Stripe Launches L1 Blockchain: Tempo • Hacker News Board

Re: Stripe Launches L1 Blockchain: Tempo

#571

Post by Izikiel43 » Thu, Sep 04, 2025, 10:40 PM UTC

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…

>why are businesses finding crypto easier/faster/better?

From the example given from Argentina, it bypasses capital controls, which until recently, made accessing foreign currency very hard/expensive/illegal. Argentina had a huge crypto boom because of them.

Re: Stripe Launches L1 Blockchain: Tempo

#572

Post by yieldcrv » Thu, Sep 04, 2025, 10:40 PM UTC

kji wrote: post #358

yieldcrv wrote: post #191

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 third party, unaffiliated, developer experience is better on an EVM than it is is on a traditional centralized database. This is definitely a take, given how easy it is to write a program with security bugs using Solidity due to specific concerns like reentrancy that only exist due to the unique way smart contracts work. The inability to "undo" a fraudulent or mistaken transaction without requiring all validato…

> Also a weird thing to call a "feature" for developers when this actively drives away potential users.

while being a funnel of 1 step for the users already in the ecosystem that find your application

the ecosystems turns the entire Web 2.0 marketing funnel industry on its head because the initial call to action is a payment. All of the mystery of converting to a paying customer is obsoleted in favor of unbridled commerce

this just points out another way its optimal for developers with ideas, when aiming for revenue in a web3 architected project for crypto natives. they have frictions, you solve them, they pay you. If you aren’t catering to crypto natives already, don’t launch a web3 application. the space is already big enough to ignore other potential users, and if you want that to be your cause to help the UX to grow the space, you can do that too.

> security bugs using Solidity

To your other point, I don't see 2016's smart contract coding problems as show stopping criticisms, because this is the lowest hanging fruit of experience for anyone learning solidity, all while standardization of open source methods has solved those building blocks just like in other languages. additionally, you can write an insecure application in the web 2.0 space as well.

There are enough and a growing number of developers that aren't afraid of deploying code on a blockchain. a lot has happened in the last ... decade? developer tooling has improved.

Re: Stripe Launches L1 Blockchain: Tempo

#573

Post by kiitos » Thu, Sep 04, 2025, 10:40 PM UTC

baby wrote: post #202

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…

A cryptocurrency is basically a distributed database, except that you are getting different actors who don't necessarily trust one to run it cooperatively.

yeah, I guess a slow and shitty distributed database where there's no way to recover a lost or forgotten password (private key)

Re: Stripe Launches L1 Blockchain: Tempo

#574

Post by baby » Thu, Sep 04, 2025, 10:40 PM UTC

mattlutze wrote: post #345

abxyz wrote: post #222

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’m as cynical about crypto as any sane person but I think you’re hand-waving away the challenges of international business. How can you transact in dollars if you’re a business in Argentina? As you say, if you’re operating in Europe, this is a solved problem, but lots of businesses are operating across borders that don’t have the same payment options. Banks could solve this problem but they haven’t and this is what…

SEPA also works easily because it's single currency for a single unified economic zone. If currency change was involved then you'd likely be back to routing through central banks or currency change banks and such.

It wouldn't surprise me if SEPA was running a BFT consensus protocol under the hood to ensure security

Re: Stripe Launches L1 Blockchain: Tempo

#575

Post by verdverm » Thu, Sep 04, 2025, 10:41 PM UTC

wazdra wrote: post #519

forgotTheLast wrote: post #498

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That term has a very specific meaning and I wish people stopped using it to mean "big tech doing something bad"

Well, doesn't that specific meaning apply here? I mean, the lack of protection for end-users is at first compensated by investment money (low prices and huge effort on support). Once network effect is reached, the unregulated nature of the platform shows, end-users are wronged, only providers profit from the lack of regulation ... Or maybe I don't understand the meaning of enshittification?

My understanding is it is more tied to crafting UX that maximizes profit. Many cases involve both enshittification and regulatory arbitrage (as a peer comment so eloquently put it)

Re: Stripe Launches L1 Blockchain: Tempo

#576

Post by dmbche » Thu, Sep 04, 2025, 10:41 PM UTC

stale2002 wrote: post #499

jrm4 wrote: post #258

Earlier quoted context omitted.

All pointless. None of those things require a blockchain and are all made less efficient by doing them that way. Again, truly decentralized cryptocurrency ADDS slow clunky overhead; that's the price of decentralization. Everything you're imagining is ALL done much easier with good ol' databases et al.

