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Stripe Launches L1 Blockchain: Tempo

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Re: Stripe Launches L1 Blockchain: Tempo

#331

Post by floatrock »

siddthesquid wrote: post #211
baby wrote: post #182

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'll attempt an answer: Today, if you want to transact between businesses or retail (folks like you and I), you need to find a route between the two entities' banks. This route might take several hops, passing through some central banks, and some of these hops might be instant or might take days to actually settle. On top of that, you need to pay the service that helped you find a route (SWIFT) and potentially the no…

I think the technology of blockchain is irrelevant. If something can be accomplished on the blockchain, which requires N nodes, a business can probably replicate that same objective with less than N nodes because they don't have to pay the cost of verifying that nodes are acting honestly. This business is incentivized to be honest because otherwise they lose their business. Someone has to pay those costs for the N no…

This makes sense as long as

> This business is incentivized to be honest because otherwise they lose their business

is true. And it might be true if you assume perfect competition, low barriers to entry, no egregious regulations, no regulatory capture, no bundling to force decisions regardless of 'honesty' (or 'fairness'), etc.

So in a perfect world, maybe. But I think the niche in all the imperfections.

Re: Stripe Launches L1 Blockchain: Tempo

#332

Post by sfdlkj3jk342a »

uyzstvqs wrote: post #290

> Tempo is a neutral, permissionless blockchain open for anyone to build on. > A diverse group of independent entities, including some of Tempo’s design partners, will run validator nodes initially before we transition to a permissionless model. > Protect your users by keeping important transaction details private while maintaining compliance standards. Sounds like it actually has potential. This could enable global…

If it will really be permissionless, what value is Stripe adding? Why not use any other fast, low-lost L1 like sending USDC on Solana?

Re: Stripe Launches L1 Blockchain: Tempo

#333

Post by boringg »

mondrian wrote: post #300
notatoad wrote: post #226

Earlier quoted context omitted.

i'm still unclear what the crypto really adds to this play. stripe customers need to move their money around, and they need a trusted source to hold money. stripe could just do that. why add crypto into the mix?

The GENIUS act enables tech companies to become reserve holders -- buy US Treasuries with customers' money. Stripe offers a "transactional ecosystem" to the customer in stablecoins, the customer gives USD to Stripe in exchange for stablecoins, Stripe buys short-term Treasuries and makes a shitload of money on interest. Part of the very high level play is the US Govt seeks to diversify away from depending on nation st…

So then by using this product you are de facto buying short term US debt lowering the debt costs in a way? Is that what you are describing? And Stripe makes money on that short term carry.

Re: Stripe Launches L1 Blockchain: Tempo

#334

Post by boringg »

alchemist1e9 wrote: post #285
notatoad wrote: post #226

Earlier quoted context omitted.

i'm still unclear what the crypto really adds to this play. stripe customers need to move their money around, and they need a trusted source to hold money. stripe could just do that. why add crypto into the mix?

So many of the crypto skeptic comments on this story are massively out of touch with the products and sophistication of the crypto industry. For those of us who aren’t, the question has basically been flipped to “what does a bank add to this situation?” . I’m typing this shortly after buying my groceries with a visa debit card that was funded 30 seconds before the transaction over Lightning Network with Bitcoin that…

What does a bank do? Many things that crypto can't but probably the number 1 thing compared to crypto ... the bank (via the FDIC) provides assurances for each account for up to $225,000 USD.

I wouldn't write off banks that quickly.

Re: Stripe Launches L1 Blockchain: Tempo

#335

Post by Imustaskforhelp »

Imagine my delight as a crypto cynic who only admires gold/stablecoin and had recently created a article just for hn (and thus the name) about this... and how stablecoins make sense

But I had literally said that stripe should've actually ventured into and created their own cryptocurrency or something...

Tada, I might be one of the happiest person thinking that I actually really predicted something by my own observations.

here's the blog post: https://justforhn.mataroa.blog/blog/most-crypto-is-doomed-to...

By what I meant most crypto, I meant anything aside from stablecoin (like gold backed/usd backed)

Now that being said, I am still a little critic as to I don't see any offical stripe message and I don't see a way on how it would be implemented?

Like one of the things that I wished in my article was this idea that someone on twitter originally asked where currently if you had money in stripe and wanted to pay it anywhere else, you had to have it enter your bank which might take 14 days and then lets say you want to give it to someone else who has stripe(think anthropic), then they would get it back again after 14 days

So someone basically asked to create something similar to a stripe card. I think that this blockchain is it, except I feel like that you could send money to anyone in a non kyc manner too via this which is again a plus point for sometimes where I feel like that in this world every transaction is usually tracked and as such something like this change is really welcomed.

Once again, can someone really explain what is going to happen in tempo's future as maybe its me who couldn't focus in such a website. I actually went and read the article that the other company that partnered with stripe (paradigm), so I just read paradigm's article: https://www.paradigm.xyz/2025/09/tempo-payments-first-blockc... and they say that it is a new incubator/partnership b/w stripe and them, but would that mean that this tempo is going to be integrated in the stripe ecosystem or no?

I always thought that stripe and stellar had some deep connections but honestly I couldn't care less about it. I don't care about these fake tokens but rather stablecoins/gold stablecoins

Re: Stripe Launches L1 Blockchain: Tempo

#336

Post by Marazan »

__MatrixMan__ wrote: post #229
jrm4 wrote: post #125

Ah the layers. Okay, so one: Obviously pointless from a tech POV. There is nothing that a Stripe controlled blockchain could offer that a database could not. But then, why? Sadly, as someone who does like the ideals of true cryptocurrency, yet another way to make sure "real" crypto doesn't happen, much like what is happening to BTC. Here's hoping (yeah, it's a long shot) people see through all of this and maybe, MAYB…

> Stripe controlled blockchain could offer that a database could not. A database cannot resist tampering by somebody with admin access to the database. It may be the only thing that blockchains have going for them, but it's a big one.

