Author: Zen, PANews As stablecoin settlement, cross-border payments, and enterprise-level on-chain reconciliation become new growth drivers, the focus of competition has shifted from "how fast a single chain can run" to "whether it is possible to quickly and cost-effectively assemble a chain stack adapted to specific scenarios using pluggable consensus, network, and runtime primitives." Only by achieving this can prototypes be transformed into scalable products, and one-time optimizations be distilled into a maintainable engineering system. Commonware is targeting the upstream of this supply curve—through its primitive design of "anti-framework," it breaks down the problem of "chain building" into combinable components, enabling payment, public chains, second-layer and industry-specific chains to be assembled and iterated rapidly on demand. Former Avalanche VP of Engineering launches new venture, raising $34 million in funding within a year. In late 2024, the newly established Commonware received support from well-known blockchain figures and investment institutions. Its seed round of financing was co-led by Haun Ventures (founded by former a16z partner Katie Haun) and Dragonfly Capital, raising $9 million. Other angel investors included Kevin Sekniqi, co-founder of Avalanche; Smokey the Bera, co-founder of Berachain; Zaki Manian, an early contributor to Cosmos; and Mert Mumtaz, co-founder and CEO of Helius. Investing is always about investing in people, and the reason these well-known investors and key participants in public blockchain projects are willing to contribute is largely due to Commonware's founder, Patrick O'Grady. Patrick previously served as Vice President of Engineering at Ava Labs, the company developing the Avalanche public blockchain, and spearheaded the launch of the blockchain integration standard Rosetta at Coinbase. This background has laid the foundation for Commonware's underlying technical capabilities and industry vision. Commonware founder Patrick O'Grady In early November 2025, Commonware announced that it had received strategic investment from the Tempo blockchain. Tempo is a new payment public blockchain project jointly incubated by payment giant Stripe and well-known crypto venture capital firm Paradigm, focusing on stablecoin settlement and cross-border payments. According to reports from Fortune and other media outlets, it was valued at approximately $5 billion in a previous funding round. This investment in Commonware marks Tempo's first strategic bet since its inception, and the amount is a substantial $25 million. Tempo chose Commonware for its first investment and made a significant bet, primarily because Commonware, as a "blockchain built specifically for payments," needs to achieve the ultimate in speed and scalability, and Commonware provides the key technological capabilities to achieve this goal. Commonware: Breaking down blockchain systems into "Lego bricks" As an open-source library for modular blockchain primitives, Commonware's core architecture abandons the inherent layers and limitations of traditional frameworks. Its design philosophy is to break down the blockchain system into independent modules based on functionality, allowing developers to freely combine them as needed. These primitives cover core blockchain elements such as network communication, data storage, consensus mechanisms, and execution environments. For example, Commonware's components include consensus algorithm modules, network communication modules, and runtime optimization modules. All primitives can run independently and be combined to form a customized blockchain "stack." This "modular assembly" approach has led Commonware to be called an "anti-framework." That is, it does not impose a specific architecture, nor does it make any hard-coded assumptions regarding block format, state layout, finality rules, or fee measurement methods. Therefore, developers can use it to build monolithic chain-like systems or support multi-layered, modular chain structures. The framework is no longer a limitation, but becomes a flexible set of Lego bricks. Commonware's modular architecture delivers significant flexibility and performance advantages. Firstly, because there are no fixed layers, development teams can select the optimal combination of components for specific application scenarios, thus avoiding paying for unnecessary features. This means that for applications seeking ultimate performance, unnecessary overhead can be saved, achieving higher efficiency. The Commonware team built a minimalist and high-speed testbed called "Alto" based on this library to demonstrate its performance potential. According to a report released by Commonware, Alto has optimized block time to about 200ms (a 20% reduction), finality time to about 300ms (a 20% reduction), and achieved an overall 65% reduction in CPU utilization. Furthermore, the modular design enables the Commonware library to adapt to different layers of blockchain applications—whether it's a Layer 0 data availability layer, an independent Layer 1 public chain, or a Layer 2 protocol attached to other networks, all can be built using the basic components provided by Commonware, avoiding the inherent limitations often encountered when using existing suites such as Cosmos SDK and OP Stack. Empowering the underlying infrastructure In the blockchain technology ecosystem, Commonware plays a role in empowering infrastructure. It is not a public chain directly facing end users, but rather a lower-level development tool layer that provides the basic building blocks for other chains and applications. This positioning makes it an important supplement to, and even an alternative to, traditional development frameworks, addressing many of their pain points. In the past, when developers used frameworks such as Cosmos SDK, they had to accept certain assumptions and features built into these frameworks, even if they were not suitable for their applications, and might even require a lot of effort to achieve specific needs. Commonware removes these constraints through its "anti-framework" philosophy, allowing developers to build their ideal chain from scratch based on their needs without having to circumvent framework limitations. In an article, Haun Ventures noted that many popular frameworks, due to historical baggage, struggle to support optimizations for specific applications. The emergence of