
Two of Silicon Valley’s top tech firms are teaming up to change the payments landscape. On Thursday, the $91.5 billion fintech Stripe and the crypto venture firm Paradigm publicly announced their joint project, Tempo, a so-called layer 1 blockchain built around stablecoins, or cryptocurrencies typically pegged to the U.S. dollar.
Layer 1 blockchains like Bitcoin or Ethereum are more demanding to build and operate than layer 2s, which sit atop other blockchains. Tempo is among a new crop of layer 1 projects dedicated to stablecoins, along with Circle’s Arc and Tether’s Plasma and Stable.