Facebook is leading a broad coalition of companies and organizations launching a new cryptocurrency, the company announced on Tuesday. The cryptocurrency, called Libra, will be backed by a basket of conventional currencies and other stable assets, preventing the wild price swings that have plagued bitcoin and most other cryptocurrencies.

The new cryptocurrency will serve as the foundation for a new payment feature for Facebook Messenger and the Facebook-owned WhatsApp. Facebook says it is creating a new subsidiary called Calibra to oversee its payment initiatives. This is partly to reassure people who are concerned about Facebook's privacy record.

"Aside from limited cases, Calibra will not share account information or financial data with Facebook or any third party without customer consent," Facebook says. "This means Calibra customers’ account information and financial data will not be used to improve ad targeting on the Facebook family of products."

Facebook is following in the footsteps of Chinese messaging app WeChat, which has included payment capabilities for a number of years. WeChat's payment feature is widely used in China—both for paying bills and for sending small payments to friends. Facebook is aiming to bring the same functionality to its own messaging products.

A new global standard?

To help make its payments platform a ubiquitous global standard, Facebook is opening up the underlying blockchain platform to a wide range of other companies or organizations. More than two dozen entities have signed on to be founding members of the Libra organization, including Visa and MasterCard, Uber and Lyft, eBay, and Spotify. Founding backers also include venture capital firms like Andreessen Horowitz and Union Square Ventures and non-profit organizations like Kiva and Mercy Corps.

Those non-profit groups reflect one of Facebook's selling points for Libra: that it's trying to create an open, global financial network that will be accessible to people in the developing world.

"Access to financial services is limited or restricted for those who need it most—those impacted by cost, reliability, and the ability to seamlessly send money," the Libra white paper argues. "All over the world, people with less money pay more for financial services."

Technically, the Libra network will be a permissioned, blockchain-like network. Each of the project's 27 members (a number Facebook hopes to expand to 100 by next year) will run a network node that processes and verifies network transactions.

The Libra Association says it aims to eventually open this up to anyone who wants to participate, but it says the technology just isn't there yet. Existing blockchain networks are way too slow for a mainstream global payment network. However, Facebook says that anyone will be free to build software on top of the Libra network.

Facebook says it won't control the Libra network once it launches. Governance decisions will be made by a vote of Libra Association members, with Facebook's vote carrying the same weight as other Libra Association members.

Facebook and the Libra Association released a lot of information on Tuesday morning, and I haven't read it all. There's a new programming language called Move that's optimized for secure smart contracts. There's an in-depth explanation of the Libra blockchain. And there's more information about how Libra's peg to conventional currencies will work. Stay tuned for a much deeper dive into Facebook's ambitious new platform in the coming days.