Fintech giant Stripe and crypto venture firm Paradigm have announced their collaboration on a new project named Tempo. The Layer-1 (L1) blockchain, designed specifically around stablecoins, aims to streamline digital transactions and enhance payment efficiency.

Stripe And Paradigm’s New Payment Solution

Tempo emerges as part of a growing trend of Layer-1 blockchains dedicated to stablecoin integration, joining the ranks of initiatives like Circle’s Arc and Tether’s Plasma Layer-1 blockchains compatible with the Ethereum Virtual Machine (EVM). 

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Its launch comes at a time when interest in cryptocurrency is surging, fueled by the Trump administration’s favorable stance towards the crypto sector and recent legislative progress, including Congress’s passage of the first stablecoin-focused bill, the GENIUS Act, in July. 

While established platforms like Ethereum (ETH) and Solana (SOL) have dominated the landscape, a new generation of payment-focused blockchains has reportedly emerged, promising rapid transactions and lower fees. 

These blockchains often utilize native tokens, such as Circle’s USDC or Tether’s USDT stablecoins, which are frequently traded on the Ethereum blockchain yet deployed across various networks.

Despite the competitive environment, Tempo benefits from Stripe’s customer base. As one of the largest payment infrastructure providers globally, Stripe caters to a clientele that largely remains outside the crypto sphere. 

The advantages of stablecoins, often touted for their speed and efficiency compared to traditional money transfer services like SWIFT, present a compelling case for broader adoption. However, concerns over regulatory uncertainties and corporate hesitance have slowed this process.

Tempo’s Ambitious Goals

Fortune reports that tempo will not launch with its own native cryptocurrency. Instead, it will utilize various stablecoins as “gas” fees, which are essential payments made to the network of entities operating the blockchain. This approach sets Tempo apart from many other blockchains that rely on their proprietary tokens for value.

As for the timeline for Tempo’s launch, details remain scarce; however, the project is currently staffed by around 15 employees, including Huang, who will continue his role at Paradigm alongside Alana Palmedo. 

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Paradigm outlined Tempo’s focus areas, which include global payments, remittances, microtransactions, and agentic payments—transactions initiated by artificial intelligence (AI) agents.

While Stripe is incubating Tempo, Paradigm emphasizes the intention for the blockchain to maintain a sense of neutrality. It remains uncertain whether other payment providers will adopt this new technology.

However, the involvement of various partners, including Anthropic, OpenAI, Deutsche Bank, and Shopify, suggests a collaborative effort to develop a new payment solution.

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The following is a guest post and analysis from Shane Neagle, Editor In Chief from The Tokenist.

Although the Terra (LUNA) collapse pricked the crypto bubble in May 2022, it took the FTX exchange catastrophe to firmly pop it at the year’s end. Ever since, the blockchain narrative has been supplanted by the AI hype. Moreover, during the Biden administration, the crypto space entered a vulnerable state of constant harassment and debanking.

This was at a time when digital assets needed to shore up, evolve, and recover from the overleveraged string of busts during 2022. Fortunately, the crypto-friendly Trump administration is now presenting a real path to recovery — to a blockchain-based decentralized finance (DeFi). This is already evident by the rise in capital across dApps.

Now at $156 billion DeFi total value locked (TVL), this marks a return to the first half of 2022. Likewise, Ethereum (ETH) price drastically outperformed Bitcoin (BTC) over the last month, at +53% vs. -1%, respectively. This is a clear sign that an altcoin season is ramping up — but which primary Layer-1 chains should crypto enthusiasts consider for long-term exposure?

Ethereum (ETH)

As the second-largest blockchain network and the DeFi vanguard, Ethereum is an obvious choice. Yet, it should not be overlooked merely for that reason, albeit within some caveats. There are two key aspects to Ethereum that are attractive as the primary exposure to the DeFi narrative.

Ethereum has the first-mover advantage, which generated the highest developer activity, ecosystem momentum, and scaling through Layer-2 networks such as Base, Polygon, Unichain, Optimism, Arbitrum, and others.

After introducing the token-burning mechanism with EIP 1559, Ethereum’s inflation rate is on par with Bitcoin (post-4th halving) at around 0.75%. Although Bitcoin’s inflation rate will continue to drop with more successive halvings, ETH could be considered sound money compared to the dollar with its 2% target inflation rate.

In other words, despite having an elastic token supply — generated by staking — compared to Bitcoin’s fixed supply, it is self-adjusting. As dApp activity rises on the mainnet, more ETH is burned. And after the Pectra upgrade, which made L2 networks more efficient with Blob Space, the burn rate has doubled.

Together with account abstraction and further Ethereum scaling with sharding, Ethereum is future-proofing itself to handle DeFi traffic while keeping transaction fees low. In turn, this ties in with the ongoing stablecoin push with the GENIUS Act.

