# Liam Horne > Software entrepreneur and engineer working on Ethereum scaling, stablecoins, and blockchain technology. I'm an English-born, Canadian-raised software entrepreneur and engineer. I went to the University of Waterloo to study Computer Science before dropping out to start a startup. For most of my twenties, I've been working on technology for ethereum. This started with scaling payments on Ethereum using a technology called state channels. Over time it became clear that people weren't yet ready for the kinds of use cases that state channels enabled (i.e., micropayments, agentic payments, streaming and instant payments). However, we built some really cool tech, like Web3Torrent. So, I pivoted my focus towards building Optimism. Our mission was to scale Ethereum without compromising on security or decentralization. We were one of the defining projects that shaped the "Layer 2" ecosystem according to Vitalik Buterin's vision of a "rollup-centric Ethereum". Alongside Coinbase, we launched Base on the OP Stack. By 2023, it was clear that stablecoins were the most important outcome of the blockchain industry. Unfortunately, despite all of our work to scale Ethereum, most of the real world usage of these products were using Tether on Tron. I wrote and spoke about this often while working on multiple projects related to stablecoins like World Chain, Stable, and Build Canada: Crypto. Much of the work I did on stablecoins led to me towards Tempo, which is a return to my original focus on payments-first infrastructure for blockchains. We're building a payments-focused L1 blockchain that uses all of the best ideas from years of scaling research and bringing it to the modern internet payments stack. I've invested in dozens of startups including Othership, QA Wolf, Daimo, Erebor, Stable, Farcaster, Ambrook, Mercantile, Software Applications Incorporated, Conduit, Splits, Axiom, OpenSea, Agora, Flex, and many more. Find me on GitHub (https://github.com/snario), X (https://twitter.com/liamihorne), LinkedIn (https://www.linkedin.com/in/liamhorne/), Telegram (https://t.me/recklessengineer), and Farcaster (https://warpcast.com/liam). ## Pages - [Tempo](https://liamhorne.com/tempo): Liam Horne joins Tempo, a payments-first blockchain incubated by Stripe and Paradigm - [World Chain](https://liamhorne.com/world-chain): The first blockchain that prioritizes anonymous verified human interactions over bots and AI - [OP Labs](https://liamhorne.com/oplabs): Becoming CEO of OP Labs - [Future of OP Labs](https://liamhorne.com/oplabs-update): Karl Floersch assumes CEO role at OP Labs - [Optimism](https://liamhorne.com/optimism): Joining Optimism to build optimistic rollups - [Making Sense of Tether on Tron](https://liamhorne.com/stablecoins): Analysis of stablecoin adoption and Tether's growth on Tron - [Canada Cannot Afford to Miss Out on Stablecoins](https://liamhorne.com/canada-stablecoins): A memo proposing a clear regulatory framework for stablecoins in Canada - [Making Sense of Web 3](https://liamhorne.com/web3): A vision for a new, better internet - [Introducing Web3Torrent](https://liamhorne.com/web3torrent): Peer-to-peer micropayments for torrenting built on Ethereum using state channels - [Counterfactual](https://liamhorne.com/counterfactual): Generalized State Channels on Ethereum - [Generalized State Channels on Ethereum](https://liamhorne.com/state-channels): Announcing work on generalized state channels - [Projects](https://liamhorne.com/projects): All projects - [Photography](https://liamhorne.com/photography): Photo gallery - [Writing](https://liamhorne.com/writing): All writing --- ## Tempo Written September 1, 2025 I'm excited to share that I've joined the team at Tempo (https://tempo.xyz). Tempo is a payments-first blockchain, incubated by Stripe and Paradigm. ### Stablecoins and blockchains When Base launched in 2023 with the OP Stack, it was clear that we had hit an important milestone in the history of blockchain scaling. Now, a Fortune 500 company in the US like Coinbase can just "spin up" a blockchain and begin integrating it into their business like they would any other technology. Given Coinbase's business development teams, its relationship to Circle, and its ability to leverage its user base, network of ramp integrations, and liquidity, Base was set up to be wildly successful — and it has been! It was those dynamics between Circle, Coinbase, and Base that got me hooked on stablecoins that summer too. Alongside some friends, I did a lot of research into Tether on Tron and the similar dynamics those two had alongside Binance in the adoption of stablecoins outside of the US. It was the observations from that research that led me to do lots of work in understanding the business of stablecoin issuers, ramp networks, various financial services firms, exchanges, and