As everyone obsesses over Tempo's design decisions, CT is once again missing the forest from the trees Tempo provides Stripe with the final piece to build out their own payments network to compete directly with Visa and other card networks Today’s payment networks are made up of four key stakeholders, each taking their cut of the net economics: - Issuing banks - Acquiring banks - Card networks - Payment processors Interestingly, crypto infra maps quite elegantly onto the traditional payments stack Stablecoin issuers look a lot like digital issuing banks - they issue tokens backed by user funds in yield-bearing assets Wallets look a lot like acquirers - they provide infrastructure for merchants to accept stablecoin payments natively Orchestrators look a lot like payment processors - they handle routing, compliance, and fraud prevention Blockchains look a lot like card networks - they serve as a credibly-neutral asset ledger that connects each respective layer If you were to rebuild the payments stack from first principles, it would probably look something like a blockchain-native payment network that vertically integrates each respective layer on-chain Stripe clearly understands this Through their strategic acquisitions, they now own (1) the orchestration and issuance layer through Bridge (most don’t know this but Bridge also has their own stablecoin called USDB) (2) wallet infra through Privy and (3) blockchain rails themselves through Tempo ...