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I'm not saying you're wrong, but can you provide a citation? Where does it concretely say that FB will not be in charge of the network when it first launches? T

by drcode 7y ago

I'm not saying you're wrong, but can you provide a citation? Where does it concretely say that FB will not be in charge of the network when it first launches? The closest I can find is the lawyerly language written here [1] that sounds, on the face of it, purposely misleading: The sentence "In these early years of the network, there are additional roles that need to be performed on behalf of the association" only makes sense if rephrased as "In these early years of the network, there are additional roles that need to be performed BY FACEBOOK on behalf of the association" [1] https://libra.org/en-US/white-paper/#the-libra-association https://libra.org/en-US/white-paper/#the-libra-association

carlosdp 7y ago
From that very page, second paragraph: "The association is governed by the Libra Association Council, which is comprised of one representative per validator node. Together, they make decisions on the governance of the network and reserve. Initially, this group consists of the Founding Members: businesses, nonprofit and multilateral organizations, and academic institutions from around the world. All decisions are brought to the council, and major policy or technical decisions require the consent of two-thirds of the votes, the same supermajority of the network required in the BFT consensus protocol." Edit: the things they are describing that "need to be done by Facebook" likely means software dev work, done in open-source (it's already open-source), cause they have a ton of well paid people already that know how to do this whereas Visa, for example, might not. They are recognizing that early on, they will be doing a lot of heavy lifting, that's all.
- drcode 7y ago
  Yes, but in the paragraph I quoted, it clearly implies that the network is already live and that some unnamed entity acting "on behalf of the association" is recruiting the founding members, so there is some time period being referenced in which the network is already live and the founding members have not yet been established. I should point out I'm not necessarily anti-libra, but I just think anyone claiming that we needn't worry because "Swiss Association" seems unreasonably sure of the situation.
  - carlosdp 7y ago
    It's live in a "test net" at the moment, so developers can build on it. The test net is hosted by Facebook, through this year. When the "main net" launches, it'll need all 28 members to run validator nodes to start it up.
    - tfha 7y ago
      Until it's fully live, Facebook can change the terms, contract, code, strategy, etc. however they want. Until they have an actually decentralized system humming away, it's all us trusting Facebook to do what they promise.
      - carlosdp 7y ago
        Until it's fully live, it's all funny money and not any sort of threat to real users. It's not like they can change things now and no one would notice before they launched and it took off?
- lammalamma25 7y ago
  If 2/3 of the members vote for something but the infrastructure is built/developed by facebook, I wonder if Facebook can simply say no. Not in the sense of publicly refusing to do it, but if something is not in their interest, they could slow it down or do it poorly so that it doesn't work. It seems the other members would have to take something like that over to get it done which is costly and may not be worth their time/money.
  - carlosdp 7y ago
    Any of the members can build their own implementation of the Libra protocol and give it to other members, or they can take Facebook's and modify it (it's already open-source on Github). Several of the members are already software shops that would gladly manage an implementation if the interests of Libra (and therefore, their own interests, cause they would only care if Libra were successful) were threatened by the Facebook implementation.
    - davidgerard 7y ago
      > it's already open-source on Github the released code appears to be rudimentary at best https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2019-06-20/facebook-s-libra-cryptocurrency-isn-t-actually-supposed-to-work https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2019-06-20/facebo...
      - carlosdp 7y ago
        It's early, but I wouldn't call it rudimentary... Cryptocurrency implementations are complicated distributed systems problems. If the code were more complete, I'd wager the author would be complaining that too much of it was developed in private. Idk, we don't need to depend on Bloomberg's opinion, we can check out the code ourselves: https://github.com/libra/libra https://github.com/libra/libra .

by drcode 7y ago

carlosdp 7y ago

From that very page, second paragraph: "The association is governed by the Libra Association Council, which is comprised of one representative per validator node. Together, they make decisions on the governance of the network and reserve. Initially, this group consists of the Founding Members: businesses, nonprofit and multilateral organizations, and academic institutions from around the world. All decisions are brought to the council, and major policy or technical decisions require the consent of two-thirds of the votes, the same supermajority of the network required in the BFT consensus protocol." Edit: the things they are describing that "need to be done by Facebook" likely means software dev work, done in open-source (it's already open-source), cause they have a ton of well paid people already that know how to do this whereas Visa, for example, might not. They are recognizing that early on, they will be doing a lot of heavy lifting, that's all.

drcode 7y ago
Yes, but in the paragraph I quoted, it clearly implies that the network is already live and that some unnamed entity acting "on behalf of the association" is recruiting the founding members, so there is some time period being referenced in which the network is already live and the founding members have not yet been established. I should point out I'm not necessarily anti-libra, but I just think anyone claiming that we needn't worry because "Swiss Association" seems unreasonably sure of the situation.
- carlosdp 7y ago
  It's live in a "test net" at the moment, so developers can build on it. The test net is hosted by Facebook, through this year. When the "main net" launches, it'll need all 28 members to run validator nodes to start it up.
  - tfha 7y ago
    Until it's fully live, Facebook can change the terms, contract, code, strategy, etc. however they want. Until they have an actually decentralized system humming away, it's all us trusting Facebook to do what they promise.
    - carlosdp 7y ago
      Until it's fully live, it's all funny money and not any sort of threat to real users. It's not like they can change things now and no one would notice before they launched and it took off?
lammalamma25 7y ago
If 2/3 of the members vote for something but the infrastructure is built/developed by facebook, I wonder if Facebook can simply say no. Not in the sense of publicly refusing to do it, but if something is not in their interest, they could slow it down or do it poorly so that it doesn't work. It seems the other members would have to take something like that over to get it done which is costly and may not be worth their time/money.
- carlosdp 7y ago
  Any of the members can build their own implementation of the Libra protocol and give it to other members, or they can take Facebook's and modify it (it's already open-source on Github). Several of the members are already software shops that would gladly manage an implementation if the interests of Libra (and therefore, their own interests, cause they would only care if Libra were successful) were threatened by the Facebook implementation.
  - davidgerard 7y ago
    > it's already open-source on Github the released code appears to be rudimentary at best https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2019-06-20/facebook-s-libra-cryptocurrency-isn-t-actually-supposed-to-work https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2019-06-20/facebo...
    - carlosdp 7y ago
      It's early, but I wouldn't call it rudimentary... Cryptocurrency implementations are complicated distributed systems problems. If the code were more complete, I'd wager the author would be complaining that too much of it was developed in private. Idk, we don't need to depend on Bloomberg's opinion, we can check out the code ourselves: https://github.com/libra/libra https://github.com/libra/libra .