Which is by the DAO exploit on Ethereum was successful and not rolledback by the Ethereum Devs.

Oh, wait... I've been handed a piece of paper...

Re: Stripe Launches L1 Blockchain: Tempo

#337

Post by asats »

boringg wrote: post #333
mondrian wrote: post #300

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The GENIUS act enables tech companies to become reserve holders -- buy US Treasuries with customers' money. Stripe offers a "transactional ecosystem" to the customer in stablecoins, the customer gives USD to Stripe in exchange for stablecoins, Stripe buys short-term Treasuries and makes a shitload of money on interest. Part of the very high level play is the US Govt seeks to diversify away from depending on nation st…

So then by using this product you are de facto buying short term US debt lowering the debt costs in a way? Is that what you are describing? And Stripe makes money on that short term carry.

Still doesn't answer why you would need any crypto here. Why can't the USD transferred to stripe just be a record in an SQL database saying customer X has N USD in the account, and transferring that around could be done instantly at zero cost by changing an sql row.

Re: Stripe Launches L1 Blockchain: Tempo

#339

Post by kortilla »

yieldcrv wrote: post #191
jchw wrote: post #148

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A lot of us are not really deep into the finance space. Maybe there's a good reason it's left unsaid, but the question I came away with after reading that page and this comment is, why are businesses finding crypto easier/faster/better? To me, it's not 100% clear exactly who Tempo is for and not for, and why blockchain is more suitable than traditional centralized database technology here. And it sounds like this sys…

that's a very high quality question, in comparison to the others. here is what you're missing, and is very easy to miss: the third party, unaffiliated, developer experience is better on an EVM than it is is on a traditional centralized database. Than it is on a shared database with a bunch of signers. Than on any "web 2.0" cloud platform. the developers continue to bring their entire audiences with them, even though…

The developer experience is irrelevant when it comes to handling money in volume.

Take the spacex example above. They are using a stablecoin to abstract away a bunch of illiquid and unstable foreign currencies. Getting rid of that huge pain of carrying 100 countries’ currencies via various banks is the value prop. The API could be cobol and it wouldn’t matter.

Re: Stripe Launches L1 Blockchain: Tempo

#340

Post by pc »

jchw wrote: post #148
pc wrote: post #46

There are lots of crypto skeptics on HN (and we ourselves were disappointed with crypto's payments utility for much of the past decade), so it might be interesting to share what changed our mind over the past couple of years: we started to notice a lot of real-world businesses finding utility in stablecoins. For example, Bridge (a stablecoin orchestration platform that Stripe acquired) is used by SpaceX for managing…

A lot of us are not really deep into the finance space. Maybe there's a good reason it's left unsaid, but the question I came away with after reading that page and this comment is, why are businesses finding crypto easier/faster/better? To me, it's not 100% clear exactly who Tempo is for and not for, and why blockchain is more suitable than traditional centralized database technology here. And it sounds like this sys…

Does that imply that some day users would be able to pay using Tempo?

I don't think that customers or businesses should see Tempo very much. In the success case, Tempo is a platform like SWIFT or ACH that others employ behind the scenes to orchestrate transactions. "Decentralized, internet-scale SWIFT" isn't exactly the right analogy (there are clearly lots of differences), but it's not totally wrong either.

Why are businesses finding crypto easier/faster/better?

Yeah, I think this is the natural follow-up question. The answer differs a bit based on the use-case, but there are a few common reasons:

* Instant on-chain transfers avoiding trapped liquidity. If you're transferring money from financial institution A to institution B, and the transfer takes a day, you're either slowed a day in taking the next step or you have to somehow cover that float. Depending on your movements and their predictability, that can require big buffers.

* Fees that are lower than cards. Card payments are instant, which is often valuable (and superior to many bank transfers), but card transactions are also expensive relative to stablecoins. (And while card authorization is instant, settlement is not.)

* Reliability. This sounds funny, but, when sending money between countries, there are many more manual processes involved at the associated financial institutions than one might think. Money is frequently just... lost, and humans are required to hunt for it. (We see this all the time at Stripe.) Crypto is punishing if you make a mistake, but, if you do things correctly, reliability is all-but guaranteed.

* Fewer currency conversions. Wholesale FX for major currencies is very cheap, but minor currencies can have bigger spreads, and the actual fee incurred by a regular customer (e.g. with their bank) can be significant. Stablecoins often make it possible to skip conversions that would otherwise happen.

* Access to USD-based functionality. The US is the world's most sophisticated financial services market. Having a stablecoin means "having an on-chain asset", but it also typically means "having a USD asset", and a lot of major parts of the ecosystem (e.g. US equities and credit markets) primarily, or only, deal with US dollars.

Acknowledging the obvious, a reflexive answer frequently invoked here is "it's regulatory arbitrage", but I think this is some combination of misguided and incurious as an explanation. First, stablecoins are now formally regulated in the US (with the GENIUS Act) and in Europe (under MiCA), so their use is now very explicitly regulated. Secondly, it implicitly assumes that the only reason one would seek an alternative to the traditional ways of doing things is because someone is doing something illegitimate. I think this usually indicates a lack of understanding of the challenges, complexities, and costs associated with high-volume cross-border money movement. Indeed, and somewhat ironically given the claim, one of Bridge's large customers is the US government.

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