The world’s biggest social network Facebook seems to be increasing their blockchain efforts by employing new staff members from Chainspace, a startup whose work includes a smart contracts platform.

First reported by online publication Cheddar, this news of the new hires is a clear indication that Zuckerberg’s flagship company is indeed moving ahead with its blockchain plans, which was first announced in May 2018 when the company announced their plans for a new, dedicated blockchain division.

Chainspace’s researchers could very well be the perfect team to assist with Facebook’s plan to scale blockchain for a number of applications. According to the Chainspace website, the company makes use of sharding, which is the process whereby a database is broken down into smaller units, in an effort to ease the current scaling issues which are faced by many blockchain platforms.

Chainspace is based upon the whitepaper of five researchers, with four out of these five minds joining the team at Facebook as per Cheddar. A spokesperson at Facebook confirmed that the startup and their tech wasn’t fully acquired, but instead some key staff members have joined Facebooks blockchain department.

Facebook added:

“Like many other companies, Facebook is exploring ways to leverage the power of blockchain technology. This new small team is exploring many different applications. We don’t have anything further to share.”

Currently, Facebook is in the process of hiring eleven new blockchain practitioners according to their careers site. That’s an additional five original members since December. According to the job-spec, the social media giant’s blockchain team will be operating as “a startup within Facebook,” :

“Our ultimate goal is to help billions of people with access to things they don’t have now – that could be things like healthcare, equitable financial services, or new ways to save or share information.”

Currently, the Chainspace webpage lists eleven team members as well as four advisors on their team page. At the top of the landing page is a message which teases Monday’s news reading:

“We’re excited to announce that the team is moving on to something new.”

We’re pretty excited to see what the Zuckerberg empire is going to do with this new blockchain endeavour, what do you think they could be up to? Let us know your thoughts by commenting below.

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