Stripe and Paradigm incubate Tempo blockchain for stablecoin payments
Private testnet aims to deliver low-cost settlement with partners including Visa, Deutsche Bank, and OpenAI
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Paradigm co-founder Matt Huang announced on Thursday that his firm and Stripe are incubating Tempo, a payments-focused blockchain designed to streamline stablecoin use in real-world financial flows.
Tempo has entered private testnet with support from initial design partners including Anthropic, Coupang, Deutsche Bank, DoorDash, Lead Bank, Mercury, Nubank, OpenAI, Revolut, Shopify, Standard Chartered, Visa, and more. The project represents Stripe’s most direct step into blockchain infrastructure, extending its payments business toward native onchain settlement.
Tempo is engineered to handle more than 100,000 transactions per second with sub-second finality, according to project materials. Its payments-first architecture enables transaction fees and gas to be paid in any stablecoin through an enshrined automated market maker (AMM).
Additional features include dedicated lanes for payments, support for memos and access lists, and opt-in privacy settings. Built on Reth, an Ethereum execution client, the chain maintains compatibility with existing Ethereum smart contracts and tooling.
Huang said Tempo is intended to support diverse financial applications such as payroll, remittances, global payouts, and embedded accounts. The protocol will follow a principle of “stablecoin neutrality,” allowing any issuer to deploy tokens for settlement. Validators will initially be curated but are expected to transition toward a permissionless model.
This is a developing story.
This article was generated with the assistance of AI and reviewed by editor Jeffrey Albus before publication.
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