Facebook’s entry into the crypto race, with Libra, received a lot of flak after its whitepaper release due to its previous ties with data and privacy concerns with the U.S. government. Being aware of this, the social media giant has (so far) unsuccessfully tried to promote Libra as an independent project, as it was difficult for the crypto community to separate the two and thus question the intentions behind the project Libra.
Andreas Antonopoulos hosted a talk in Edinburgh, emphasizing on the noise the whitepaper of Libra created. It remains to be seen if FB’s entry into crypto will compel corporates such as Netflix, Google, and Amazon to join this bandwagon in an effort to increase their share of adoption.
Despite having an impressive technological vision, Facebook intended to build Libra based out of the best features from different cryptos. For example, the project included a virtual machine for execution of smart contracts and gas from Ethereum and various other foundational features of Bitcoin. However, Libra’s primary challenge is to survive the first contact with Facebook corporate, and distinguishing Libra from its parent company, according to the Bitcoin proponent, Andreas Antonopoulos. He explained that:
“Because at the moment this is an incubated project. It’s idealistic, it’s progressive, it is aggressive in its vision. It is focused on being decentralized a bit now and even more in the future. A bit permission now, permissionless in the future, proof of authority now, proof of stake in the future.”
Apart from trying to uncover Libra’s ultimate motive, experts within the space have displayed their concern about Facebook’s existing 2 billion user base and their data. As a repercussion, the regulators will have an additional and important role to play when Libra launches to prevent any form of user exploitation. While the tech impresses the community, it’s the history of Facebook that conflicts Libra’s intentions for users.
