What is pace? The Payments and Stablecoin Blockchain built by Stripe

Stablecoins and payment use cases are exploding in popularity in crypto, attracting large institutional adoption while getting a stamp of approval from regulators with the adoption of the GENIUS law in July 2025.

The total stablecoin market capitalization has grown to over $300 billion on-chain according to data from DeFi Llamaand US Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent has said this before that a market cap of $2 trillion is reasonable for the asset class.

Now payments giant Stripe is teaming up with crypto company Paradigm building a blockchain specifically focused on stablecoins and its use in payments.

Here’s what you need to know.

What is pace?

Tempo is a new Ethereum Virtual Machine-compatible, layer-1 blockchain developed by Paradigm and Stripe.

Unlike other layer 1 networks like Ethereum and Solana, which are built for a wide variety of crypto activities, Tempo is purposefully designed for stablecoins and payments, building on the experience Stripe has gained from its 15 years in the field.

In addition to the promised low fees, the blockchain will operate at approximately 100,000 transactions per second (TPS) and come with specific features designed to best facilitate real-world payment usage and help bring more capital into the chain.

The company raised a $500 million Series Aabout $5 billion, according to an October report Fortune.

Who builds Tempo?

Tempo is being incubated by crypto firm Paradigm and global payments giant Stripe, with early design input from some of the world’s largest companies, such as OpenAI, Shopify, Visa and more.

The blockchain will initially use a series of independent validators, some managed by early design partners, before transitioning to an open and permissionless network that allows validation by any interested party.

Additionally, in the early stages of Tempo’s development, Tempo is working with its design partners to test use cases on a private testnet related to real-world payments and stablecoin usage, including cross-border payments, remittances, and more.

In September, Tempo unveiled a list of infrastructure partners that will help provide the building blocks of its network, including crypto wallets Phantom and MetaMask for wallet services, as well as protocols such as Across and LayerZero for blockchain interoperability.

Stripe-acquired stablecoin platform Bridge and wallet infrastructure company Privy are also included in the list of infrastructure partners.

In October the company poached prominent Ethereum developer Dankrad Feist to help expand his network.

What functions does Tempo have?

Tempo’s payments-focused design ensures that it maintains a feature set unlike that of other networks.

For example, the network allows batch transfers and the transactions can use memo fields. Furthermore, its reported speeds of over 100,000 TPS make it much faster than other popular layer 1 networks such as Ethereum and Solana, which currently maintain real TPS numbers around 21.8 and 1,344 according to their respective block explorers.

Because Tempo is specifically designed for stablecoin use, it is also equipped with an automated market maker (AMM) that allows users to pay gas or transaction fees with any stablecoin on the network. In other words, a user could pay for their transactions on Tempo with Circle’s USDC or Tether’s USDT stablecoin.

While blockchains are praised for their transparency, Tempo additionally features an opt-in privacy feature that allows users to keep certain transaction data private while still meeting typical financial compliance standards.

The future of Tempo

Currently in a private testnet, Tempo is working with global design partners to build out existing payments use cases during a period of priority access. Some of the early design partners are currently also serving as validators of the network.

In the future, however, Tempo aims to be an open, permissionless blockchain, allowing anyone to use, build and participate in network validation.