What is Libra? - Facebook's Cryptocurrency Libra, Explained

What is Libra? - Facebook's Cryptocurrency Libra, Explained

Introducing Libra

The world really needs a reliable digital currency and infrastructure that can simultaneously deliver on the promise of an "Internet of money".

Protecting your financial assets on your mobile device should be simple and intuitive. 

Taking money in the world should be as easy and less expensive as it is - and even more secure and secure - sending a text message or sharing a photo, no matter where you live, what you do, or how much you earn Are. 

New product innovations and additional entrants into the ecosystem will be able to reduce capital access and cost barriers for all and facilitate frictionless payments for more people.

Now is the time to build a new kind of digital currency built on the foundation of Blockchain Technology. The mission for Libra is a simple global Currency and financial infrastructure that empowers millions of people. 

Libra is made up of three parts, which will work together to create a more inclusive financial system:

1. It is built on a secure, scalable and reliable blockchain;
2. It is supported by the repository of assets designed to provide internal value;
3. It is governed by the independent Libra Association that works with developing the ecosystem.

Libra currency is built on "Blockchain". Because it aims to address a global audience, the software that the Libra Blockchain implements are open source - one that can be built on anyone, and billions of people can depend on it. 

For their financial needs. Imagine an open, inter-ecosystem

Developers and organizations will build people and businesses to help Libra move and relocate for everyday use. With the proliferation of smartphones and wireless data, increasingly more people will be online and will be able to use Tula through these new services. 

For achieving this approach over time, to enable the bolt ecosystem, Blockchain has been built to improve efficiency in scalability, safety, storage and throughput from the ground, and future optimization capability. Keep reading for an overview of Blockchain.

The unit of currency is called "bent". Libra has to be accepted in many places and it will be easy to use for those who want to use it. In other words, people need to believe that they can use Libra sign and its value will remain relatively constant over time. 

Unlike most Cryptocurrency, the Tula is fully supported by the real estate reserves. A basket of bank deposits and short-term government securities will be held in Libra reserve for each Libra Reserve, which builds confidence in its internal value. 

With time the Libra Reserve will be administered with the aim of preserving the value of Libra with time. Keep reading for an overview of Libra and Reserve.

The Libra Association is an independent, non-profit membership organization headquartered in Geneva, Switzerland. The purpose of the union is to lead and coordinate social impact grant funding to control networks and support financial inclusion. 

This white paper is a reflection of its mission, vision, and scope. The membership of the association is built from a network of verifier nodes that operate the Libra blockchain.

Members of the Libra Association will be geographically distributed and combined with diverse businesses, nonprofit and multilateral organizations and educational institutions. 

The initial group of organizations that will work together to finalize the association's charter and become "founding members" upon its completion, by industry:

• Payment: MasterCard, PayPal, PayU (Naspers Fintech arm), Striped, Visa
• Technology and Markets: Booking Holdings, eBay, Facebook/Calibra, Ferfetch, Lyft, Mercado Pago, Spotify AB, Uber Technologies, Inc.
• Telecom: Iliad, Vodafone Group
• Blockchain: Anchorage, Bison Trails, Coinbase, Inc., Zapo Holdings Limited
• Venture Capital: Andreasen Horowitz, Breakthrough Initiatives, Rohit Capital, Throwing Capital, Union Square Ventures
• Non-Profit and Multilateral Organizations, and Educational Institutions: Creative Destination Labs, Keva, Mercy Corps, Women's World Banking

We expect about 100 members of the Libra Association by target launch in the first half of 2020.

Working with other founding members, Facebook teams played a key role in building the Libra Association and the Libra Blockchain. 

Although the final decision-making body rests with the association, Facebook hopes to retain a leadership role through 2019. 

Facebook created Calibra, a regulated subsidiary, to ensure separation between social and financial data and to build and operate services on top of it. Libra Network.

Once the Libra network launches, Facebook, and its affiliates, will have the same commitment, privileges, and financial obligations as any other founding member. 

As one of the many members, Facebook's role in the governance of the union would be equal to that of its peers.

Blockchain has been described as either permission or permission in relation to the ability to participate in the form of a valid node. In "Permission Blockchain", access to run a validator node is granted. 

In the "Blockchain", which meets any technical requirements, it can run a validator node. In that sense, Libra will start as a blockchain.

To ensure that Libra is truly open and always works in the best interests of its users, our ambition is to become unadapted to the Libra network. 

The challenge is that as of today we do not believe that there is a proven solution that can provide scale, stability, and security through a permissions network for billions of people and transactions worldwide. 

One of the directives of the association will be to work for the research and implementation of this transition to the community, which will begin within five years of the public launch of the Tula blockchain and ecosystem.


