The Love-Hate for "Stripe Chain" Tempo

Olivia Capozzalo & Camila Russo
September 05, 2025

Happy Friday, Defiers!

Today’s big story:

Tempo is not a bad of Ethereum or Solana, it’s just bad for Tempo.

In other news:

The WLFI team blacklists Justin Sun’s wallet
Streaming firm files $2B shelf registration for ENA treasury
Fireblocks launches stablecoin payments network
L2 Linea gears up for token launch
Goat Network: The future of Bitcoin DeFi and sustainable BTC yield [SPONSORED]

Read more below! But first, please give our sponsors some love; they make this newsletter possible.

Mezo Mainnet is live! Mint MUSD — Bitcoin-backed, dollar-pegged, and fully permissionless. BTC is finally productive. Start borrowing today at mezo.org/overview

Traditional developer education relies on lectures followed by delayed practice, causing students to forget material. The most effective learning happens through junior-senior mentorship: immediate feedback, problem-solving while knowledge is fresh, and targeted help when stuck.

AI can now replicate this model at scale. By creating structured environments where students tackle progressive problems and ask AI questions when needed, learners can spend 99% of their time practicing instead of reading. Students in RareCode's Rust course wrote hundreds of lines of code in their first week. While AI has limitations with novel technologies, for well-established subjects, the cycle of brief instruction → problem solving → AI feedback creates an unmatched learning experience that human instructors can't sustain for hours daily.

We’re back! Here’s what you need to know in web3 today

📈 Markets in the Last 24 Hours

TICKER	VALUE	24H
Bitcoin	$110,601	0.87 %
Ethereum	$4,280.54	-1.27 %
XRP	$2.81	-0.71 %
BNB	$848.41	0.29 %
Solana	$202.54	-1.02 %

Today’s Big Story

Tempo is Only a Threat to Itself

Stripe and Paradigm just peeled the curtain back on Tempo, a payments-first Layer 1 built for stablecoin rails, now entering private test mode with design support from Visa, OpenAI, Deutsche Bank, Shopify, Revolut and more.

Debate has been focused around whether Tempo is a dagger for Ethereum (why not build an L2?) or a disruptor to Solana, Tron or any high-throughput chain. But let’s call it what it really is: Tempo isn’t a threat to Ethereum or Solana or Tron, it may just be a threat to itself. .

Yes, rationales abound fr why Tempo could succeed in becoming a hub for payments: Its strong design partners, Stripe distribution, stablecoin-gas, etc. And sure, Stripe brings merchant heft and Paradigm brings capital. Still, the issue is simpler and more fatal: nobody actually needs another payments L1.

Stablecoins aren’t hitting capacity limits

The whole premise of building a new “payments L1” is that existing infrastructure is inadequate. The data doesn’t support that.

Ethereum: USDC and USDT transfers have largely migrated to Layer 2s like Arbitrum, Base, and Optimism. Base alone processed over $1 trillion in transaction volume in 2024 (L2Beat), with transfer fees often under $0.01. Ethereum L1’s throughput (~15 tps) isn’t the bottleneck anymore.
Tron: By far the leader in stablecoin settlement. Tron hosts over $50 billion in USDT circulation (Tether Transparency), regularly settling $10–15 billion in daily transfers according to DefiLlama data. Fees remain near zero, throughput ~2,000+ tps. No visible performance ceiling. You may not like that it’s centralized – but neither is Tempo.
Solana: Since Firedancer, Solana’s throughput capacity has climbed into the hundreds of thousands of tps in stress tests. Stablecoin transfers are sub-cent and finality is sub-second.
BNB Chain: Supports hundreds of tps with stablecoin transfers typically under $0.10.

In other words, stablecoins are already scaling just fine on Ethereum L2s, Tron, Solana, and BNB. Visa’s own pilot with USDC on Solana reported 400ms transaction finality and cost “a fraction of a cent” (Visa). There is no technical constraint demanding a new chain.

You could have maybe made the regulation argument, but with GENIUS passed, and increasingly customizable existing options for KYC in Ethereum L2s (like what Robinhood is using with the Arbitrum stack) and even on Avalanche’s Layer 1s, compliance needs don’t justify a new chain anymore.

Payments L1s are multiplying anyway

Tempo isn’t even first to the pitch. In August, Circle announced Arc, its own EVM-compatible payments L1 designed for USDC gas, built-in FX, and sub-second finality. Tether-backed efforts like Plasma and Stable have already raised hundreds of millions to do the same.

This means Stripe and Paradigm are entering an overcrowded space. And every new payments chain fragments liquidity further. Which brings me to the next point.

Tempo doesn’t offer meaningful improvements:

Speed and fees? As established, Solana, Tron, and Ethereum L2s already do cheap, instant stablecoin transfers.
User experience? Inside Tempo, Stripe can promise a smooth checkout flow. But in practice, funds still need to bridge in and out, where users face costs, delays, and slippage. That makes UX worse, not better. Good UX will also rely on whether there is decent liquidity, and that’s still a question mark.
Decentralization and censorship-resistance? Tempo is a “corporate chain,” able to censor transactions and blacklist tokens. The whole point of blockchains is can’t do evil, not won’t do evil.

