It was one of the most eagerly awaited moments in the industry. On Thursday, Stripe presented Tempo, its own blockchain designed for payments. A project reminiscent, in some respects, of Libra's aborted ambitions in 2019, but in a radically different context.
At the time, Facebook and its partners were dreaming of a global currency. Six years on, the financial and tech giants are no longer looking to create a universal currency: they are building bespoke infrastructures to circulate existing stablecoins.
>> The crypto strategy of Stripe, new industry giant
Stripe wants to control the value chain In his message published on X , Stripe CEO Patrick Collison stresses the issue of scalability. Bitcoin only processes a handful of transactions per second, Ethereum around twenty, Solana and Base up to a thousand, but Stripe already exceeds 10,000 TPS. Difficult, he says, to build a global payment network on rails designed for speculation.
This technical argument, however, masks a deeper strategic choice. In three moves (acquiring Bridge in 2024 , acquiring Privy in 2025, then incubating Tempo) Stripe has given itself the means to control the asset (stablecoins), access (wallets) and now the infrastructure (blockchain).
Where Libra had failed for lack of an institutional and regulatory anchor, Stripe is moving forward step by step, surrounding itself with investors (Paradigm) and heavyweight partners such as Visa, Revolut and Shopify.
>> John Egan (Stripe): "We want to build a global network for payments and cash"
An underlying trend Stripe is not alone in embarking on this type of project. In recent months, there has been a proliferation of initiatives, mapping out a new geography of so-called "private" blockchains, or more accurately, blockchains specialising in finance.
In August Arc, Circle presented an Ethereum-compatible blockchain where fees are paid in USDC (Tempo will also allow fees to be paid in stablecoins). The promise is clear: near-instantaneous transactions, predictable costs, and direct integration with institutional players such as Fireblocks.
Tether, meanwhile, is banking on Plasma, a network designed to process USDT flows at no apparent cost to the user. The aim is to compete with Tron, which currently concentrates the majority of stablecoin transfers.
Canton, developed by a network of traditional financial players, is advancing in another area: the tokenisation of institutional assets. Backed by Goldman Sachs, BNP Paribas and Deutsche Börse, this network already brings together several hundred players and announced that it had raised $135 million in June to speed up its rollout.
All these initiatives are based on the same logic: taking back control of the infrastructure, rather than relying on public chains like Ethereum.
The return of "private" This could be seen as a paradox. After years of extolling openness and decentralisation, the industry is returning to more controlled architectures, often limited to validated partners. But the reality is pragmatic: institutions are prioritising cost stability, regulatory compliance and performance over the promise of a totally permissionless network (you will have to be selected to participate in governance and operation).
This resurgence in private blockchains nevertheless poses several challenges. The first is fragmentation: each player is developing its own network, at the risk of scattering stablecoin liquidity between different silos. The second is that of governance: how can we guarantee the gradual opening up of these networks, without falling into the trap of an infrastructure closed to the major players alone?
There is also the question of the role of public blockchains such as Ethereum or Solana, which continue to attract developers and capital but risk losing part of the payment flows. "It is possible that the latter will continue to play an important role in ensuring interoperability between these different institutional blockchains," explains the manager of a node on Canton.
What is certain is that these projects mark a new stage in the history of blockchain. After years of experimentation and speculation, the time has come for specialised financial infrastructures, designed primarily for compliance and efficiency. They may not make cypherpunks dream, but they meet the expectations of institutions looking for suitable rails to move billions of dollars worth of stablecoins.
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