more. Over the past year, I've applied lots of those insights in the buildout of World Chain where we've built an EVM-based blockchain network designed for the over 30M humans that have signed up on World. From that work, a few things became really clear to me: Stablecoins were going to go mainstream, very soon. You could see it was imminent from the data. Stablecoins were already 70% of transaction volume across all blockchains, yet they didn't have anywhere near that level of notoriety within the ecosystem. Fintech adoption of stablecoins was coming. Outside of the blockchain space, there is already a massive shift going on within fintech. More and more applications are offering bank-like services to end consumers. Things like Starbucks's cash product, Apple Cash, Cash App, DoorDash Crimson, Wise, and more are all rebuilding exactly the kinds of infrastructure in a closed and bespoke way that the stablecoin space is creating in an open and integrated way. Blockchains were not designed for stablecoins. Stablecoins are an emergent phenomenon of blockchains. They were created in order to be inter-exchange financial rails and to be an alternative bank for those exchanges, but the main use case driving their adoption was crypto trading. Meanwhile, blockchains themselves have always treated them as some kind of "application," as opposed to the fundamental primitive that they should be designed for. ### Why Tempo In the last year or so, we've definitely seen stablecoins go mainstream. However, the experience for fintechs, banks, businesses, and end consumers using them is still not so great. To me, solving this problem is the most important mission for the future of the blockchain industry. Tempo is an attempt to build those rails from scratch. It is leveraging over a decade of research and development by the best in the industry, and is being built in partnership with the largest payment gateway and payment processor on the internet. Instead of focusing on trading, Tempo is being designed from the ground up to support real-world crypto use cases like remittances, global payroll, embedded accounts, agentic finance, and even microtransactions. It's a blockchain designed for payments first, not as an afterthought. Features at the chain level include: - High throughput and sub-second finality, designed to feel instant for payments. - Low, predictable fees payable in any stablecoin. - Cross-stablecoin transfers through a built-in AMM, ensuring neutrality across issuers. - Payments-first UX with gasless flows, memos, access lists, and dedicated lanes. - Optional privacy for real financial applications and enterprise requirements. Tempo is also being designed to be neutral and permissionless, borrowing much of the Ethereum ethos. Tempo is an independent company, with Stripe and Paradigm as first investors, and a team of 15 led by Matt Huang. --- ## World Chain Written October 2024 The reality is that bots run by trading firms dominate transactions and fee revenues on blockchains. Although being "onchain" is becoming more popular, there are still very few actual people using blockchain-based applications. To help with this, I've been advising the World Foundation this year on the launch of World Chain. The chain is launching with nearly 15M humans migrating from OP Mainnet. World Chain is the first blockchain that prioritizes anonymous verified human interactions over bots and AI. Since World Chain is built on Optimism, transactions are submitted to and sequenced by a server run by the World Foundation. Since every person that has a valid World ID is identifiable by their public address on the chain (i.e., they are anonymously verified humans), the World Foundation can build blocks that put those transactions above all others, regardless of all other factors. Humans will be given a gas allowance for their transactions, meaning for them gas will be free up to a certain point. The non-verified addresses (i.e., the bots) will still pay for fees like on other blockchains, and the revenue from those fees will be put back into the free gas allowance for users. --- ## OP Labs Written June 2022 I'm proud to share today that I'm becoming CEO of OP Labs (previously known as Optimism PBC) to continue the journey of scaling Ethereum by building the Optimism protocol and driving the evolution of the Ethereum protocol and ecosystem for a rollup-centric future. Optimism is meant to scale Ethereum's technology and its values. By specifying and building optimistic rollups today and driving the adoption of Optimism Mainnet we're scaling the technology. By introducing retroactive public goods funding and launching broader governance over the network, we're scaling its values. What has become most clear to me is how crucial it is for us to scale the Ethereum product. Ethereum, like Bitcoin, is a