The cryptocurrency sector is undergoing a structural shift, with top players deploying their own, independently controlled blockchain infrastructure. Following Coinbase's efforts to leverage its Base Chain to leverage user resources for ecological advantage, Robinhood and eToro have also announced plans to build their own blockchains. This trend has transformed building their own underlying public blockchain from an option to a strategic necessity. Today, the competitive landscape in the global payments sector is undergoing a pivotal shift. Payments giant Stripe and stablecoin issuer Circle have both announced plans to develop their own Layer 1 (L1) public blockchains—Tempo and Arc, respectively. This move reflects a clear strategic shift: both companies are moving away from relying solely on third-party blockchain infrastructure and instead embarking on building a complete technology stack, from the underlying protocol to the settlement layer. Leveraging their deep expertise in the enterprise payments market, this initiative will further enhance professionalism and competition in the crypto settlement space.
Stripe Tempo: Redefining Corporate Payments
As a fintech giant that processes trillions of dollars in transactions worldwide, Stripe's crypto ambitions are deeply embedded in its DNA, but its journey has been full of twists and turns. In 2014, Stripe was one of the first mainstream companies to support Bitcoin payments, but withdrew in 2018 due to network efficiency issues. The repeated experiences of jumping on and off the bandwagon made it realize that to truly integrate crypto into its ultimate payment experience and achieve complete control, it must own its own underlying infrastructure. Thus, Stripe embarked on a "silent march." Through the strategic acquisitions of crypto wallet developer Privy and stablecoin infrastructure company Bridge, it quietly assembled the core pieces of the "wallet + stablecoin technology" puzzle. In August 2025, a since-deleted job posting revealed that payment services giant Stripe and crypto venture capital firm Paradigm were collaborating on a high-performance L1 blockchain project called "Tempo." Tempo is positioned as an independent L1 blockchain designed specifically for corporate payment scenarios. Its target users are not individual cryptocurrency investors, but rather the financial directors and fund management teams of large multinational companies. Recruitment requirements such as "experience marketing to Fortune 500 audiences" and "solving real-world problems for CFOs" indicate Tempo's clear focus on serving enterprise users, aiming to build a settlement network tailored to the global financial flows of businesses. Tempo's core goal is to provide an alternative to the existing SWIFT system for global corporate payments. As an interbank messaging network, SWIFT relies on multiple levels of correspondent banks for intermediary processing, a model that has long resulted in inefficiencies, high costs, and a lack of transparency in cross-border payments. Tempo, built on blockchain technology, is committed to enabling near-real-time, fully traceable, and cost-effective cross-border payment processing. Tempo's core design goal is high performance, embodied in extremely high transaction throughput (TPS) and sub-second transaction finality (TTF). This ensures that transactions are irreversible once they are on-chain, providing deterministic and highly reliable settlement capabilities for corporate financial operations.
Stripe's overall strategy is to build a complete encrypted payment infrastructure to more efficiently support global payment business. This architecture covers the underlying Tempo blockchain, the middleware stablecoin and wallet technology, and the top-level payment API and user interface, aiming to provide corporate customers with a seamless, efficient and fully controllable end-to-end payment experience. Circle Arc: Enabling Stablecoin Finance Circle is a leading global stablecoin issuer, and its USDC stablecoin dominates the market. According to its second quarter 2025 financial report, Circle's total revenue and reserve income increased by 53% year-on-year to US$658 million. At the same time, the market performance of its stablecoin USDC continued to be strong, with a market capitalization of US$65.6 billion and a circulation volume increase of 90% year-on-year. Against the backdrop of Circle's impressive financial performance, Circle announced the Arc blockchain project alongside its earnings report, demonstrating that Arc is a key component of Circle's post-IPO growth strategy and a response to the growing stablecoin market opportunity. The Arc blockchain aims to address pain points such as unpredictable transaction costs and data privacy concerns in general-purpose blockchain environments, providing customized solutions for businesses and institutions. It was explicitly designed to be "purpose-built for stablecoin finance," with core features including: Open and Compatible: Fully compatible with the Ethereum Virtual Machine (EVM), facilitating seamless migration for developers. USDC Native: USDC is not only a core asset but also the network's native gas token, directly pegging transaction costs to the value of the US dollar, ensuring low and predictable fees.
Scenario Focus:Arc aims to become an important underlying support for international payments, remittances, stablecoin foreign exchange contracts, and on-chain credit infrastructure. By supporting the tokenization of real-world assets (RWAs), the chain is committed to migrating traditional capital market businesses on-chain and enabling efficient instant delivery and payment (DvP) and collateralization mechanisms. Full Circle Platform Integration: Native support for Circle Payment Network (CPN), USDC, EURC, USYC, Mint, Wallets, Contracts, CCTP, Gateway, Paymaster, and more. The launch of Arc is a key initiative by Circle to advance vertical integration and build a "full-stack internet financial system." Its business philosophy is "strategic profit-taking"—Circle focuses on collecting low-margin settlement fees at the network level, transferring more application-layer revenue to ecosystem partners in exchange for the broadest network effect. Arc is expected to significantly accelerate the penetration of stablecoins in mainstream finance, thereby reshaping the way global payments and capital markets operate. Why choose to build your own L1 public chain? 1. Stablecoin Compliance Trend: The GENIUS Act The United States Stablecoin National Innovation Guidance and Establishment Act (GENIUS Act), signed into law on July 18, 2025, is the first federal legislation in the United States to establish a regulatory framework specifically for payment stablecoins. This newfound regulatory clarity is clearly viewed as a key cornerstone for Tempo and Arc's development, enabling both parties to build compliant and scalable solutions for financial applications such as cross-border payments. 2. The Situation of Traditional Payment Methods and the Issues of Relying on Layer 2 Traditional financial systems, represented by SWIFT, are widely criticized for their inefficiencies (long transaction times, high costs, and opaque processes). While existing Layer 2 solutions (such as Base) improve the scalability and cost-effectiveness of general-purpose blockchains, they still rely on the underlying Layer 1 network. This reliance introduces unpredictable fee markets (such as uncertainty in underlying gas fees) and the risk of being subject to Layer 1 governance and technology upgrades. These are unacceptable to global payment companies, which require an absolutely stable settlement system with controllable costs. Furthermore, the general design of public blockchains struggles to meet enterprise-level requirements, such as extremely high performance requirements, transaction privacy protections, and stricter security models. By building their own L1 public chains, Stripe and Circle have transformed themselves from "tenants" to "landlords," gaining full sovereignty over defining settlement rules, fee models, and compliance paths, thereby achieving actual control over the settlement layer.
