: “As stablecoins go mainstream, there’s a growing need for optimized infrastructure. Existing blockchains either explicitly or implicitly cater to trading but are comparatively underoptimized for payments.”
Tempo fixes this at the protocol level.
2. How Tempo Eliminated Volatile Gas Fees
Unlike every major blockchain before it, Tempo doesn’t have a native volatile token for fees. Instead, it uses what the team calls “stablecoin-native gas.”
The mechanism works like this:
1. Users pay gas fees directly in any major stablecoin—USDC, USDT, or others
2. An “enshrined DEX” (a built-in automated market maker) automatically converts the stablecoin to the validator’s preferred denomination
3. Validators receive compensation in stable value, not volatile tokens
4. Users never touch a volatile asset
According to Tempo’s technical documentation, the network targets transaction fees under $0.001 (less than a tenth of a penny) for standard stablecoin transfers using their TIP-20 token standard.
Translation: To use Tempo, you only need dollars. You pay fees in dollars. The accounting is simple. The volatility risk is eliminated.
This isn’t just a technical improvement; it’s a fundamental rethinking of how blockchain economics should work for real-world payments.
3. The Speed: Built for Point-of-Sale Reality
Beyond the fee structure, Tempo is engineered for the instant settlement that modern payments demand.
- 0.6-second finality: Blocks are confirmed in just over half a second, offering the “instant” feel required for point-of-sale retail payments. This matches or exceeds traditional card network speeds.
- No reorganizations: The network uses Simplex Consensus (built on Commonware) to ensure transactions are final immediately, no need to wait for multiple confirmations like on Bitcoin or Ethereum.
- 100,000+ TPS target: Tempo is designed to handle over 100,000 transactions per second with sub-second finality, putting it in the same performance tier as Visa’s peak processing capacity.
For context, Ethereum processes roughly 20 transactions per second. Solana manages a few thousand in practice. Tempo’s architecture is purpose-built for payment volume, not general-purpose computing.
4. The “FaceID” Experience: Removing the Seed Phrase Barrier
Perhaps Tempo’s most consumer-friendly innovation is native support for “WebAuthn”, the same technology that powers FaceID and TouchID on your phone.
This means:
– No browser extensions required
– No seed phrases to memorize or write down
– No separate crypto wallet app
– Just biometric authentication, like unlocking your phone
Paradigm CTO Georgios Konstantopoulos demonstrated a feature that lets users create stablecoins directly from their browser using Tempo’s TIP-20 token standard. The process takes seconds and feels more like using Venmo than navigating crypto infrastructure.
For mainstream adoption, this may be as important as the gas fee innovation. The mental model shifts from “using crypto” to simply “making a payment.”
5. The Partner Roster: Why This List Matters
Tempo’s design partners aren’t just providing feedback, many are actively running validator nodes and testing real-world payment flows on the network.
The partnership spans four categories:
Payments Infrastructure:
– Visa
– Mastercard
– Revolut
– Klarna (launched KlarnaUSD stablecoin on Tempo in November 2025)
– Kalshi
Banking:
– Deutsche Bank
– Standard Chartered
– UBS
– Nubank
– Lead Bank
– Mercury
– Coastal Bank
Tech & AI:
– OpenAI
– Anthropic
– Shopify
– DoorDash
– Coupang
Infrastructure:
– Stripe (incubator and major stakeholder)
– Paradigm (venture capital and technical lead)
This isn’t typical blockchain vaporware. When Klarna, a regulated EU digital bank, launches a USD-pegged stablecoin on your network before mainnet, that’s validation.
When Visa and Mastercard, the duopoly controlling global card payments, both participate as design partners, that signals they see blockchain-based stablecoin settlement as inevitable.
When AI labs like OpenAI and Anthropic join, it suggests they’re preparing for “agentic payments”, AI agents autonomously making microtransactions on behalf of users.
6. The Funding: $500 Million at $5 Billion Valuation
In October 2025, Tempo raised $500 million in Series A funding at a $5 billion valuation, led by Thrive Capital (Joshua Kushner) and Greenoaks Capital.
Other investors included:
– Sequoia Capital
– Ribbit Capital
– SV Angel
– Stripe (as early investor)
– Paradigm (as founding investor)
What’s notable: Thrive and Greenoaks are generalist venture firms that typically invest in mainstream sectors like AI and business software, not crypto-native projects. Their bet on Tempo represents the latest evidence that institutional capital no longer views blockchain infrastructure as speculative;it’s becoming table stakes for fintech.
The project also recruited **Dankrad Feist**, a core Ethereum Foundation researcher known for his work on data availability and sharding, to enhance Tempo’s technical architecture.
7. What’s Live Now on the Public Testnet
As of December 10, 2025, Tempo’s testnet is open to anyone. Developers can:
- Run a full node and sync the entire chain
- Create stablecoins using the TIP-20 standard directly from a browser
- Test payment flows with dedicated payment lanes
- Experiment with batch payments for payroll and settlement use cases
- Build applications using Ethereum-compatible tooling (Solidity, Remix, Hardhat, etc.)
