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The launch partners for Facebook’s Libra cryptocurrency are split.
Earlier in the week, it was reported that seven key partners were reconsidering their options. The article, published in the The New York Times also established that the 27 partners had only signed nonbinding agreements to be part of the project—with no money having changed hands. This means several of them could abandon Libra later down the line.
But some are committed to the cause.
Nathan McCauley, the CEO of Anchorage, one of Libra’s partners and a custodial infrastructure provider, told Decrypt that a number of the partners are very dedicated to the cause and have no intention of dropping out.
“I’m aware of numerous partners who are committed to the project and want to be a part of it,” said McCauley. “They have internal plans, which are pretty well fleshed out, indicating they are approaching this with quite a bit of seriousness.”
When asked what he meant by commitment, McCauley explained that he was factoring in a number of different aspects, namely: having an internal champion; dedicated, internal resources and roadmaps; executive level support and business model alignment. And that several of the partners are aligned along these levels, fully intending to support Libra going ahead.
McCauley accepted that the project is in its early days, with the partners having only signed letters of intent. He added that, “it still has plenty of legwork to do to get this from initiation stage to true reality.” But, he argued it’s on the right track.
And when it comes to Anchorage, Facebook has its full support.
“We have executive alignment. We have already dedicated engineering resources to it,” he said, adding that Anchorage has already reviewed the whitepaper and given feedback regarding the consensus mechanism of the cryptocurrency, and how Facebook’s new MOVE programming language would work.
McCauley explained that, as a custodian, Anchorage has a lot of experience integrating different crypto assets from proof-of-work coins like bitcoin, to proof-of-stake coins like tezos. From this, the team contributed advice, such as how to avoid common bugs when coding smart contracts.
But what sealed the deal for it to join Libra?
The crux of the matter for Anchorage, was whether it was really decentralized. McCauley said, “As we assessed whether we were going to be involved with it, it was clear to us and, frankly, it was clear to them, this needed to be an independent unit. We were confident from the very early stages that is something they would be pursuing.”
However, for some this wasn’t enough. A volley of criticism followed the initial announcement arguing the Libra blockchain isn’t decentralized, or even a blockchain for that matter. But for the diehards, it’s full steam ahead.