Social encounters

Will Libra Ever Launch?

by Matt Spoke in Forbes

Of all the companies in the world that could successfully launch a cryptocurrency, Facebook would be a good bet: it’s used across the globe, it has more users than the populations of several large countries, and it has experience managing responsibilities — like personal identity — normally reserved for governments.

But despite having all the elements the blockchain industry has been missing for wide scale adoption, Facebook is missing the most critical one: trust. And that may well be what will ultimately doom Facebook’s cryptocurrency, Libra, in the end — not the technology.

Facebook seemed to recognize early on in this process that it had a trust problem: in order to launch Libra, the company knew they couldn’t go it alone.

So Facebook built an arm’s length organization with other companies — the Libra Association — to serve as the central authority over the currency. Uber, Paypal, Mastercard, Stripe and other household names all joined. Presumably, Facebook hoped having these companies participating would give the cryptocurrency the patina of independence and decentralized governance.

But so far, Facebook is the only company to have formally committed or put money into Libra as far as we know.

The Libra partners are arguably doing the smart thing here — by jumping into the crypto space with a global giant, they get to hang out in the back and watch how it all goes down. Letting Facebook lead in the initial battle — including in the funding and in the engineering — and take the slings and arrows first allows these companies to sit back and watch whether this war can be won — and decide if they really want to join on the front lines. If they decide later they are all in, they’re well positioned.

But for Facebook’s Libra to actually have a shot at launching — and surviving — a couple things need to happen:

The Libra Association needs to successfully convince either current partners, or new partners, to step up and be much more integral participants in Libra than they are currently — Libra has to be viewed as something bigger than just Facebook.

To that point, the presumptive leader of Libra — David Marcus — is an employee of Calibra, a Facebook subsidiary, rather than working for the Libra Association he’s championing. He should either work for the Libra Association itself, or allow someone from that organization to hold the spotlight and speak neutrally about its intentions.

The group needs to better represent the diversity of the global reach Libra could have. This project can’t just be a bunch of California tech bros in hoodies trying to determine policies for people thousands of miles away — both geographically and philosophically.

If Facebook remains the primary leader and force, it will become, to use blockchain lingo, the central point of failure. Originally built to connect the world, today Facebook is best known for the chaos it has caused: data breaches, election interference, “fake news” and violent content. Facebook’s current reputation makes getting regulatory approval for Libra — something Facebook’s David Marcus promised would happen prior to launch — very complicated, if not impossible. We’re already starting to see some early negative results for Facebook, with yesterday’s news about France’s Finance Minister coming out against Libra and vowing to fight for the EU to block the launch the new cryptocurrency.

(This is not to say that we don’t need massive financial reform and new products in the world. We do. Too many people, many already poor, have been left further behind financially because of today’s financial system. I believe that blockchain technology is part of the solution to make this happen. And frankly, I applaud the companies who are finally jumping into the crypto space — many of us have been here for years and are thrilled to have others see the light that this really is the future.)

But it is hard to seriously believe that Facebook — a company where one person is the chairman, CEO, and controls 60 percent of the voting shares — will be successful at deploying a technology founded on the principle of decentralization. The entire idea of Libra is actually antithetical to Facebook’s culture.

So while the world needs to monitor and examine Libra, it is equally important to ask what will happen if Libra isn’t successful. Jack Dorsey, the founder and CEO of Twitter, has gone the opposite direction of Facebook and is supporting the “too decentralized to fail” Bitcoin network. Others are opting to leverage Ethereum, Aion or Ripple to name a few — rather than trying to build their own.

Time will tell who’s right. That much we can trust.

Aion continues its mini-interview series:

Jeff Disher (Lead Engineer):

Aman Alam (Developer Relations):

Marcus (Accounting & Finance):

Ayush (Aion Dev) answering questions about ABIs:

Yao Sun answering questions about the ARRT team and Unity:

• What does the ARRT team do?

• What is Unity?

• Why is Unity more favorable than other consensus methods?

• Does Unity change anything for current AION miners?

AVM interviews with Jeff Disher:

Reddit:

Weekly Community AMA — Week ending September 20 — Special Guest Jeff Tchadjeu (August):

Jeff Tchadjeu leads the team at August, a boutique digital agency that’s obsessed with blockchain, creative design and all things digital. Aside from managing the team, he also helps with project management and drives strategy/biz dev. Prior to August, Jeff held several positions in Sales, Operations and Product with mostly technology companies and has also founded a few companies.

While the August team takes on traditional web projects, a large portion of them have been in the blockchain space. This includes:

Cranberry, a loyalty program for AION miners with the plan to incentivize other stakeholders in the future. Cranberry has been launched for several months now and has awarded more than 150,000 PLAT and almost 100,000 AION to miners that make up the Aion community

Kokun, an easy way for Aion token holders to send and receive AION and AIP tokens. Kokun also makes it easier for dApp developers to sign transactions and facilitate payments in their dApps by simply copying a line of code

Aion Surf, a zero-fee Aion mining pool with a special focus on impacting visual appeal and user experience. August’s goal was to make mining more easily accessible to prospective miners as well as raise the standard of what miners should expect in terms of UX/UI.

Weekly Community AMA — Week ending September 27 — Special Guest Minh Tran (Tech & Ops Lead):

Minh Tran leads Operations and Technology for the Foundation and has been with Aion for almost a year. In his current role, his primary focus is implementing operational best practices to ensure software excellence in all of Aion’s technical outputs, including change and release management and adding structure to testing, development, and operational readiness activities. Minh has also streamlined the Foundation’s IT spend by cutting expenses by two-thirds this year and implementing checks and balances to control it going forward.

On top of his work on operations, Minh is also managing key initiatives like the Unity Consensus release. As the Unity project manager, he is responsible for overseeing all the different moving parts and work-streams and bringing them all together into one concerted effort.

Although a 20+ year industry veteran working mostly for big banks and large organizations, he has happily traded in that enterprise structure for the chaos of start-ups. Minh is also a technology co-founder and he continues to consult in application, data sciences, and infrastructure technology. When his hands aren’t on a keyboard or a whiteboard, Minh is dedicated to family, sports, food and travel of any kind.

Upcoming events:

October 7th-10th: Matt Spoke to speak at JAX London about integrating blockchain in Java applications.