The network currently operates with four internal validators, but will expand to include international banks and fintech partners as it moves toward mainnet.
Six core features are live:
1. Dedicated Payment Lanes: Reserved blockspace for payment transactions, preventing congestion from NFT mints or DeFi speculation
2. Stablecoin-Native Gas: Pay fees in USDC/USDT, not volatile tokens
3. Built-in Stable Asset DEX: Low-fee swaps between stablecoins for seamless conversions
4. Payment Metadata: Structured memo fields aligned with ISO 20022 banking standards for invoice reconciliation
5. Fast Deterministic Finality: 0.6-second confirmation with no reorganizations
6. Modern Wallet Signing: WebAuthn support for biometric authentication
8. The Architecture: Built on Battle-Tested Tech
Tempo is EVM-compatible, meaning it can run Ethereum smart contracts and integrate with existing Ethereum tooling. The chain is built on Reth, Paradigm’s high-performance Ethereum execution client.
Key technical specifications:
– Consensus: Simplex Consensus via Commonware (fast finality, graceful degradation under network stress)
– Virtual Machine: Ethereum Virtual Machine (EVM) for maximum developer compatibility
– Token Standard: TIP-20 (Tempo’s optimized stablecoin standard)
– Target TPS: 100,000+ transactions per second
– Finality: Sub-second (~0.6 seconds)
– Fee Structure: Sub-millidollar costs (<$0.001 for basic transfers)
Additional planned features include:
– Fee sponsorship: Applications can pay users’ gas to streamline onboarding
– Scheduled payments: Protocol-level support for recurring payments
– Batch transactions: Atomic multi-operation payouts for payroll and settlements
9. Why This Might Actually Work
Blockchain payment networks have promised to disrupt finance for over a decade. Most have failed to gain traction outside crypto-native users. Why might Tempo be different?
Five reasons:
1. Institutional backing from Day 1: When Visa and Mastercard are involved from the start, regulatory and compliance pathways are clearer
2. Real use cases identified: Partners aren’t speculating; they’re testing specific workflows like cross-border remittances, payroll, tokenized deposits, and agentic AI payments
3. Removes the two biggest barriers: Volatile gas fees and complex wallet UX were the adoption killers. Tempo solves both.
4. Stripe’s distribution: With Stripe processing hundreds of billions in annual payment volume, Tempo has built-in distribution that no other blockchain enjoys
5. Stablecoin momentum: The $200B+ stablecoin market isn’t going away, it’s accelerating. Tempo is positioned at the exact moment when institutions are ready to move beyond pilots.
10. The Risks and Open Questions
Despite the impressive launch, several questions remain:
- Decentralization timeline unclear: Tempo currently runs four internal validators. The transition to a truly permissionless, decentralized validator set hasn’t been detailed.
- No native token (yet): The absence of a native token means no obvious value capture mechanism for investors beyond equity. Will Tempo eventually issue a governance token?
- Stablecoin adoption required: Tempo’s success depends on major stablecoin issuers (Circle, Tether) officially supporting the chain with native bridges. These conversations are reportedly ongoing but unconfirmed.
- Regulatory uncertainty: While having banks involved de-risks compliance, stablecoin regulation remains in flux globally. Tempo’s roadmap could be affected by changing rules.
- Competition is fierce: Circle, Google, Robinhood, and others are all building similar infrastructure. First-mover advantage matters, but execution matters more.
11. The Bottom Line: Payments Blockchain With Actual Payments Companies
Most blockchain projects talk about “real-world adoption” as a distant aspiration. Tempo launched with the real world already integrated.
When the roster includes Visa, Mastercard, Deutsche Bank, OpenAI, and Shopify and when Klarna has already issued a stablecoin on the network this stops being a speculative crypto project and starts looking like actual financial infrastructure.
The innovation is clear: Pay fees in dollars, not volatile tokens. Sign transactions with FaceID, not seed phrases. Get instant settlement at sub-cent costs.
If Tempo’s architecture holds up under stress testing and mainnet launches successfully in 2026, “paying with crypto” might finally become as boring and as ubiquitous as swiping a card.
Key Takeaways:
– Tempo eliminates volatile gas fees, users pay in stablecoins (USDC, USDT) not native tokens
– Public testnet launched December 10, 2025, open to all developers
– Design partners include Visa, Mastercard, OpenAI, Deutsche Bank, UBS, Shopify, Klarna
– $500 million raised at $5 billion valuation in October 2025
– 0.6-second finality, 100K+ TPS target, <$0.001 transaction costs
– FaceID/TouchID support via WebAuthn—no seed phrases required
– Klarna launched KlarnaUSD stablecoin on network (first digital bank to do so)
– Built by Stripe and Paradigm, EVM-compatible, runs on Reth client
– Mainnet target: 2026
– Competing with Circle’s Arc, Solana, and emerging stablecoin-focused chains
Disclaimer:This content is for educational and reference purposes only and does not constitute investment advice. Digital asset investments carry high risk. Please evaluate carefully and assume full responsibility for your own decisions.
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