The spirit of Libra is essential, both in its permitted and non-permitted state, the Libra blockchain will be open to all: any consumer, developer or business can use the Libra network, building products on top of it, And can add value through their services. 

Open access ensures low barriers to entry and innovation and encourages healthy competition benefiting consumers. It is logical for the goal of building more inclusive financial options for the world.

How will Libra work?

The plan is for the Libra network to operate independently of Switzerland, but users will need a Libra 'wallet' to interact with it, and that wallet will be regulated domestically. 

Facebook is building Calibra wallet, and unlike Libra itself, Calibra will be fully owned by Facebook. It is understandable: the price for Facebook is not in the bent itself; The transaction figures are the real treasure.

This data will be generated by the Wallet app and Facebook claims that it will not transact Data with its other data without the user's consent. Calibra app will probably try to get the biggest question right now is how will regulators react? The e-Money license (which is already in Europe) can not be enough for the Calibra app. 

Given that Libra has not been shown in domestic currency, but indicates a currency basket, it is likely to be a protection from a legal perspective. It takes us back to the discussion that has been suffering from cryptocurrency over the years: Is this security or something else?

What about the central bank and regulators?

There is more. Digital bonds will be supported by a full reserve of low-risk secured assets, including government bonds. But the supply of safe assets in the world is limited. The central bank is buying Government bonds have increased scattering in various parts of the world, including the eurozone. 

if When Libra succeeds, it can develop into an important buyer of government securities, Potentially negative rates can move forward in the negative zone. Germany, Switzerland, Take node.

Over the years, the central bank is discussing cryptocurrency and central bank Digital Currency (CBDC) But with the onset of Libra, Facebook has now made this discussion very fast. 

It can be prudent and regulators may have to wait to make their point of view, or it can take the approach and recovery of the US-based Ride-Heling service, to force regulators to respond.

In any case, lawmakers and supervisors must decide very quickly what is bent, and how it should be regulated.

The Libra Blockchain

The goal of the Libra Blockchain is to serve as a solid foundation for financial services, including a new global currency that can meet the daily financial needs of billions of people. Through the process of evaluating the existing options, we decided to create a new block channel based on these three requirements:

• Enabled on a scale of billions of accounts, requiring high transaction throughput, low latency, and an Efficient, high capacity storage system.
• Highly secure to ensure the security of money and financial data.
• Flexible, so it can power the governance of the Libra ecosystem as well as future innovation in financial services.

Libra Blockken is designed from the ground so that these needs can be met and built on learning from existing projects and research - the combination of innovative approach and well-suited technique. This next section will highlight three decisions about the Libra blockchain:

1. Design and use of the move programming language.
2. Using a Byzantine defect tolerant (BFT) consensus approach.
3. Adoption and repetition of widely adopted Block Block data structures.

"Move" is a new programming language for implementing custom transaction logic and "smart contracts" on Libra transactions. The goal of one day for the people of Libra is to serve billions of people, making safety and security as top priorities. 

The Move takes insights from security incidents that have occurred with smart contracts to date and creates a language that makes it inherently easier to write code that meets the author's intent, leading to unexpected bugs or security incidents. The risk is low. In particular, the move is designed to prevent cloning. 

This enables "resource types" that force digital assets to have the same properties as physical assets: a resource has only one owner, it can only be spent once, and the creation of new resources is prohibited. 

The move language also facilitates automatic proofs that transactions satisfy certain properties, such as payment transactions only changing the account balance of the payer and receiver. By prioritizing these features, the Move Libra will help secure the blockchain. 

The move enables secure implementation of the Tula ecosystem's governance policies, such as the management of the Tula currency and the network of verifier nodes, by easing the development of critical transaction codes. The move will accelerate the development of the Libra blockchain protocol and any financial innovation built on top of it. 

We expect that the ability to create contracts for developers to support the development and validation of the move will be opened over time.

To facilitate an agreement between all validator nodes on the transactions to be executed and the order in which they are executed, Tula TulaChain adopted the BFT approach using the TulaBFT consensus protocol. 

This approach instills confidence in the network because the BFT consensus protocol is designed to function correctly, even if some validator nodes - up to a third of the network - are compromised or failed. This class of consensus protocols enables higher transaction throughput, lower latency, and a more energy-efficient approach to consensus than "proof of work" used in some other blockchains.


To securely store transactions, the data on Blockchain is preserved by Merkal trees, the data structure used by other blockchains, which enables any changes in existing data to be detected. 

Unlike the previous blockchain, which views the blockchain as a collection of blocks of transactions, the Libra blockchain is a single data structure that records the history of transactions and states over time. 