Commonware modular primitives, however, effectively reduces the burden on developers regarding infrastructure, allowing them to focus their efforts on business logic and differentiated innovation. Therefore, Commonware can improve the development experience, ultimately enhancing the user experience. Development teams have greater creative freedom to experiment with innovative designs previously restricted by frameworks, leading to a richer and more diverse range of blockchain applications. For projects, this means the ability to create a competitive advantage, tailoring blockchains to their specific needs in terms of performance, security, and functionality, allowing their products to stand out from the competition. Meanwhile, Commonware's underlying technology is open source and free, making blockchain creation no longer a high-cost project that only giants can undertake. Small and medium-sized innovative teams can also use these ready-made high-performance primitives to quickly build their own dedicated blockchain prototypes, thereby accelerating the technological evolution of the entire ecosystem. The Tempo team will act as core contributors. After the above analysis, Tempo's large investment in Commonware becomes easier to understand. According to details released by both parties, Tempo will fully integrate Commonware's primitive library, including consensus, networking, and storage modules, and will become one of the core code contributors to the open-source project. With Commonware, Tempo's engineering team will not need to develop the underlying consensus or networking mechanisms from scratch; they can directly utilize readily available high-performance components, allowing them to focus on building differentiated payment functionalities and user experiences. Beyond performance considerations, Tempo's choice of Commonware also stemmed from the alignment of their philosophies. Georgios Konstantopoulos, partner at Paradigm and technical lead for the Tempo project, stated that he was initially impressed by Commonware's unique approach to implementing consensus algorithms as reusable libraries; subsequently, they continued to admire the team's progress on cutting-edge issues in distributed systems. He emphasized that this collaboration is a long-term starting point, with both parties co-creating faster, simpler, and more open infrastructure. O'Grady aptly described their division of labor: "Tempo focuses on developing new mechanisms to unlock differentiated payment experiences, while Commonware provides state-of-the-art primitives for everything else." In other words, Tempo values the modularity provided by Commonware, which fills all the gaps in Tempo's foundational technologies. Simultaneously, Tempo's participation as a core contributor in the co-construction of the Commonware open-source library means that Commonware will receive real-time data and feedback from Tempo's actual production environment, allowing it to refine and improve the reliability of its components under demanding payment scenarios. For an emerging infrastructure project, such large-scale real-world testing and financial support will undoubtedly accelerate its implementation and maturation.Author: Zen, PANews As stablecoin settlement, cross-border payments, and enterprise-level on-chain reconciliation become new growth drivers, the focus of competition has shifted from "how fast a single chain can run" to "whether it is possible to quickly and cost-effectively assemble a chain stack adapted to specific scenarios using pluggable consensus, network, and runtime primitives." Only by achieving this can prototypes be transformed into scalable products, and one-time optimizations be distilled into a maintainable engineering system. Commonware is targeting the upstream of this supply curve—through its primitive design of "anti-framework," it breaks down the problem of "chain building" into combinable components, enabling payment, public chains, second-layer and industry-specific chains to be assembled and iterated rapidly on demand. Former Avalanche VP of Engineering launches new venture, raising $34 million in funding within a year. In late 2024, the newly established Commonware received support from well-known blockchain figures and investment institutions. Its seed round of financing was co-led by Haun Ventures (founded by former a16z partner Katie Haun) and Dragonfly Capital, raising $9 million. Other angel investors included Kevin Sekniqi, co-founder of Avalanche; Smokey the Bera, co-founder of Berachain; Zaki Manian, an early contributor to Cosmos; and Mert Mumtaz, co-founder and CEO of Helius. Investing is always about investing in people, and the reason these well-known investors and key participants in public blockchain projects are willing to contribute is largely due to Commonware's founder, Patrick O'Grady. Patrick previously served as Vice President of Engineering at Ava Labs, the company developing the Avalanche public blockchain, and spearheaded the launch of the blockchain integration standard Rosetta at Coinbase. This background has laid the foundation for Commonware's underlying technical capabilities and industry vision. Commonware founder Patrick O'Grady In early November 2025, Commonware announced that it had received strategic investment from the Tempo blockchain. Tempo is a new payment public blockchain project jointly incubated by payment giant Stripe and well-known crypto venture capital firm Paradigm, focusing on stablecoin settlement and cross-border payments. According to reports from Fortune and other media outlets, it was valued at approximately $5 billion in a previous funding round. This investment in Commonware marks Tempo's first strategic bet since its inception, and the amount is a substantial $25 million. Tempo chose Commonware for its first investment and made a significant bet, primarily because Commonware, as a "blockchain built specifically for payments," needs to achieve the ultimate in speed and scalability, and Commonware provides the key technological capabilities to achieve this goal. Commonware: Breaking down blockchain systems into "Lego bricks" As an open-source library for modular blockchain primitives, Commonware's core architecture abandons the inherent layers and limitations of traditional frameworks. Its design philosophy is to break down the blockchain system into independent modules based on