Despite the regulatory vagueness around Facebook’s yet to launch Libra token, the independent Libra Association has established a new technical steering committee to guide on the technical development of the Libra stable coin.
Per the latest announcement, the members of Libra Association have voted on five members who set to form a “technical steering committee”. Noticeably, the members of the newly formed committee include experts from several firms in fintech and blockchain space including; Diogo Monica from Anchorage, George Cabera III from Calibra, Nick Grossman from Union Square Ventures, Joe Lallouz from Bison Trails, and Ric Shreves from Mercy Corps.
However, it was stated that the new committee will spearhead the Libra network’s development – from guiding the working group in the form of research, codebase to engaging the Libra development community. More so, the formation of the new committee is a part of the project’s vision as Libra Association tends to be “decentralized, self-governing independent of any one organization’s control”.
Although Libra’s planned launch this year remained unclear, yet the new committee’s technical governance framework and other relevant documents will come forth in the first quarter of 2020. Having said that, how quickly the Libra Association will push the new committee forward is worth waiting and watching. This will be an important development to help get the project on the right track. In 2019, Facebook had to deal with multiple catalysts backing away from the project due to regulatory issues.
Besides, regulators continued throwing their skeptical comments on Facebook’s plan to enter in the global financial industry. Specifically, US lawmakers held two long debates with Calibra CEO David Marcus and Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg – however, nothing solid has ever come out. In fact, US lawmakers are majorly viewing Libra as a threat to USD. Besides US lawmakers, other countries including Switzerland are raising their eyebrows which eventually halted Libra’s development as early as this year.
With regulatory consideration, Mark Zuckerberg claimed that Facebook will not launch Libra until it cleared the skeptical views of regulators. On the other hand, the CEO of Ripple blockchain payments firm, Brad Garlinghouse stressed that Libra may not receive regulatory approval before 2023, noting that it would have been completed by now if Facebook wasn’t involved in the project.
