Tempo’s stablecoin blockchain goes live with support for ‘AI agent’ transactions

Tempo is finally live.

The project, backed by payments giant Stripe and crypto venture firm Paradigm, announced the launch of its highly-anticipated blockchain on Wednesday alongside new tools to support so-called machine payments — transactions executed by artificial intelligence agents.

AI agents are autonomous software programmes designed to achieve specific goals without constant human oversight. They sit at the bleeding edge of the booming AI sector, yet doubts about their capabilities abound.

“Agents can already write code, coordinate services, retrieve data, and execute complex workflows across the internet,” Tempo said in a blog post announcing its blockchain’s launch. “But as these systems become more capable, they increasingly need to transact.”

Tempo aims to provide a standardised way for AI agents to coordinate payments for services, like accessing datasets or buying computing power, by themselves.

The launch comes as more and more crypto projects pivot to weaving AI into their offerings.

Last month, Tomasz Stańczak, a former co-director of the Ethereum Foundation, pushed for the $280 billion blockchain and its developers to utilise the technology to review and edit proposals, moderate meetings, write code, and even accept or reject network upgrades.

Several other crypto projects, including the Near blockchain and Render have also shifted their focus to AI in recent years.

‘Machine Payments Protocol’

For the longest time Tempo was teased as a blockchain purpose-built for stablecoins, tokens pegged to currencies like the US dollar, British pound, or euro.

“When we first announced Tempo in September, our premise was simple: if stablecoins become a core layer of internet commerce, the infrastructure that moves money needs to be purpose-built for payments,” Tempo said in its blog post.

Now, it appears Tempo is expanding its remit to building payments infrastructure for AI agents, too.

That will be powered by Tempo’s Machine Payments Protocol — or MPP.

The protocol lets AI agents enter a session in which they can continuously pay for services automatically, as long as they’re within pre-defined limits.

At the end of a session, those transactions can be aggregated into a single settlement transaction, which Tempo says allows the system to scale to larger and larger numbers of users — or agents — without getting clogged.

Excitement builds

Tempo has generated a lot of excitement within the crypto industry since it was first announced in September.

The project has stacked top talent in the leadup to its launch.

Last month, Farcaster co-founders Dan Romero and Varun Srinivasan joined the project. Farcaster, which Romero and Srinivasan led for the past five years, was acquired in January by Neynar, as the social media app struggled to catch on with users.

Former Ethereum Foundation researcher Dankrad Feist joined Tempo’s ranks in October, while Optimism Labs CEO Liam Horne and Rice University Professor Mallesh Pai also joined late last year.

Tempo has already inked over a dozen high-profile partnerships with AI firms Anthropic and Open AI, payments firms Mastercard and Visa, and neobanks Nubank and Revolut, among others.

Tim Craig is DL News’ Edinburgh-based DeFi Correspondent. Reach out with tips at tim@dlnews.com.