The Libra Association has reportedly established a five-member “Technical Steering Committee” in order to manage the ongoing development of the controversial Facebook-led stablecoin and digital payments project.
The five members include Diogo Monica, co-founder at Anchorage, George Cabrera III, core product lead at Calibra (the digital wallet that will support Libra), Joe Lallouz, founder and CEO at Bison Trails, Nick Grossman, partner at Union Square Ventures, and Ric Shreves, emerging technology director at Mercy Corps, a humanitarian aid organization. This, according to an official announcement made on January 16.
The newly established committee will oversee the technical roadmap and requirements for the Libra project and manage the platform’s codebase development as it prepares for mainnet (main network) launch later this year.
The five-member technical steering group will release a technical governance framework in the coming months, which will reportedly include the process through which Libra’s open-source community can suggest or recommend technical modifications to the blockchain-enabled network. The committee will aim to ensure that the codebase update process is transparent and that the proposals are evaluated in a fair and objective manner.
Facebook (and its partners) announced Libra in June of last year in order to provide modern financial services to the unbanked or underbanked, the founders had claimed. Libra aims to facilitate cross-border money transfers at affordable costs. It’s expected to be introduced by the end of 2020, however, regulatory pressure could delay Libra’s launch, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg confirmed during an interview conducted last year.
Jens Weidmann, president of Germany’s reserve bank (Bundesbank) and a governing councilor at the European Central Bank, told Handelsblatt earlier this month that much needs to be understood before central banks consider issuing a digital currency like Facebook’s Libra.
Weidman also clarified that Facebook’s Libra is not really a currency.
He remarked:
“I would be careful with the concept of currency. Facebook is planning a digital form of payment, tied to a basket of multiple currencies such as the euro and the US dollar.”