Stripe-backed Tempo blockchain inches toward launch with public testnet

Tempo, a highly-anticipated layer 1 blockchain, took a major step toward launch on Tuesday with the release of its public test network.

“What began as a vision for a payments-first blockchain is now a functioning network being tested by many of the world’s leading companies,” the company said in a news release.

Backed by Stripe and crypto venture capital firm Paradigm, Tempo made waves when it was first unveiled in September.

That is, in part, because Stripe’s position as one of the world’s preeminent payment processors guarantees that Tempo will enjoy vast distribution upon its launch sometime in 2026.

With a valuation of $106 billion, Stripe was the largest privately-held fintech company as of September, according to FinTech Magazine. In 2024, it processed $1.4 trillion in payment volume, “equivalent to around 1.3% of global GDP,” according to the company. It customers included half of the Fortune 100, including NVIDIA, PepsiCo, and Comcast.

And Tempo has lured several well-respected crypto researchers, executives, and software engineers, such as former Ethereum Foundation researcher Dankrad Feist, former Optimism Labs CEO Liam Horne, and Rice University Professor Mallesh Pai.

“We ourselves were disappointed with crypto’s payments utility for much of the past decade,” Stripe CEO Patrick Collison wrote on Hacker News earlier this year.

He changed his mind, however, after seeing how businesses found real-world utility in stablecoins.

“None of these businesses are using crypto because it’s crypto or for any speculative benefit,” Collison said. “They’re performing real-world financial activity.”

Tempo aims to offer low-fee payment transactions — its goal is a tenth of a cent per transaction — without the congestion that can snarl general-purpose blockchains.

“Payments have guaranteed blockspace reserved at the protocol level,” Tempo said on Tuesday. “They don’t compete with other traffic like NFT mints, liquidations, or high-frequency contract calls.”

The permissionless blockchain will also feature a built-in decentralised exchange optimised for stablecoins and tokenised deposits.

The Tempo client is open-source, allowing anyone to run a node, according to the company. Though the test network began with four company-run validators, Tempo will expand its validator set to include its design partners before eventually moving to a permissionless model.

On Tuesday, Tempo said it had added UBS, Mastercard, and Kalshi, among others, as new “design partners.”

Initial design partners included Anthropic, Deutsche Bank, DoorDash, OpenAI, Revolut, Shopify, Standard Chartered, and Visa.

Aleks Gilbert is DL News’ New York based DeFi correspondent. You can reach him at aleks@dlnews.com.