Facebook doesn’t want Libra to be a Facebook project, because of the negative connotations associated with the Facebook brand. So the main goal of the blockcha

Facebook doesn’t want Libra to be a Facebook project, because of the negative connotations associated with the Facebook brand. So the main goal of the blockchain part is to have friends (the Libra association) between which the responsibility is shared. It dilutes concerns and deflects issues: the headlines won’t be “Facebook faces regulatory sanctions” but “The Libra association (Facebook, Uber, Spotify, …) faces regulatory sanctions”. Or at least that was their hope initially. The press, or the regulator, may have pushed scrutiny on Mastercard had they stayed involved, but I doubt they will assume that Spotify is responsible if something wrong happens in the Libra association. But fundamentally, the creation of consensus on transactional history merely elects a leader, and other companies’ servers only record the leader’s blockchain. Additionally, the assets backing the payment system are the real meat behind enabling this technology. And unlike traditional banking, Facebook & cie maintain control over those assets regardless of which company handles the Libra account. Banks can handle your payments because they have ownership of your deposits, but funds do leave the bank when performing a transfer (ACH, SWIFT, etc.) to another bank. In Libra, the assets remain controlled by the Libra association even when making a transfer from one Libra app to another, eg. from Novi to Spotify.