functionality, allowing developers to freely combine them as needed. These primitives cover core blockchain elements such as network communication, data storage, consensus mechanisms, and execution environments. For example, Commonware's components include consensus algorithm modules, network communication modules, and runtime optimization modules. All primitives can run independently and be combined to form a customized blockchain "stack." This "modular assembly" approach has led Commonware to be called an "anti-framework." That is, it does not impose a specific architecture, nor does it make any hard-coded assumptions regarding block format, state layout, finality rules, or fee measurement methods. Therefore, developers can use it to build monolithic chain-like systems or support multi-layered, modular chain structures. The framework is no longer a limitation, but becomes a flexible set of Lego bricks. Commonware's modular architecture delivers significant flexibility and performance advantages. Firstly, because there are no fixed layers, development teams can select the optimal combination of components for specific application scenarios, thus avoiding paying for unnecessary features. This means that for applications seeking ultimate performance, unnecessary overhead can be saved, achieving higher efficiency. The Commonware team built a minimalist and high-speed testbed called "Alto" based on this library to demonstrate its performance potential. According to a report released by Commonware, Alto has optimized block time to about 200ms (a 20% reduction), finality time to about 300ms (a 20% reduction), and achieved an overall 65% reduction in CPU utilization. Furthermore, the modular design enables the Commonware library to adapt to different layers of blockchain applications—whether it's a Layer 0 data availability layer, an independent Layer 1 public chain, or a Layer 2 protocol attached to other networks, all can be built using the basic components provided by Commonware, avoiding the inherent limitations often encountered when using existing suites such as Cosmos SDK and OP Stack. Empowering the underlying infrastructure In the blockchain technology ecosystem, Commonware plays a role in empowering infrastructure. It is not a public chain directly facing end users, but rather a lower-level development tool layer that provides the basic building blocks for other chains and applications. This positioning makes it an important supplement to, and even an alternative to, traditional development frameworks, addressing many of their pain points. In the past, when developers used frameworks such as Cosmos SDK, they had to accept certain assumptions and features built into these frameworks, even if they were not suitable for their applications, and might even require a lot of effort to achieve specific needs. Commonware removes these constraints through its "anti-framework" philosophy, allowing developers to build their ideal chain from scratch based on their needs without having to circumvent framework limitations. In an article, Haun Ventures noted that many popular frameworks, due to historical baggage, struggle to support optimizations for specific applications. The emergence of Commonware modular primitives, however, effectively reduces the burden on developers regarding infrastructure, allowing them to focus their efforts on business logic and differentiated innovation. Therefore, Commonware can improve the development experience, ultimately enhancing the user experience. Development teams have greater creative freedom to experiment with innovative designs previously restricted by frameworks, leading to a richer and more diverse range of blockchain applications. For projects, this means the ability to create a competitive advantage, tailoring blockchains to their specific needs in terms of performance, security, and functionality, allowing their products to stand out from the competition. Meanwhile, Commonware's underlying technology is open source and free, making blockchain creation no longer a high-cost project that only giants can undertake. Small and medium-sized innovative teams can also use these ready-made high-performance primitives to quickly build their own dedicated blockchain prototypes, thereby accelerating the technological evolution of the entire ecosystem. The Tempo team will act as core contributors. After the above analysis, Tempo's large investment in Commonware becomes easier to understand. According to details released by both parties, Tempo will fully integrate Commonware's primitive library, including consensus, networking, and storage modules, and will become one of the core code contributors to the open-source project. With Commonware, Tempo's engineering team will not need to develop the underlying consensus or networking mechanisms from scratch; they can directly utilize readily available high-performance components, allowing them to focus on building differentiated payment functionalities and user experiences. Beyond performance considerations, Tempo's choice of Commonware also stemmed from the alignment of their philosophies. Georgios Konstantopoulos, partner at Paradigm and technical lead for the Tempo project, stated that he was initially impressed by Commonware's unique approach to implementing consensus algorithms as reusable libraries; subsequently, they continued to admire the team's progress on cutting-edge issues in distributed systems. He emphasized that this collaboration is a long-term starting point, with both parties co-creating faster, simpler, and more open infrastructure. O'Grady aptly described their division of labor: "Tempo focuses on developing new mechanisms to unlock differentiated payment experiences, while Commonware provides state-of-the-art primitives for everything else." In other words, Tempo values the modularity provided by Commonware, which fills all the gaps in Tempo's foundational technologies. Simultaneously, Tempo's participation as a core contributor in the co-construction of the Commonware open-source library means that Commonware will receive real-time data and feedback from Tempo's actual production environment, allowing it to refine and improve the reliability of its components under demanding payment scenarios. For an emerging infrastructure project, such large-scale real-world testing and financial support will undoubtedly accelerate its implementation and maturation.