decentralized technology and protocol. Making major modifications to the protocol takes time and requires a consensus amongst a large group of people scattered all over the world. It's clear to me that Optimism is Ethereum's opportunity to scale its product. At OP Labs, we shipped the Optimism Mainnet, designed the most minimal rollup abstraction in the industry, and launched the ecosystem with the creation of the OP token and its governance mechanisms. --- ## Future of OP Labs Written May 31, 2023 Today I'm proud to share that my longtime friend and Optimism co-founder, Karl Floersch, will assume the role of CEO of OP Labs. In this role, Karl will be responsible for leading the company, defining its vision, and working with our amazing team to establish and execute the strategies necessary to decentralize Optimism and build the Superchain. As for myself, I will maintain a close working relationship with Karl, concentrating on vision, strategy, and execution in an advisory capacity at OP Labs. The transition will enable me to direct more attention towards the burgeoning ecosystem of projects and businesses building on top of the OP Stack. --- ## Optimism Written February 1, 2021 I'm incredibly excited to share that I'm joining Optimism to help Karl, Jing, Ben, and the world-class team they've built around them build and deploy production-ready optimistic rollups. What motivated me most about Ethereum was its founding philosophies that invited anyone to build on top and to contribute to the development of the community and protocol. Instead of deterring new ideas or approaches, the Ethereum ecosystem welcomed them with eyes and ears wide open. This culture is also what inspired my friends and I to start ETHGlobal. Within Ethereum, many of the best projects and ideas are created by aggressive and rapid experimentation. The big challenge now is scaling the technology to meet the demand without compromising on its commitment to decentralization, censorship resistance, and security. For myself and some others, this has meant investing heavily in the research & development of layer 2 solutions. Having collaborated on researching these layer 2 strategies alongside Optimism's Co-Founders Ben, Karl, and Jing over the years, the thing that I've admired most about their approach has always been staying true to Ethereum's founding philosophies. Optimism was even founded as a public benefit corporation. --- ## Making Sense of Tether on Tron Written November 2023 My friends that work on Ethereum tend to be very surprised once they realize the most used cryptocurrency for payments is Tether on Tron. ### Stablecoins grew exponentially over the last five years Global access to the US dollar has really turned out to be a killer app. They're used for inter-exchange settlement, cross-border payments, and accessing a dollar product in countries with strict capital controls. They're growing really fast, over 100% year-over-year in the past five years, from under $3B to over $125B of stablecoins in circulation. Stablecoins today make up 70% of all cryptocurrency transaction volumes despite only composing 10% of the entire cryptocurrency market cap! Stablecoins even surpassed PayPal in total settlements in 2022: over $11T of volume settled on blockchains. That's almost the size of the entire Visa network ($11.6T). ### Stablecoins seriously help people that need stable money More than a third of Latin American consumers say they have made a payment for an everyday purchase with stablecoin, according to Mastercard. People living in countries with failing monetary policy like Argentina have experienced 100% annual inflation for over a century. In Turkey, the Lira inflated by 80.5% in 2022 making cryptocurrencies ways for people to preserve wealth. Ownership of cryptocurrencies is the highest in the world, at 27.1%. ### Businesses are building consumer finance apps with stablecoins Lemon lets more than 2M customers in Latin America store their stablecoins like they would with a traditional bank. Mercado Pago is starting to support payments in USDC and USDP. Yellow Card provides fiat payment and disbursement solutions in 16 African countries using stablecoins as the backend. Even Visa is beginning to pilot stablecoins for merchant settlement. ### Stablecoin issuers are benefiting from higher interest rates Tether owns more US Treasury Bills than Australia, Spain, and the United Arab Emirates. With federal rates at 5%, Tether makes billions from interest alone. Coinbase makes significant revenue via a revenue share with Circle — $201.4M in Q2 2023. ### Tether was the first to establish the utility of stablecoins Tether's USDT represents 69% of the entire stablecoin supply and 55% of all DEX volume. Tether was founded in 2014 and was the first way for users of cryptocurrency exchanges to get access