Stripe’s Tempo and Circle’s Arc Face Scrutiny Over Decentralization Trade-offs, Says Libra Co-Creator

Christian Catalini, co-creator of Facebook's ill-fated Libra project, has framed Stripe's Tempo and Circle's Arc as a litmus test for crypto's Core ideals. The initiatives risk repeating Libra's fate—achieving commercial success by sacrificing decentralization, he warned in a Sept. 5 X thread.

Libra's 2019 debut as a Meta-backed global stablecoin promised frictionless payments but collapsed under regulatory pressure by 2022. Catalini revealed how initial designs for non-custodial wallets were scrapped to appease regulators demanding accountable intermediaries. "For them, killing self-custody wasn't a choice, it was an obvious necessity," he wrote.

The irony cuts deep: today's open networks develop precisely what Libra couldn't deliver. Yet Tempo and Arc now navigate the same tension between mass adoption and cryptographic purity—a tension Catalini knows all too well.