How it works
From a tangle of debts to one settlement.
Cinch is a multilateral netting clearinghouse on Tempo. When a group owes each other back and forth, it accumulates who owes whom, nets the whole tangle down to the fewest possible transfers, and settles the entire cleared circle in a single atomic transaction — all at once, or not at all.
Open a circle
Make a room and add the parties. Drop in each obligation — who owes whom, how much, and what it is for. Share the link so everyone can add theirs.
Net it out
Cinch computes everyone's net position and the minimal set of transfers that discharges every debt. A balanced loop collapses to nothing; an unbalanced one shrinks to a handful of payments.
Settle atomically
The whole cleared circle goes out as one Tempo transaction. Every leg settles or none does — so no party ever pays into a settlement that leaves someone else short.
Why netting moves so much less money
Imagine three parties: A owes B 100, B owes C 100, and C owes A 100. Paid one at a time, that is 300 moving across three transfers. But look at each party's net position: A is down 100 and up 100 — square. So is everyone. The circle cancels, and the right number of transfers is zero.
Real circles are rarely perfectly balanced, so Cinch computes each party's net position and finds the smallest set of transfers that leaves everyone square — the net debtors paying exactly their shortfall to the net creditors. For n parties the result is at most n−1 transfers, usually far fewer than the obligations you started with.
Then the whole set is submitted to Tempo as a single atomic transaction, so the moment it settles, every debt in the round is discharged at once.
The Tempo primitives it leans on
The whole cleared circle settles as one transaction — the foundation of trust-free netting.
Each leg carries the obligation references it discharges, so settlement is also reconciliation.
Fees are paid in the stablecoin being settled — no separate gas token for anyone to hold.
A circle's organiser can sponsor the clearing round, so members settle touching zero gas.
Obligations in different stablecoins net against one another inside a single settlement.
A circle can be signed now and clear itself later — scheduled netting without anyone back to press the button.
A cleared circle is final in about half a second, so settling is something you do, not wait for.