Ethereum has the most diversified stablecoin ecosystem, holding $138.6 billion in stablecoins. This is half of the total $272.6 billion stablecoin market cap, according to DeFiLlama. As the bridging currency that brings the familiarity of the dollar in tokenized form, stablecoins are the first interaction for most people, leading to wider DeFi exposure.

Moreover, when Circle announced the launch of its ARC blockchain for stablecoin traffic, one should note it is an EVM-compatible L1 network.

Superficially, this may seem bearish for Ethereum as stablecoin transactions could shift away from Ethereum. In reality, it is bullish because it signals Ethereum’s integration into enterprise-grade liquidity through cross-chains and Ethereum’s L2 ecosystem.

All of these factors are now driving up Ether accumulation across treasuries. According to the Strategic ETH Reserve tracker, they have accumulated 3.57 million ETH worth around $16.58 billion. Effectively, Ether treasuries are likely to have the same effect on ETH price that spot-traded Bitcoin ETFs had on the BTC price.

But does that mean investors should go all in on ETH? For existing ETH holders, they should consider locking in profits in the following few months. Historically, when Ethereum’s Market Value to Realized Value ratio (MVRV) is above 3.0, it signals a peak before a selloff.

After the Fed’s likely interest rate cut in September, Ethereum’s MVRV ratio should start rising to that level. Following the market correction, this is when new investors should gain ETH exposure. According to a recent FundStrat forecast, ETH price is likely to reach $10,000 by the year’s end.

Avalanche (AVAX)

Since its launch in 2020, this L1 network has caught attention with its novel approach to blockchain architecture design. Namely, Avalanche divides workload through X-Chain for asset exchange, C-Chain to execute EVM-compatible smart contracts, and P-Chain for managing subnets, validators, and staking.

The implication of this design results in an effortless export of Ethereum dApps in addition to customized subnets. If an organization values financial privacy, it could create unique governance and consensus rules for its subnet. This opens the door to a wide range of use cases in banking, healthcare, supply chains, and private funds.

Case in point, FIFA picked Avalanche in May for its NFT deployment. Most recently, the Avalanche Foundation launched its $50 million accelerator program to fund blockchain gaming.

In terms of tokenomics, 90% of AVAX token supply is unlocked out of a total supply of 458.1 million, from the initial mining of 360 million AVAX. In Q2 2025, the annualized inflation rate remained at 3.8%, following a dynamic schedule driven by the amount of AVAX staked and the staking period.

Although this makes AVAX inflationary compared to Ethereum or Bitcoin, the AVAX token still has a hard cap of 720 million.

AVAX token price is likely to go up as more services are launched. To name a few: lending service Euler Finance, Nexpace (MapleStory N), VanEck’s VBILL treasury fund, Watr’s commodity trading, and Dinari’s tokenized securities.

This burst of activity increased average daily active addresses by 210% on a quarterly basis, according to Messari data. Over the last month, AVAX is up 18%, currently priced at $25 per token. The potential for gains is high, as AVAX reached multiple $50 peaks during 2024. Reminder: this was still during the crypto-hostile Biden administration.

Cardano (ADA)

Following an academic approach to blockchain development, Cardano is closely tied to Ethereum’s origins, as its co-founder Charles Hoskinson founded Cardano due to differences in how Ethereum should be organizationally set up. Over the years, Cardano gained a perception as the “left-behind” chain, with Solana (SOL) gaining prominence as Ethereum’s competitor.

Nonetheless, Cardano’s roadmap is progressing, and its ecosystem is slowly building up. In early 2024, Cardano gained its own USDM stablecoin, issued by fully compliant Moneta, even meeting Europe’s strict MiCA standard. Likewise, the Norwegian Block Exchange (NBX) onboarded USDM.

In the scaling department, Cardano advanced Hydra Layer-2 scaling for off-chain transactions and launched Mithril for lightweight node synchronization. By the year’s end, Ouroboros Peras is set to drastically reduce transaction settlement times. Together with Ouroboros Leios, Cardano is likely to be as performant in transaction throughput as Solana.

Zero-knowledge (ZK) smart contracts are also set for mainnet launch in late 2025, bringing privacy, scalability, and interoperability to the Cardano table. In addition to the privacy-focused Midnight project, Cardano is surrounded by positive narratives.

Another positive narrative from a sound money-wise perspective is that Cardano’s inflation rate is on par with Ethereum. In Q1, it was at 0.7% annually, while trending downward owing to the interplay between 5-day 0.3% expansion epochs, the hard cap of 45 billion ADA, transaction fees, and staking participation.

