Tempo is a Layer 1 blockchain developed in collaboration between Stripe and Paradigm, focused on large-scale payment scenarios. It has completed a $500 million funding round, with a post-investment valuation of $5 billion, and is expected to launch its mainnet in 2026. (Background: Stripe announced the acquisition of the crypto wallet Valora, intending to promote the stablecoin network Tempo) (Additional context: Will Stripe's payment-specific chain Tempo threaten the positions of ETH and SOL?) Tempo is a brand new Layer 1 blockchain co-developed by financial technology company Stripe and crypto venture capital Paradigm, with its core positioning to provide dedicated infrastructure for large-scale payment scenarios. The project opened its public testnet in December this year and plans to launch its mainnet in 2026. Tempo is not a general-purpose smart contract platform; its design has always been optimized around the core scenario of 'payments', aiming to solve the high costs and low efficiency problems faced by existing blockchains when supporting payment applications like stablecoins. Tempo is fully compatible with the Ethereum Virtual Machine, which means developers can seamlessly migrate existing Ethereum tools and applications. One of its core innovations is the introduction of a native token standard called 'TIP-20', specifically designed for stablecoins and payment tokens, serving as the basis for network transaction fees, payment channels, and other functions. Unlike most public chains, Tempo does not have a native token. Network transaction fees (including gas fees) can be paid directly using stablecoins, provided that the stablecoin is natively issued under the TIP-20 standard and has sufficient liquidity in the on-chain fee AMM. The official has set a fixed base fee rate, rather than the dynamic model adopted by Ethereum EIP-1559, aiming to control the cost of a single TIP-20 transfer to below $0.001, with fees directly accruing to the block validators. One of Tempo's core innovations is its native transaction type, Tempo Transactions. This design introduces batch transactions, concurrent execution, fee payment, scheduled payments, and modern authentication mechanisms based on Passkeys (such as biometrics) around real payment needs. These features aim to support on-chain scenarios like payroll, subscription billing, and enterprise-level bulk payments, while reducing the complexity for applications in terms of user experience and operational management. Its block finality time is approximately 0.6 seconds, providing a deterministic settlement guarantee for payments. In mid-October 2025, Tempo completed a $500 million Series A funding round, with a post-investment valuation of approximately $5 billion. This financing round was led by Greenoaks and Thrive Capital, with participation from institutions like Sequoia Capital, Ribbit Capital, and SV Angel, while Stripe and Paradigm themselves did not appear on the investor list. In terms of ecosystem development, Tempo announced its first batch of infrastructure partners in September, covering wallets, deposit and withdrawal channels, compliance, development tools, interoperability, and stablecoin-related services, with participants including MetaMask and Phantom. In December, the official further disclosed that its partner network has expanded to multiple financial institutions and large enterprises, including Visa, Mastercard, Deutsche Bank, Standard Chartered Bank, UBS, Shopify, and some technology companies. In the same month, Swedish fintech company Klarna launched its stablecoin KlarnaUSD and chose to go live on Tempo, becoming an early example in the payment scenario on this chain. The Tempo team currently consists of about 15 people, operating independently but receiving support from Stripe and Paradigm in terms of resources and ecosystem. The project lead is Matt Huang, co-founder and managing partner of Paradigm, who is also a board member of Stripe. Public information shows that Matt Huang will serve as Tempo's first CEO while continuing his management role at Paradigm. The core engineering team mainly comes from the Ethereum scaling and infrastructure fields. Among them, Liam Horne, who previously served as co-founder and CEO of Optimism, is involved in Tempo's core construction; Paradigm CTO Georgios Konstantopoulos is responsible for engineering direction, and his past experience in Reth, Foundry, as well as Ethereum clients and development tools, has provided important support for Tempo's underlying implementation. The market and partnership aspects are driven by Simon Taylor, who has long been engaged in fintech consulting and entrepreneurship. Ordinary users can experience the Tempo testnet through the following steps: · First, they need to add the Tempo testnet to compatible wallets like MetaMask, with network information available through its official documentation. · Second, users can claim free test stablecoins from the testnet faucet to pay for subsequent transaction fees. · After obtaining the test coins, users can perform a series of core interactions, such as sending an on-chain transaction on specific websites, deploying a simple smart contract using tools like Remix, or minting NFTs on the testnet. Additionally, they can register testnet domain names or participate in tasks released by some third-party platforms to deepen interaction. At the same time, users can also build network nodes themselves through official documentation to participate in the network. Tempo has not yet launched its mainnet, and the official estimates the mainnet launch time to be in 2026. The current testnet supports basic EVM functions and has launched payment channels, stablecoin gas mechanisms, and decentralized trading components. At the application level, the Tempo testnet has seen its first NFT project. The Momo series released by artist Lola is considered the first NFT collection on Tempo, characterized by retro animation style, and is planned to gradually roll out in 2026. Although Tempo has garnered significant attention from traditional finance and crypto capital, its development path is not without controversy. Christian Catalini, who participated in the design of Meta's stablecoin project Libra, has publicly expressed skepticism toward enterprise-led blockchain models. He believes that the core issue facing projects like Tempo is not technical but lies in the incentive and competitive structure, as once a de facto monopoly is formed, the open and permissionless characteristics of the network may be weakened.