to a product similar to a digital dollar. ### Tether's supply started to move onto Tron Tron entered the arena with a fork of ethereum that promised extremely cheap and low-latency settlement. Today, Tether has an outstanding supply of more than $44B worth of USDT on Tron, even more than there is USDT on Ethereum Mainnet ($39B). ### The majority of consumer stablecoin transactions use Tether on Tron Today, ~5M weekly active stablecoin addresses transact using stablecoins and 75% of them less than $1k per week, indicating that retail users likely represent the majority. Most of that activity is using Tether on Tron. ### Binance helped make Tron the default for holding USDT Binance played a massively important role in Tron's early success. Tron was the default blockchain for depositing and withdrawing Tether on the exchange. Binance is now used by over 150M people in 180 countries and is also the largest holder of USDT. ### How can Ethereum compete? Ethereum scalability enables better products to compete. Because of mature specifications like the OP Stack, and production blockchain networks like Optimism, it's now possible to build EVM blockchain networks secured by Ethereum with fees less than $0.01 per transaction. Last year, the total transactions per second on all L2s surpassed those on Ethereum Mainnet, reaching around 5x as many. Now is the perfect time to build stablecoin applications on Ethereum. --- ## Canada Cannot Afford to Miss Out on Stablecoins Written January 2024. Cross-posted from Build Canada. Proposed by: Som Seif, Founder Purpose Unlimited Supported by: Lucas Matheson, Liam Horne, Jean Amiouny, Eric Richmond, Alex Tapscott, Daniel Debow, Jamie McDonald, Justin Sky, Brice Scheschuk, Josh Domingues, Daniel Eberhard, Farhan Thawar, Brian Mosoff Stablecoins backed by the Canadian dollar will make transactions faster, cheaper, and more efficient, modernizing our digital payment infrastructure. Canada is actively fighting against this technology. Meanwhile the EU and Singapore have already established a regulatory framework, and the US is actively pushing forward the GENIUS Act. Without a stablecoin framework, Canada will lose economic influence to foreign stablecoin issuers, increase reliance on USD-pegged assets and forfeit economic sovereignty. ### Goals Establish a clear framework for stablecoins in Canada under federal prudential regulation as digital payment instruments – distinct from securities. Integrate stablecoins into our financial and payment systems. ### Background and Motivation In many ways, blockchain technology is a made-in-Canada innovation. Ethereum, the world's second-largest blockchain network, was co-founded in Canada by a Canadian. Today it is the largest Canadian business venture ever built, worth over $300 billion CAD. A stablecoin is a type of digital currency designed to maintain a stable value by being backed by traditional currency, such as the Canadian dollar. Stablecoins offer two major advantages: they eliminate middlemen and enable programmable financial transactions. One in five Canadians remit money abroad today, but pay hefty fees of 6-12%. Stablecoins solve high fees, slow transactions, currency conversion costs, limited banking access, and inefficient treasury management. ### What Needs To Be Done 1. Define Stablecoins in Law 2. Amend the Retail Payment Activities Act (RPAA) 3. Establish a Single Regulator for Stablecoins (Bank of Canada) 4. Enable Stablecoin Integration into New Banking Infrastructure --- ## Making Sense of Web 3 Written June 6, 2018 - Co-authored with Josh Stark and Panashe Mahachi The internet is changing again. Over the last decade internet-based services have trended towards centralization. Today, a handful of companies control the platforms we use. "Web 3" has become a catchall term for a vision of a new, better internet. An internet where payments and money are natively digital, where "decentralized" applications compete with centralized ones, and where users have more control over their identity and data. Web 3 is about power. It's about who has control over the technologies and applications that we use every day. We can have the benefits of the internet without handing the majority of power to a minority of companies. Three trends for web 3: 1. Money will become a native feature of the internet. 2. "Decentralized" applications will offer users new capabilities. 