Farcaster co-founders Dan Romero and Varun Srinivasan said Monday they are joining stablecoin-focused startup Tempo, signaling a move away from crypto-native social media and blockchain-based payments.
The move follows last month’s acquisition of Farcaster by Neynar, a longtime infrastructure provider for the protocol that offers APIs and tools for developers building on the network.
Farcaster was once touted as the crypto answer to Twitter, a protocol-based alternative where users controlled their identity and data. After the acquisition of Neynar, Romero, Srinivasan and several members of their team at Merkle, the company behind Farcaster, withdrew from the project.
In an article on
Launched quietly last year, Tempo quickly gained attention as one of the most well-capitalized new companies in the stablecoin space. It was incubated by payments giant Stripe and crypto venture capital firm Paradigm, both of which have extensive experience building and scaling financial infrastructure. Tempo’s goal is to power international payments using stablecoins, providing an alternative to traditional cross-border systems that remain expensive, slow and opaque.
