Lucas Geiger, co-founder of blockchain infrastructure startup Wireline, has announced OpenLibra — a permissionless fork of Facebook’s planned stablecoin.
Ethereum developer Lane Rettig tweeted on Oct. 8 that OpenLibra was announced by Geiger at the Ethereum developer conference Devcon 5, adding:
“Seeing #openlibra publicly announced for the first time is sending shivers down my spine. I am so excited about this initiative to ‘lock the door open’ for libra tech.”
A more trustworthy environment for Libra apps
OpenLibra’s developers have already released the first version of a permissionless Libra-based virtual machine on GitHub — dubbed MoveMint — that will run on top of the Tendermint blockchain software.
According to the project’s official website, OpenLibra aims to become “an alternative to Facebook’s Libra, that places emphasis on open governance and economic decentralization.” The site explains:
“Despite pushback from nation-states, we believe that Facebook is likely to succeed in their goal. OECD Governments will be focused on their own outcomes, and in reality have little legislative power to leverage against a transnational force such as Facebook’s Libra. For that reason we are creating OpenLibra.”
OpenLibra’s core team and contributors list includes personalities from projects such as Cosmos, Wireline, Radicle, Chainlink, Democracy Earth, BlockScience, Synestate, Vulcanize, MathShop, Web3, Singapore University, Ethereum Foundation, Spacemesh, George Mason University, Iclusion, Radicle, Hashed, Danish Red Cross and Kyokan.
As Cointelegraph reported on Oct. 8, Brad Garlinghouse, the CEO of blockchain payments network Ripple, thinks that Facebook will fail to launch its Libra digital currency before 2023.