In a significant shift within the cryptocurrency industry, Dan Romero and Varun Srinivasan, the co-founders of the decentralized social media protocol Farcaster, have joined stablecoin-focused blockchain project Tempo. The move, announced by the founders on their X accounts, follows the recent acquisition of Farcaster by infrastructure provider Neynar, which prompted their departure from day-to-day operations at their previous venture.
Romero publicly framed stablecoins as a "generational opportunity," signaling a strategic bet on financial technology over social infrastructure. Srinivasan echoed this, stating Tempo is working on "the most important problem in finance: building a global payments network that is fast, inexpensive and transparent." Their roles at Tempo have not been specified.
The transition underscores a broader trend of high-profile Web3 talent migrating towards projects with tangible real-world utility. Romero and Srinivasan bring considerable expertise from building Farcaster's decentralized community and prior roles at Coinbase, where Romero oversaw consumer business and international expansion, and Srinivasan directed engineering and product teams.
Tempo is backed by fintech giant Stripe and crypto venture firm Paradigm, the latter co-founded by Matt Huang, who is also a co-founder of Tempo. The project has been aggressively stacking talent, recently adding former Ethereum Foundation researcher Dankrad Feist, former Optimism Labs CEO Liam Horne, and Rice University Professor Mallesh Pai to its ranks.
The startup has already secured over a dozen high-profile partners, including Anthropic, Coupang, Deutsche Bank, DoorDash, Lead Bank, Mercury, Nubank, OpenAI, Revolut, Shopify, Standard Chartered, Visa, and Klarna. Tempo rolled out its testnet in December 2025, with a full launch scheduled for later in 2026.
Following the Farcaster acquisition by Neynar, Romero stated he plans to return all $180 million that Farcaster had raised to its investors. Analysts view the founders' move to Tempo as a logical progression, bridging community-driven growth expertise with the challenge of achieving mainstream adoption for stablecoins in a market dominated by giants like Tether (USDT) and Circle's USD Coin (USDC).
