I Tried Using Facebook’s Libra Blockchain. It Didn’t Work.
This premature release of the cryptocurrency code must be a sacrificial lamb offered up to regulators.
Mark Zuckerberg is giving regulators a lot of time to ponder Facebook’s Libra currency.
Photographer: Josh Edelson/AFP, via Getty Images
On Tuesday, Facebook announced its new cryptocurrency Libra with a white paper and prototype of the client software. Regulators are already tripping over themselves to regulate Libra, but the cryptocurrency isn’t even complete. Not just in need of updates. Libra is incomplete in the sense that its creators are still figuring out what to build.
Libra’s documentation is a monstrosity, a 12-page white paper accompanied by 96 pages of technical detail. The papers are far from expository. There are vague references to empowering the unbanked and transitioning from centralization to decentralization, and an unspecified shift from permissioned access to permissionless with open participation in governance. The documents not only describe a lot of functionality that hasn’t been built but also refer to major architectural features that have yet to be invented.1