Tempo

The blockchain for payments at scale.

Tempo nodes use published network identities to verify consensus finalisation and authenticate snapshots.

Tempo is a blockchain designed specifically for stablecoin payments. Its architecture focuses on high throughput, low cost, and features that financial institutions, payment service providers, and fintech platforms expect from modern payment infrastructure.

You can get started today by integrating with the Tempo testnet, building on Tempo, running a Tempo node, reading the Tempo protocol specs or by building with Tempo SDKs.

What makes Tempo different

• TIP‑20 token standard (enshrined ERC‑20 extensions)

  • Predictable payment throughput via dedicated payment lanes reserved for TIP‑20 transfers (eliminates noisy‑neighbor contention).
  • Native reconciliation with on‑transfer memos and commitment patterns (hash/locator) for off‑chain PII and large data.
  • Built‑in compliance through TIP‑403 Policy Registry: single policy shared across multiple tokens, updated once and enforced everywhere.

• Low, predictable fees in stablecoins

  • Users pay gas directly in USD-stablecoins at launch; the Fee AMM automatically converts to the validator’s preferred stablecoin.
  • TIP‑20 transfers target sub‑millidollar costs (<$0.001).

• Tempo Transactions (native “smart accounts”)

  • Batched payments: atomic multi‑operation payouts (payroll, settlements, refunds).
  • Fee sponsorship: apps can pay users' gas to streamline onboarding and flows.
  • Scheduled payments: protocol‑level time windows for recurring and timed disbursements.
  • Modern authentication: passkeys via WebAuthn/P256 (biometric sign‑in, secure enclave, cross‑device sync).

• Performance and finality

  • Built on the Reth SDK, the most performant and flexible EVM (Ethereum Virtual Machine) execution client.
  • Simplex Consensus (via Commonware): fast, sub‑second finality in normal conditions; graceful degradation under adverse networks.

• Coming soon

  • On‑chain FX and non‑USD stablecoin support for direct on‑chain liquidity; pay fees in more currencies.
  • Native private token standard: opt‑in privacy for balances/transfers coexisting with issuer compliance and auditability.

What makes Tempo familiar

• Fully compatible with the Ethereum Virtual Machine (EVM), targeting the Osaka hardfork.
• Deploy and interact with smart contracts using the same tools, languages, and frameworks used on Ethereum, such as Solidity, Foundry, and Hardhat.
• All Ethereum JSON-RPC methods work out of the box.

While the execution environment mirrors Ethereum's, Tempo introduces some differences optimized for payments, described here.

Getting Started

As a user

You can connect to Tempo's public testnet using the following details:

Next, grab some stablecoins to test with from Tempo's Faucet.

Alternatively, use cast:

cast rpc tempo_fundAddress <ADDRESS> --rpc-url https://rpc.moderato.tempo.xyz

As an operator

We provide three different installation paths: installing a pre-built binary, building from source or using our provided Docker image.

• Pre-built Binary
• Build from Source
• Docker

See the Tempo documentation for instructions on how to install and run Tempo.

As a developer

Tempo has several SDKs to help you get started building on Tempo:

• TypeScript
• Rust
• Go
• Foundry

For local development and CI, run the bootstrapped localnet container:

docker run --rm -p 127.0.0.1:8545:8545 ghcr.io/tempoxyz/tempo-localnet:latest

For prover E2E devnets, ghcr.io/tempoxyz/tempo-devnet (also on Docker Hub) contains the Tempo L1 binary built with custom-pcrs. It is published alongside the regular images with matching tags, including sha-<short-sha> and nightly. Pass the prover measurements using --zone-verifier.custom-pcrs or TEMPO_ZONE_VERIFIER_CUSTOM_PCRS; this variant refuses to start on mainnet and Moderato. The regular images keep the compiled-in PCR policy.

Want to contribute?

First, clone the repository:

git clone https://github.com/tempoxyz/tempo
cd tempo

Next, install just.

Install the dependencies:

just

Configure Git to run the repository hooks:

./scripts/setup-hooks.sh

Build Tempo:

just build-all

Run the tests:

cargo nextest run

Start a localnet:

just localnet

Contributing

Our contributor guidelines can be found in CONTRIBUTING.md.

Network identities

These BLS threshold public keys are built into Tempo nodes and used by both follow/RPC nodes and validators to verify consensus finalisation certificates, including those used to authenticate snapshots.

Mainnet — from epoch 0

0xa217bb85001d4dcf8e5c50136f77af88cb2cab1857279b91c6240f41cca95c4f43f6dcab3e0dfb87dafb3ecbeb6251e90a5df2e6c47432482821cd8b84665ee4642589d2d9628a92b03e2bbfb00e006d038cd98def76d2a41b7c228c05f5a193

Testnet (Moderato) — from epoch 1747

0x967ae1a6d3ddbe5cb0fe5e6fc58e74249787b4a277619b549fed6609d04660540dd2449cd7174def35e40f544e5ad72d15d064191a205ed6e0c49619c68f975108b614d0d51def9a8416a10a07c4193bea0cbbc4252ec1b33f21095a5d7aa590

See the compiled network identities for the built-in values. To override them, see How do I override the network identity?.

Security

See SECURITY.md. Note: Tempo is still undergoing audit and does not have an active bug bounty. Submissions will not be eligible for a bounty until audits have concluded.

Verifying release binaries

Each release ships <binary>-<version>-<target>.tar.gz plus .sha256 (archive checksum) and .asc (GPG signature), and is also covered by Sigstore-signed SLSA build provenance.

The tempoup installer performs these checks automatically on every install. To verify manually, pick one of the two paths below — both prove the archive came from the tagged commit, signed by tempoxyz.

Path A — offline / no GitHub auth required (checksum + GPG):

TAG=v1.6.0
ARCHIVE=tempo-${TAG}-x86_64-unknown-linux-gnu.tar.gz

gh release download "$TAG" --repo tempoxyz/tempo \
  -p "$ARCHIVE" -p "$ARCHIVE.sha256" -p "$ARCHIVE.asc"

sha256sum -c "$ARCHIVE.sha256"

# Public key + fingerprint:
# https://docs.tempo.xyz/guide/node/installation#verifying-releases
gpg --verify "$ARCHIVE.asc" "$ARCHIVE"

Path B — Sigstore (requires gh installed and authenticated):

TAG=v1.6.0
ARCHIVE=tempo-${TAG}-x86_64-unknown-linux-gnu.tar.gz

gh release download "$TAG" --repo tempoxyz/tempo -p "$ARCHIVE"
gh attestation verify "$ARCHIVE" --repo tempoxyz/tempo \
  --predicate-type https://slsa.dev/provenance/v1

License

Licensed under either of Apache License, Version 2.0 or MIT License at your option.

Unless you explicitly state otherwise, any contribution intentionally submitted for inclusion in these crates by you, as defined in the Apache-2.0 license, shall be dual licensed as above, without any additional terms or conditions.