This implementation simplifies the work of applications reaching Blockchain, allowing them to verify the integrity of that data at any time by reading any data and using an integrated framework.

Libra is a blockchain pseudonym and allows users to have one or more addresses that are not associated with their real-world identities. This approach is familiar to many users, developers and regulators. 

The Libra Association will oversee the development of the Libra blockchain protocol and network, and it will continue to evaluate new technologies that increase privacy in the blockchain, considering concerns about practicality, scalability, and regulatory impact.

For more information, read the technical paper on Libra Blockchain. Detailed information is also available on the Move Programming Language and LibraBeT Consensus Protocol. We are open to the initial preview of Libertus Testament with documentation. 

TestNet is still under development, and the APIs are subject to change. Our commitment is to work in the open with the community and hope you will read, build, and respond.

The Libra Currency and Reserve

We believe that the world needs global, digitally original currency, which brings together the characteristics of the best currencies in the world: stability, low inflation, broad global acceptance, and fertility. 

The Libra currency is designed to help with these global needs, which is how money works for more people around the world.

Libra is designed as a stable digital cryptocurrency that will be fully supported by the actual property reserve - Libra Reserve - and is supported by a competitive network of exchanges buying and selling Libra. 

This means that someone with a Libra sign has a high-class assurance that they can convert their digital currency to a local fiat currency based on the exchange rate, such as exchanging one currency for another while traveling. 

This approach is similar to how in the past how other currencies were introduced: To help build confidence in new currency and to adopt widely during its initial state, it was guaranteed that someone The country's notes can be traded in real estate such as gold.

However, rather than supporting Libra with gold, it would be supported by the collection of low-volatility assets such as bank deposits and short-term government securities in currencies from stable and reputable central banks.

It is important to highlight that this means that a Libra will not always be able to convert to the same amount of a given local currency (i.e., Libra is not a "peg" for a currency). Rather, as the value of the underlying assets moves, the value of a balance in any local currency can fluctuate. 

However, reserve assets are being chosen to reduce volatility, so holders of Libra can rely on the currency's ability to preserve value over time. Assets in Tula Reserve will be provided by a geographically distributed network with investment-grade credit ratings providing both asset protection and decentralization.

The property behind the bent is a major difference between its and many existing cryptocurrencies, which lacks such internal value and therefore there are values ​​which make great fluctuations based on expectations. 

Libra is actually a cryptocurrency, however, and by this, it has inherited many of the attractive qualities of these new digital currencies: the ability to send money quickly, the security of cryptography, and the freedom to easily transmit money across borders. 

Just like today, people can use their phones to mess up their friends anywhere in the world, with Libra, in the same way, money can be done - immediately, safely, and at a lower cost.

Interest on reserve assets will be used to cover system costs, ensure lower transaction fees, pay dividends to investors who provided capital to jumpstart the ecosystem and support further development and adoption. 

The rules for allocating interest on reserves will be set in advance and will be overseen by the Libra Association. Users of Libra zodiac do not get returns from reserves.

The Libra Association

To make Libra's mission a reality - a simple global currency and financial infrastructure that empowers millions of people - Libra Blockchain and Libra Reserve require an operating unit in which diverse and independent members are involved. 

The governing body is the Libra Association, an independent, non-profit membership organization headquartered in Geneva, Switzerland. Switzerland has a history of global neutrality and openness for blockchain technology, and the union attempts to become a neutral, international entity, so the option of being registered there. 

The association is designed to facilitate the operation of the Tula blockchain; To coordinate the agreement between its stakeholders - Verifying Nodes of the Network - In order to promote, develop and expand the network and to manage the reserve, in their search

The association is run by the Libra Association Council, which includes one representative per delegate node. 

Together, they decide on the rule of network and reserve. Initially, the group consists of founding members: business, non-profit and multilateral organizations and educational institutions around the world. 

All decisions are brought to the council, and the key policy or technical decisions require the consent of two-thirds of the votes, the same supremacy of the necessary network in the BFT consensus protocol.

Through the association, the verifier aligns on the technical roadmap and development of the node network
aim. In this sense, it is similar to other nonprofits, often as foundations, that govern open-source projects. 

As the Libra relies on the growing distributed community of open-source contributors to advance itself, the Association is an essential vehicle for setting guidance, which is the protocol or specifications to develop and adopt.

The Libra Association also serves as the entity through which the Libra Reserve is managed, and hence the stability and growth of the Libra economy are achieved. 

The Sangh is the only party capable of making and destroying (mint) mint. Coins are only fired when authorized resellers have bought those coins from the Association with Fiat Assets to fully return new coins. Coins are burned only when authorized resellers sell the Libra coin to the association in exchange for the underlying property. 