3. Users will have more control over their digital identities and data. Where early internet startups committed to "don't be evil", web 3 companies aim higher to try and ensure that they can't be evil. Web 3 is not inevitable. Even with uncertainty, web 3 is a worthwhile vision for the future. The promise of web 3 is that at least this time, constraints on power and control are design requirements, not afterthoughts. --- ## Introducing Web3Torrent Written June 18, 2020 Web3Torrent is a browser based torrenting client that supports incentivized peer-to-peer filesharing using micropayments. The micropayments are built using state channels that run on top of the Ethereum blockchain. Users can upload files and begin seeding to earn small, incremental, amounts of money from anyone that downloads from them. We wanted to demonstrate something practical that shines a light on the features that state channels offer. Torrenting stood out because it is peer-to-peer, requires high-frequency messaging, and has an incentivization problem. Introducing a micropayment based incentivization layer would increase the quality of the peer-to-peer network and lead to greater decentralization. --- ## Counterfactual: Generalized State Channels on Ethereum Written June 12, 2018 State channels are the foundational technology for useable distributed applications. They can be used in any interaction with a defined set of participants, such as payments or games like chess or poker. "Channelizing" these applications makes them radically cheaper, and reduces latency, enabling web-like response times. Our state channels minimize on-chain requirements to an extreme: a sufficiently powerful multisignature wallet is the only necessary on-chain component of any individual state channel. We achieve this using "counterfactual instantiation" — instantiating a contract without actually deploying it on-chain. When a contract is counterfactually instantiated, all parties in the channel act as though it has been deployed, even though it has not. Our channel design lets developers take an object-oriented approach to state channels. Any individual state channel will be composed of several counterfactual objects — e.g. a payment channel object, or a chess-game channel object. Because these are counterfactually instantiated, they require no fees to be added into the channel. --- ## Generalized State Channels on Ethereum Written October 31, 2017 - Co-authored with Jeff Coleman A fundamental limitation of blockchain applications is that blockchains are expensive. The idea behind state channels is that we can make blockchains more efficient by moving many processes off-chain, while still retaining a blockchain's characteristic trustworthiness. We have started working on a generalized state channels implementation with a focus on privacy, speed, trust minimization, security, and modularity. We think this is one of the most important layers of infrastructure that needs to be built today. We will not be doing an ICO, token sale, or other kind of fundraising event involving a token. Instead, we will initially be funded by a donation from Vitalik Buterin. State channels are the basic foundation for usability in distributed applications. They reduce latency from unacceptably high levels to weblike response times that users expect. --- ## Projects Tempo (https://tempo.xyz) is a payments-first blockchain, incubated by Stripe and Paradigm. It's purpose-built for stablecoins and fintech adoption. World Chain is the first blockchain that prioritizes anonymous verified human interactions over bots and AI. It is built on top of Optimism. Optimism (https://optimism.io) is a protocol for scaling the ethereum protocol without compromising on security or decentralization. ETHGlobal (https://ethglobal.com/) is Ethereum's largest developer community. Since 2017, we have welcomed over 100,000 hackers from across the world to our online and in-person hackathons. We've supported the launch of hackathon projects that have collectively raised over $250M. L4 (https://l4.xyz) was a small team based in Toronto focused on accelerating the adoption of Web 3. We founded ETHGlobal and invested in companies like OpenSea, Celer, Ramp Network, and others. Ether Capital (http://ethcap.co/) was founded to provide public market exposure to the Ethereum ecosystem. We helped launch the first ever Bitcoin and Ether ETFs in Canada alongside Purpose. Terminal (http://terminal.io/) was founded to help companies create world-class technical teams through "Remote Operations as a Service". PiinPoint (http://piinpoint.com/) is a platform to help businesses find the best locations for expansion, powering organizations like Tim Hortons, Colliers, H&R Block, and Cushman & Wakefield. In 2014 Liam dropped out of the University of Waterloo to build PiinPoint. Hack the North (http://hackthenorth.com/) is the world's biggest collegiate hackathon. Guest speakers have included Vinod Khosla, Justin Trudeau, Sam Altman, Jack Dorsey, and Chamath Palihapitiya. State Channels (https://statechannels.org/) is a blockchain application framework that supports zero-fee state transitions on Ethereum with instant finality. We introduced the concept of generalized state channels in 2017 and built Web3Torrent in 2020.