3. Underlying conditions for enterprise-level payments
Blockchains for enterprise payments need to meet a series ofstrict conditions:
Compliance and privacy:Optional privacy features, transaction monitoring systems, and regulatory interfaces must be provided to meet the strict compliance requirements of enterprises and regulators.
Integration and developer-friendly:It needs to be seamlessly integrated with the existing financial system and compatible with the Ethereum Virtual Machine (EVM) to promote widespread adoption.
Analysis of the Competitive Landscape of Stripe and Circle
Similarities:
Shared Goals:
Both Stripe Tempo and Circle Arc are explicitly designed for enterprise-level payment scenarios, rather than general-purpose smart contract platforms. Both aim to revolutionize cross-border payments by offering faster, more cost-effective, and more compliant alternatives to traditional systems like SWIFT.
Both companies recognize and prioritize the critical importance of regulatory clarity (such as that provided by the GENIUS Act) to achieving broad mainstream adoption of their platforms. However, there are significant differences in their approaches: Stripe Tempo: Tempo's strategy is deeply rooted in leveraging Stripe's vast and established merchant network. Its focus is on seamlessly integrating stablecoin payments into existing e-commerce processes, subscription models, and cross-border transactions for businesses. Stripe's core competitive advantage in this competition lies in its vast base of "Web2 enterprise customers." Circle Arc: Arc is built around its native USDC stablecoin and aims to solidify USDC's dominance in key financial sectors, including capital markets, foreign exchange operations, and large-scale institutional settlements. Circle's unique advantage stems from its "native USDC integration and deep crypto industry connections." While both target the enterprise market, their core competitive advantages and market entry strategies differ significantly. Stripe aims to migrate its existing merchant base to new blockchain rails, while Circle deepens its control and influence over the stablecoin ecosystem, aiming to make USDC the indispensable and most efficient digital asset for on-chain finance. In the ongoing "infrastructure construction frenzy" in digital finance, control over the underlying network infrastructure is crucial, as it determines the standards for transaction processing, verification, and settlement. While Stripe aims to become the "platform owner" and own the complete payment rails, Circle is committed to making USDC "the rail" itself. Reshaping the Crypto Settlement Ecosystem: Impact on ETH: While both Tempo and Arc are EVM-compatible, as Layer 1 blockchains optimized for enterprise payments, they may divert some high-frequency, large-value enterprise transactions from the Ethereum mainnet. This could shift some value and activity from Ethereum to these specialized networks, but at the same time, they also expand the scope of application for the entire EVM ecosystem. Impact on Stablecoins: The strategic development and deployment of these proprietary L1 blockchains by major fintech companies is expected to significantly accelerate the mainstream adoption of stablecoins and blockchain-based payments through their respective extensive networks. This trend represents a significant shift in the market value narrative, in part from an emphasis on "pure decentralization" to "regulated asset liquidity." For Circle, the launch of Arc will further solidify USDC's dominance and utility in the stablecoin market. Impact on the competitive payments landscape: Both Tempo and Arc clearly aim to directly challenge the traditional payment system by offering fundamentally faster and more cost-effective payment rails. This competitive landscape is likely to lead to a clear segmentation in the public blockchain market. It is expected that the future market will be divided into "open, crypto-native 'permissionless chains' such as Ethereum" and "enterprise-specific chains, such as Tempo, serving regulated commerce." This foreshadows a new competitive landscape in which fintech companies will control their own payment rails, disrupting traditional e-commerce and cross-border transactions. The future of digital settlement: The rise of enterprise-grade blockchain is placing higher demands on the infrastructure connecting users and complex blockchain networks. As a leading multi-chain stablecoin wallet, TokenPocket provides secure and stable digital asset management services to over 30 million users worldwide, supporting over 1,000 networks (including Ethereum, EVM, and non-EVM chains), making it a critical bridge enabling the development of this new settlement layer. In terms of security, TokenPocket, through its PassPhrase feature, multi-signature wallet functionality, and KeyPal hardware wallet service, provides businesses and institutions with a flexible and secure solution for managing mainstream stablecoin assets, laying a solid foundation for the widespread adoption of the cryptographic settlement layer. The launch of Stripe Tempo and Circle Arc marks a pivotal turning point in digital finance. While these two projects directly compete in the enterprise payments sector, they jointly push the boundaries of innovation in blockchain technology for enterprise applications. This trend demonstrates that leading fintech companies are strategically developing their own L1 blockchains, aiming to dominate the infrastructure for next-generation stablecoin payments and thereby reshape the global financial architecture. This shift means that the digital settlement layer will evolve towards greater efficiency, lower costs, and stronger compliance, potentially profoundly altering the existing landscape of global business operations, cross-border payment processes, and capital markets.
Alex
JinseFinance
Beincrypto
Future
Cointelegraph