Since authorized resellers will always be able to sell Libra coins in reserve at the same price as the price of the basket, the Libra Reserve acts as the "buyer of the last resort". These activities of the association are controlled and constrained by the Reserve. Management policy, which can only be changed by the supremacy of members of the Union.

In these early years of the network, there are additional roles that need to be executed on behalf of the Association: recruitment of the founding members to serve as valid nodes; 

Fundraising for jumpstart ecosystem; 

Design and implementation of incentive programs to adopt Tula, including the distribution of such incentives to founding members; 

And the Association's Social Impact Grant-making Program is established.

An additional goal of the Association is to develop and promote an open identity standard. We believe that decentralized and portable digital identity is a prerequisite for financial inclusion and competition.

An important purpose of the LibL Association is to increase decentralization over time.

This decentralization ensures that there are fewer barriers to entry for both network construction and use, and longer Tula improves the resilience of the ecosystem. 

As discussed above, the association will develop a path towards permissionless governance and consensus on the Libra network. 

The purpose of the association will be to begin this transition within five years, and in doing so will gradually reduce dependence on the founding members. In the same spirit, the association aspires to reduce its dependence as an administrator of the Tula Reserve.

What’s Next for Libra?

Today we are outlining this document as our goals for Libra and launching libra.org as a home for the association and everything. It will be updated in the coming months. We are also opening the code for the Tula blockchain and launching Tula's initial testnet to experiment and build with developers.

There is a lot to do before the launch in the first half of 2020.

• Tula Blockchain: In the coming months, the association will collect feedback on the Tula blockchain prototype in collaboration with the community and bring it into a state ready for production. In particular, the work will be focused on ensuring the security, performance, and scalability of protocols and implementations.

1. The Libra Association will create well-documented APIs and libraries to enable users to interact with the Libra blockchain.
2. The Libra Association will create a framework for the collaborative development of the technology behind the Tula blockchain using open-source methodology. Procedures will be created to discuss and review changes to protocols and software that support blockchain.
3. The association will conduct extensive testing of blockchains, ranging from tests Protocol for the full-scale construction of the network in collaboration with entities such as Wallet Services and Exchange to ensure the system is working before launch.
4. The association will work to promote language development and determine a path for third parties to create smart contracts when language development becomes stagnant - following the launch of the Tula ecosystem.

Together with the community, the association will research technical challenges along the route An unmanaged ecosystem so that we can fulfill the purpose of initiating transition within five
Year of launch.

• Reserve:

1. The Association will work to establish a geographically distributed and regulated group globally. Institutional guardian for reserve
2. The association will establish operational procedures for the reserve to negotiate with reserve resellers and ensure high transparency and audibility.
3. The Association will establish policies and procedures that establish how the Association can do Change the structure of reserve basket.

• Libra Association:

1. We will work to develop the Libra Association Council to create around 100 geographical and diverse members, all of which serve as the initial verification nodes of Block Block.
2. Development and adoption of a comprehensive charter and set biol for the association At present, cooperation on the basis of the proposed governance structure.
3. We will recruit a managing director for the association and work with him to work for the Association's executive team.
4. We will identify and work with the social impact partners that have been aligned with our joint mission. Establish a social impact advisory board and a social impact program.

How to Get Involved in Libra

The Association has implemented a vibrant ecosystem of developers creating applications and services to promote the global use of Libra. 

The Association defines success that enables any person or business globally to provide reasonable, affordable, and quick access to their money. 

For example, success would mean that a person working abroad is a quick and easy way to send the family back home, and a college student can easily pay their rent as easily as they can. Can buy coffee.

Our journey is just beginning, and we are asking the community to help. If you believe in what Libra can do for billions of people around the world, share your perspective and join it. Your response needs to create financial inclusion for people everywhere.

• If you are a researcher or protocol developer, an initial preview of Libra Testnet is available with the document, under the Apache 2.0 Open Source License. This is just the beginning of the process, and TestNet is still an initial prototype under development, but you can react quickly, build and react. Since the current focus is on stabilizing the prototype, the project may initially be slow to make a community contribution. However, we are committed to building a community-oriented development process and opening a platform for developers - as soon as possible - start with bridge requests.
• If you want to know about the Libra Association.
• If your organization is interested in becoming a founding member or applying for a social impact grant from the Libra Association.

Conclusion

This is the goal for Libra: a stable currency built on a secure and stable open-source blockchain, supported by There is a reserve of real property and is governed by an independent association.

Our hope is to make better access to better, affordable and open financial services - no matter who you are, where you live, what you do, or how much you have. 

We believe that the path to distribute it will be long, difficult, and it will not be isolated - it will come together and build a real movement around this search. 

We hope you will join us and help turn this dream into a reality for billions of people around the world.

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