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Ethereum Foundation Researcher Dankrad Feist Joins Stripe-Backed Tempo

Feist's departure from full-time work at the EF comes amid increased corporate investment in building L1 blockchains.

Oct 17, 2025 • 1 min read

Dankrad Feist – a prominent Ethereum Foundation researcher known for his work on scaling solutions – is joining Tempo, a new high-performance blockchain developed with backing from Stripe and Paradigm. The move underscores growing competition for top Ethereum talent among next-generation Layer 1 projects.

What’s the Scoop?

New Chapter: Feist, who joined the Ethereum Foundation’s research team full-time in 2019, has played a key role in architecting Ethereum’s scaling roadmap. He will remain a research advisor to the EF’s Protocol Cluster, focusing on the “Scale L1,” “Scale Blobs,” and “Improve UX” initiatives.
Joining Tempo: Feist said the decision reflects a belief that crypto’s long-standing goal of enabling everyday payments is finally within reach, and that Tempo is uniquely positioned to deliver it. “I believe the real-world moment is now,” Feist wrote. “Tempo’s open-source technology will be able to integrate back into Ethereum, benefiting the entire ecosystem.”
Ethereum Values, Tempo Speed: Feist emphasized that Tempo shares Ethereum’s permissionless ethos and technical foundations, but can push further on throughput and latency, calling it a “complementary” platform that can push the boundaries of blockchain scale and speed.
Tempo’s Momentum: Tempo has quickly emerged as one of the most anticipated new blockchains in crypto. It aims to optimize for real-world payments like e-commerce and remittances by processing a high volume of transactions per second with low, predictable fees.

I am excited to announce that I will be joining Tempo. This last year has been a turning point for crypto, where we have finally seen the outlines of our vision being materialized. While payments used to be front and center in the early days of crypto, I see a special opportunity…
— Dankrad Feist (@dankrad) October 17, 2025

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