Year-to-date, ADA is up 2.5%, still under the dollar per token. In September 2021, ADA reached its all-time high price of $3.10. This makes it one of the cheapest blockchain exposures. And because Cardano has been dismissed so many times, its upside potential is amplified if its roadmap delivers as planned. In the stock market, dividend growth investing follows a similar principle of patience and compounding returns.

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An artificial intelligence (AI)-based altcoin is faltering after gaining support from the world’s largest crypto exchange platform by trading volume.

In a new announcement, Binance says that it is adding support for Sahara AI (SAHARA), a decentralized AI platform that enables users to develop and monetize AI models, datasets and applications.

“Binance is excited to announce that Sahara AI will be added to Binance Simple Earn, ‘Buy Crypto,’ Binance Convert, Binance Margin, and Binance Futures.”

News of the addition had a negative impact on the price of SAHARA, as the digital asset went from a peak of $0.141 earlier today to its current price of $0.096, a dip of over 32% in just a few hours.

Earlier this week, SAHARA was also added to Binance Earn, a program that allows traders to generate passive income by staking crypto.

In its official litepaper, the development team behind Sahara AI says its purpose is to address the common issues found in centralized AI platforms.

“Centralized AI platforms come with significant limitations and risks, including concerns for privacy, deepening economic disparities, and restricted access to resources.

This creates significant barriers that hinder widespread innovation, limit participation in AI development from diverse backgrounds, and restrict access to AI technologies across different communities. Sahara AI addresses these challenges by decentralizing AI ownership and enabling broader participation in its development.”

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Though Ethereum’s price has been stuck in the doldrums, ETH’s network is booming, according to the crypto analytics firm Santiment.

The firm notes in a recent post on the social media platform X that “the utility and growth of the network continues looking healthier than ever.”

“The amount of new weekly ETH addresses created is ranging around 800,000-1 million per week, compared to about one-third less at this point last year.”

ETH is trading at $2,421 at time of writing. The second-ranked crypto asset by market cap is down more than 3.5% in the past day.

Despite Ethereum’s growing network, Santiment notes that a different layer-1 project, Tron (TRX), has been dominating the social media conversation.

“The Tron blockchain and ecosystem is trending, including its deflationary tokenomics, staking options via Tronscan and TronLink, and its role in stablecoin transactions, especially USDT on Tron.

Discussions include token conversions, swapping, and competition with Ethereum in DeFi (decentralized finance) and stablecoin transfers. Tron is also noted for a potential NASDAQ listing and involvement of notable figures, enhancing its prominence. TRX, the native token, is highlighted for fast, low-cost transactions, a growing DeFi, NFT (non-fungible tokens), and dApp ecosystem, surpassing Dogecoin in market cap, and a $210 million reverse merger attracting institutional interest.”

TRX is trading at $0.273 at time of writing.

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A widely followed trader believes that a layer-1 decentralized exchange (DEX) altcoin is gearing up for rallies to new all-time highs.

Pseudonymous analyst Altcoin Sherpa tells his 248,500 followers on the social media platform X that he thinks Hyperliquid (HYPE) looks very strong despite the recent marketwide correction.

The trader sees HYPE consolidating close to the highs for now before igniting a fresh leg up en route to a new record high.

“HYPE has insane strength right now, this one got bought up quickly. wouldn’t be surprised to see a bit more chop around here but $50+ is destined, even in these crazy times.”

At time of writing, HYPE is worth $40.44.

While Altcoin Sherpa is bullish on HYPE, he says he’s bearish on two Solana (SOL)-based memecoins. The trader notes that dogwifhat (WIF) and Popcat (POPCAT) are both in the midst of a downtrend and may drop to much lower levels if BTC fails to print new all-time highs.

“Moment of truth for many of these [coins] soon; that could have just been a lower high formed. It’s all going to be dependent on BTC. If we see it blast through the highs, we’re going up again. If not, alts probably go [down] another 30-50%. Can see some examples with WIF, POPCAT.”

Based on the trader’s chart, he seems to predict that POPCAT could fall to as low as $0.22. At time of writing, POPCAT is worth $0.31.

Looking at the trader’s chart, he seems to suggest that WIF could plunge to $0.60. At time of writing, WIF is trading for $0.839.

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Former Goldman Sachs executive Raoul Pal says one Solana (SOL) competitor is his “favored child.”

Pal tells his 1.1 million followers on the social media platform X that if he had to “have a favorite,” the layer-1 chain Sui (SUI) would look preferable to Solana.

The Real Vision chief executive shares a chart comparing the SUI/USD price to the SOL/USD price, with SUI/USD looking like it’s on the cusp of breaking out of resistance.

SUI is trading at $2.97 at time of writing. The 13th-ranked crypto asset by market cap is up more than 21% in the past day and nearly 41% in the past week.

SOL is trading at $149.47 at time of writing. The sixth-ranked crypto asset by market cap is up more than 3.5% in the past 24 hours and more than 13% in the past week.