> ADDS slow clunky overhead; that's the price of decentralization. Actually, you can just use a federated blockchain. > Everything you're imagining is ALL done much easier with good ol' databases There is an ecosystem of 10s of thousands of developers that can run specifically ethereum contracts on a database, while being compatible with all existing stable coin onramps? You have to show me the 10s of thousands of de…

What are the tens of thousands (?) of devs doings that is more efficient by doing it on a blockchain is the question

Hint: the point of "proof of work" is to do more work than necessary

Re: Stripe Launches L1 Blockchain: Tempo

#577

Post by risyachka » Thu, Sep 04, 2025, 10:42 PM UTC

dperfect wrote: post #348

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…

It sounds great, but every time I see this argument, I end up going down the rabbit hole of actually studying how stablecoins operate. And every time, I come to the same conclusion: they always rely on trust in an off-chain oracle or custodian. At that point, a shared ledger implemented with traditional databases / protocols would be faster, easier, and more transparent. Bitcoin (and possibly a few others) is one of…

>> So what are stablecoins really trying to do? Circumvent regulation? Implement something the banks just aren't willing to do themselves?

yeah and this is great. I couldn't care less for banks protection.

Revolut blocked my account with 8k on it for 8 months, though their app said it will be max 2 weeks.

Customer support ignored me for 6 months until I said I am going to court.

So yeah fuck them. The is a case for banks but there is also a case for me keeping a chunk of my money in stable coins so its actually mine.

Edit: and to clarify I didn't do anything illegal, after I threatened them they completed their whatever they did and unlocked my funds that have been locked for 8 month.

And guess what - no consequences for them leaving me at that time without my safety net.

Re: Stripe Launches L1 Blockchain: Tempo

#578

Post by mbesto » Thu, Sep 04, 2025, 10:43 PM UTC

pc wrote: post #452

mbesto wrote: post #425

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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. These are slow by design - abuse/fraud. How does blockchain solve that issue? > * Fees that are lower than cards. Card payments are instant, which is often valuable…

In these matters, I always try to keep in mind that technologies aren't themselves disruptive; customer choices are. It'll be interesting to see what customers choose in the years to come.

For sure, but do you care to address the fraud/abuse aspects?

FWIW - I personally would choose a quicker and cheaper transaction all day, every day, but if it came at the expense of losing my money, I'd have to think twice about it. You yourself said it best "crypto is punishing if you make a mistake".

Re: Stripe Launches L1 Blockchain: Tempo

#579

Post by ethbr1 » Thu, Sep 04, 2025, 10:43 PM UTC

wouldbecouldbe wrote: post #522

allknowingfrog wrote: post #479

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do we have a term for this phenomenon yet? Airbnb is a great example. Uber is another. Regulatory loopholes are the way that these companies actually make money, but they call it "technology" and everyone kind of shrugs.

Airbnb was a bit more then a regulatory loophole, it at least started out as a new way for private homeowners to monetize one of their greatest asset. So it was much more an unused potential that was being tapped in. The regulation that came after has in my personal experience privatized airbnb and now it's hard to find a private renter, when I started using it that was the standard.

Once Airbnb became systemically harmful, regulation followed.

Nobody cares about small tech companies breaking the law for a few users.

Everyone cares about {insert bad outcome from mass regulatory avoidance}.

(Also, of the 3 airbnb founders, one has delusions of being the next Steve Jobs and turning it into an everything app (Chesky), another now works for DOGE (Gebbia), and the last is sucking up to Chinese government data requests (Blecharczyk)... so, yeah, not exactly the sort of folks that should be trusted with light regulation)

Re: Stripe Launches L1 Blockchain: Tempo

#580

Post by kiitos » Thu, Sep 04, 2025, 10:43 PM UTC

stale2002 wrote: post #504

vanviegen wrote: post #201

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> the non existent "Database driven", uhh money tools. Are you claiming here that things like banks and stock markets don't exist? Genuinely curious though; what kind of 'money related features', that have no non-crypto counterparts, are you referring to?

> Are you claiming here that things like banks and stock markets don't exist? No, I am claiming that I couldn't spin up a bank or a stock market on my laptop, that is compatible with all the other stock markets, by forking a git repo. > that have no non-crypto counterparts, are you referring to? The git repo fork button, that slots right into a whole ecosystem that has 10s of thousands of contributors to it. Ease of…

> No, I am claiming that I couldn't spin up a bank or a stock market on my laptop, that is compatible with all the other stock markets, by forking a git repo.

yeah, and that's kind of very much by design -- regulations that prevent this kind of yolo nonsense are a feature and not a bug