Issuing Assets: The TIP-20 Standard & TIP-403 Compliance

General-purpose token standards like ERC-20 were designed for open, permissionless ecosystems, lacking the native compliance and control mechanisms required by regulated financial institutions. Building payment applications typically means retrofitting these missing features through complex, custom smart contracts.

Tempo addresses this gap at the protocol level through its native token and policy standards. Through the native TIP-20 standard and the TIP-403 policy registry, stablecoin issuers and enterprise developers can enforce compliance rules, manage access, and streamline reconciliation directly on-chain.

The TIP-20 Token Standard

TIP-20 is an extension of the Ethereum ERC-20 standard, optimized specifically for real-world payments and institutional stablecoins. Because it is backward-compatible with the EVM ecosystem, it integrates seamlessly with existing wallets and infrastructure while introducing vital payment-focused primitives.

Key features of TIP-20 include:

• Transfer Memos: The transferWithMemo function allows users to attach 32-byte memos to transactions. This enables institutions to include reference IDs or link off-chain compliance data (like IVMS101 or SWIFT formats), helping to simplifying reconciliation and Travel Rule compliance.
• Stablecoin Gas Integration: TIP-20 USD‑denominated stablecoins can be used directly to pay network gas fees via Tempo’s built‑in Fee AMM, removing the need for users to hold a separate native utility token.
• Built-in Operational Controls: The standard natively supports operational functions to pause or unpause transfers and enforce supply controls, ensuring issuers maintain strong control over the asset lifecycle when needed.

Enforcing Compliance with TIP-403

The true power of TIP-20 for institutional issuers lies in its deep integration with TIP-403, Tempo’s native policy registry system for access control. Instead of hardcoding compliance rules into individual tokens, TIP‑403 provides a modular framework where policies are created once and enforced across multiple TIP‑20 tokens.

By leveraging TIP-403 alongside your TIP-20 token, your compliance teams can seamlessly manage:

• Role-Based Access Control (RBAC): Distribute operational responsibilities (e.g., freezing assets, updating compliance lists) securely across different teams or multi-sig wallets.
• Dynamic Allowlisting & Blocklisting: Instantly define and update which addresses are authorized to transact with the asset, helping ensure adherence to global sanctions or internal KYC requirements.
• Asset Recovery: Execute on‑chain asset recovery procedures in the event of fraud or key loss, a key requirement for traditional financial custodians.

Deploying and Managing Assets via Blockdaemon

Because TIP-20 tokens are EVM-compatible, you can deploy and interact with them using standard development tools (like Foundry, Hardhat, or ethers.js) routed through your high-availability Blockdaemon RPC endpoints.

By connecting through Blockdaemon, you benefit from enterprise‑grade Tempo infrastructure with high uptime and capacity, significantly reducing the risk of disruption or public node rate limits during high‑volume periods.