Pal isn’t the only analyst bullish on the Solana rival: Last week, crypto trader Michaël van de Poppe told his 783,900 followers on the social media platform X that Sui is gaining adoption as a decentralized finance (DeFi) network, including for Bitcoin (BTC) staking and lending, referred to as Bitcoin DeFi (BTCfi).

“Once the markets are turning back into an uptrend, the money will flow back into the ones that have shown strength. SUI is one of them. It’s a great spot to investigate SUI:

• BTCFi is quickly growing fast as 10% of TVL (Total Value Locked) going through SUI.
• DeFi on SUI is in the top six of all chains.
• Nearly $6 billion in trading volume on DeFi in the past month.

I think it can do really well in the upcoming cycle.”

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The Ethereum Foundation is realigning its developmental strategy to address core protocol efficiency and user experience challenges, following recent leadership changes earlier this year.

Co-executive director Tomasz Stańczak outlined the updated focus areas in a public statement on X earlier today, emphasizing that the shift is intended to strengthen Ethereum’s long-term scalability while improving near-term usability.

Protocol Upgrades and a Revised Role for Vitalik Buterin

Stańczak described the discussions surrounding Ethereum’s base-layer roadmap as extensive and community-driven, noting that the changes are designed to sharpen focus among researchers and core developers. Stańczak wrote:

Our discussions about the Layer 1 scaling roadmap have been extensive, and the feedback so far suggests that the community appreciates our ambition. Turning that ambition into reality now depends on the focus of the core development teams and researchers.

As part of its strategic transition, the Ethereum Foundation is aiming to give Vitalik Buterin more time to focus on advanced research rather than daily operational oversight.

“We aimed, among other things, to free more of Vitalik’s time for research and exploration,” Stańczak stated, adding that Buterin’s recent writings on topics like RISC-V and zkVMs have been instrumental in directing attention toward potentially “transformative technologies.”

According to Stańczak, these insights have played a significant role in realigning the Ethereum community around long-term priorities, such as privacy, modularity, and decentralized infrastructure.

Stańczak clarified that Buterin’s proposals are not mandates but starting points for community-led exploration:

Vitalik’s proposals will always carry weight, but they are intended to start conversations and encourage progress in difficult research areas.

He also stressed the importance of giving other researchers the same freedom, highlighting ongoing work by contributors like Justin Drake and Tankard Feist.

Overall. the Foundation’s research direction is now geared toward short-term outcomes that include better Layer-1 scaling, enhanced Layer-2 integration, and more “seamless” user experiences—especially in upcoming upgrades like Pectra, Fusaka, and Glamsterdam.

RISC-V Proposal and Developer Flexibility

The Foundation is also assessing the feasibility of moving from the Ethereum Virtual Machine (EVM) to a more modern execution environment powered by RISC-V.

This proposal, initially introduced by Buterin, suggests that RISC-V could streamline execution, improve efficiency, and simplify zero-knowledge proof implementation.

“We are exploring ways to bring forward projects that currently look three to five years away,” Stańczak noted, referencing possible acceleration in next-gen execution and consensus layer development.

RISC-V’s benefits include broader language compatibility and the potential for backward compatibility with existing EVM contracts. Developers could continue using Solidity and Vyper or expand into languages like Rust.

Additionally, RISC-V could improve validator performance through hardware-level customization, while maintaining core Ethereum features such as account models and contract interactions.

As research and experimentation continue, Stańczak emphasized the importance of community input: “Ethereum researchers often ask that readers recognize the exploratory nature of their posts and proposals. Focus remains essential.”

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The world’s largest crypto exchange platform by trading volume is adding a new layer-1 Ethereum (ETH) rival to its launchpool.

In a new announcement, Binance says it’s adding Initia (INIT), a blockchain designed to offer rollups and infrastructure for appchain development, to its launchpool.

“Binance is excited to announce the 68th project on Binance Launchpool – Initia (INIT), an L1 blockchain that unites appchains to unlock their full value through interwoven infrastructure and aligned economics.”

Binance’s launchpool was started in 2020 and is a platform that allows traders to earn new tokens passively by staking their existing assets.

According to its official website, Initia seeks to reduce the decision fatigue that blockchain and blockchain developers face as a means of improving how they operate.

“The Interwoven Stack is Initia’s comprehensive, all-in-one solution designed to empower developers and teams in building and deploying rollups with unmatched ease and efficiency. Historically, building a rollup requires developers to research, select, and piece together numerous components and services…

[The] tasks divert time and resources from developers, preventing them from focusing on building their applications…

With this approach, developers can focus solely on building, improving, and shipping their applications, while the Interwoven Stack manages the heavy lifting of selecting the right tools and components for a performant and secure rollup, ensuring a smooth and optimal developer and user experience.”

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