Facebook-led Libra’s White Paper Unveiled

By Prashant Jha

If you are a crypto enthusiast with your eyes on the news, you must have seen countless headlines about Facebook’s native crypto project Libra of late. Having bagged funding from a consortium of investors including major players like Uber and Spotify, Libra seems to be enjoying its time in the sun, and generating quite a lot of hype at the same time. Finally, capitalising on the great deal of interest surrounding the project, the promoters and initiators of Libra have come out with the Libra white paper, helping us gain important insights into the company’s vision for the project.

The social media giant’s pet project was conceived to tackle a very specific issue and the introductory problem statement in the white paper clarifies that for us.

While the statement begins on a positive note, enumerating the leaps the world has taken in terms of technology adoption and economic empowerment, it soon begins to explain where problems still lie. It says:

“Despite this progress, large swaths of the world’s population are still left behind — 1.7 billion adults globally remain outside of the financial system with no access to a traditional bank, even though one billion have a mobile phone and nearly half a billion have internet access.”

The paper goes on to focus on the problems of emerging economies and unbanked communities, and details the role of blockchain and cryptocurrencies in alleviating these issues. The second section of the paper explains how Libra fits into this scheme of things, stating that:

“Now is the time to create a new kind of digital currency built on the foundation of blockchain technology. The mission for Libra is a simple global currency and financial infrastructure that empowers billions of people.”

According to the white paper, Libra will be backed by an asset reserve, governed by an independent association (Libra Association) and built on the basis of a robustly secure and scalable blockchain network.

In the subsequent sections, the white paper details the future plans regarding Libra and its underlying blockchain technology and the specifics of the people involved. Scheduled to be launched in the early part of 2020, Libra is to see its prototype rolled out for feedback generation soon.

Clearly, a lot of interesting things are in store for Facebook’s native crypto project and we, for our part, cannot wait!