I have no insider knowledge, but my guess is that nobody wants to work on this project. Best to avoid any project that might get you hauled in front of the senate, which has already happened to Libra.
Libra is a zombie project. It was effectively killed as of the July 2019 House and Senate hearings; it's just taken years to stop twitching.
A pile of Libra/Diem/Novi people have left. I think it's less fear of being hauled up in front of the Senate, and just being sick of spending their lives in development hell. Even the original instigator of Libra, Morgan Beller, left in late 2020.
The last attempt to get permission to do Diem was earlier this year, when they wanted to do a US dollar stablecoin with an actual bank (Silvergate) holding the backing. But a consumer stablecoin that's meant to serve as money in society was still too much to allow, particularly from Facebook. So Novi is now scouting around for other stablecoins to use in its wallet software.
This is assuming a significant number of users of Facebook-owned apps want to use Facebook for payments, which is unclear. Messenger Pay/Facebook Pay has existed since 2015 and still has negligible volume as a percentage of the FB userbase.
Hell, dude. That's hard to imagine. Maybe it's hard for them to recruit world leading experts on crypto, but Facebook still has a ton of top talent and a ton of hungry people willing to make a name for themselves within the company.
It's supposed to be the technology of the future that everyone uses. It's not supposed to be like direct methods in crystallography, which are understood by a dozen people, of which half are over 50 years old.
This article is a bit sensational / hyperbole, Morgan Beller, who's is mentioned as instrumental also left the team a while ago and it was still moving along, albeit slowed due to external pressures
well if X10 engineers exist, and these two are them, it's like 20 engineers just left.
Or also if the project has 10 engineers, and the first is the lead who knows everything and the second one is the one who knows deeply about some real important dependency it could suck - losing 20% of your engineers on a project is bad enough, but the two most important ones comprising that 20% could derail a project.
At least COBOL in its time was a major breakthrough that resulted in immediate productivity improvements.
Crypto is more like a honeypot for the incompetent, ideologically delusional and/or pathologically greedy. (Which explains why certain FB executives are still running this doomed Libra/Diem/whatever project. They might do more harm somewhere else.)
ashtonkem|4 years ago
davidgerard|4 years ago
A pile of Libra/Diem/Novi people have left. I think it's less fear of being hauled up in front of the Senate, and just being sick of spending their lives in development hell. Even the original instigator of Libra, Morgan Beller, left in late 2020.
The last attempt to get permission to do Diem was earlier this year, when they wanted to do a US dollar stablecoin with an actual bank (Silvergate) holding the backing. But a consumer stablecoin that's meant to serve as money in society was still too much to allow, particularly from Facebook. So Novi is now scouting around for other stablecoins to use in its wallet software.
This is assuming a significant number of users of Facebook-owned apps want to use Facebook for payments, which is unclear. Messenger Pay/Facebook Pay has existed since 2015 and still has negligible volume as a percentage of the FB userbase.
asdfman123|4 years ago
nuclearnice1|4 years ago
Well, possible, I guess. It could be exciting!
programmarchy|4 years ago
bobsil1|4 years ago
HarryHirsch|4 years ago
vmception|4 years ago
rising-sky|4 years ago
random314|4 years ago
bryanrasmussen|4 years ago
Or also if the project has 10 engineers, and the first is the lead who knows everything and the second one is the one who knows deeply about some real important dependency it could suck - losing 20% of your engineers on a project is bad enough, but the two most important ones comprising that 20% could derail a project.
ffhhj|4 years ago
pavlov|4 years ago
Crypto is more like a honeypot for the incompetent, ideologically delusional and/or pathologically greedy. (Which explains why certain FB executives are still running this doomed Libra/Diem/whatever project. They might do more harm somewhere else.)
unknown|4 years ago
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