Tempo does say they have a “roadmap toward permissionless validators,” so we can give them the benefit of the doubt and wait to see if they’ll follow through. But for now, just saying they’re “neutral” isn’t enough.

Put bluntly: Tempo doesn’t add much value beyond the bullish signal of having so many big names involved in a stablecoin chain and potentially pushing all these players to adopt crypto further. But it does subtract by splintering liquidity and introducing permissioned trust assumptions.

Why Tempo exists

If Tempo doesn’t fix a technical problem, why does it exist? Simple: incentives.

For Paradigm: it’s an investment bet. A new chain plus a native token can deliver venture-scale returns if adoption sticks.
For Stripe: it’s about control. Stripe processes hundreds of billions annually in fiat payments. If crypto payments are inevitable, Stripe would rather own the rails, capture transaction fees, and potentially profit from L1 token value.
That’s perfectly rational for them. But it’s not aligned with what’s best for users.

Why it may also be bad for Tempo

Ironically, that misalignment may backfire. By launching as a new Layer 1, Tempo inherits the cold-start problem: no liquidity, no users, no organic flows. Competing against Tron, Solana, and Ethereum L2s on throughput is pointless when those ecosystems are already proven at scale.

Stripe would have been far better off launching an Ethereum L2, where liquidity, wallets, and integrations already exist. They could still optimize fees and UX, but without fighting against the gravitational pull of stablecoins already entrenched elsewhere.

Tempo isn’t a threat to Ethereum, Solana, or Tron. Stablecoins are scaling just fine without it. Tempo exists because Stripe and Paradigm want to capture economic upside, not because users actually need it. And that’s why, in the end, Tempo isn’t bad for other chains. It may just end up being bad for itself.

With love,

Cami, founder of The Defiant

Forwarded this newsletter? Subscribe for insights and curated news from The Defiant team, Monday-Friday. It’s free.

Subscribe to The Defiant Daily

🎬WATCH

The Future of Finance is Tokenized: Ondo’s Vision for RWAs

In the latest episode of The Defiant Podcast, Cami sat down with Ian De Bode, Chief Strategy Officer at Ondo Finance. The conversation dives into the future of tokenized RWAs, and democratizing access to financial markets for a global audience. Ian also shares insights into Ondo's tokenized equities platform (which just launched today), their innovative approach to liquidity and pricing, and the broader implications of regulatory clarity for the RWA space.

Top News in the Past 24 Hours

World Liberty Financial Blacklists Justin Sun’s Wallet The DeFi platform founded by members of the Trump family has apparently blacklisted an address associated with TRON founder Justin Sun, a major investor in the project’s WLFI token. The wallet was blacklisted after reports surfaced that Sun had transferred some WLFI tokens to an exchange, despite prior pledges not to sell any unlocked tokens. WLFI is down over 40% since it was listed for trading earlier this week. Why it matters: Sun is one of World Liberty Financial’s earliest and most prominent backers, and one of the largest holders of WLFI. It remains unclear if the blacklist move marks a broader rift between the two parties.
Mega Matrix Bets Big on Ethena With $2 Billion Shelf Registration A NYSE listed holding company of a streaming platform has pivoted into the crypto treasury game. Mega Matrix Inc. (ticker: MPU) just filed a $2 billion shelf registration with the SEC to create a tresury for ENA, the governance token of Ethena. The staked version of Ethena’s USDe, SUSDE, is the largest yield-bearing stablecoin on the market. Why it matters: The firm marks the second ENA treasury firm, but the first already public one. StablecoinX, which is officially backed by the Ethena Foundation, has yet to be publicly listed, though it plans to be.
Fireblocks Launches Stablecoin Payments Network with Built-In Compliance The company said that its new Fireblocks Network for Payments aims to simplify the infrastructure behind stablecoin payments, building on its existing platform, which already handles over $200 billion in monthly stablecoin transactions. Why it matters: The network represents another move to create blockchain-based alternative systems to organizations like SWIFT. Circle launched a similar payments network this spring.
Ethereum Layer 2 Linea to Launch Token Next Week Ethereum Layer 2 network Linea is gearing up for its long-awaited token release, but it appears that pre-market traders are bearish on the L2. Linea announced its upcoming TGE on Sept. 3, with a target launch date of Sept. 10. A pre-market derivative was quickly launched on Hyperliquid and opened at $0.06 per token, implying a $6 billion valuation, but has since fallen to $0.027, or $2.7 billion. Why it matters: Linea is backed by Consensys, the blockchain development firm behind MetaMask and led by Joe Lubin, an Ethereum co-founder and the chairman of SharpLink’s board.