
Open Libra: An open platform for financial inclusion - yosoyubik
https://www.openlibra.io/
======
sgeisler
The value in libra isn't in some novel technical concept. From what I have
seen they made some ugly trade-offs to make the whole thing scale, invented
their own not-state-of-the-art BFT algorithm and invented a new programming
language for smart contracts that looks a bit saner than the EVM stuff.

The real selling point is the partnership with major payment services, CC
companies etc. If it succeeds you might be able to pay with libra at every POS
terminal and that would be huge. If the base layer is as permissionless as
advertised that could even be used to build proxies that allow Bitcoin
payments at every POS terminal.

The second interesting idea is the monetary basket backing it. That would take
some control out of government's hands and would discourage overly reckless
money printing since people would have a damn easy way of both detecting it
(e.g. looking at the Libra/€ price) and opting out (buying Libra). If all big
fiat currencies aren't stable enough even gold or BTC could be chosen as a
backing asset.

If OpenLibra can't replicate this they have a totally worthless project, not
much different from all the other altcoins out there.

~~~
neffy
Linking to a monetary basked is another idea borrowed from economics that is
based on the less than accurate understanding there of how monetary systems
actually work.

I suspect the reason other financial companies are withdrawing is that they´ve
looked at the practical implications.

~~~
eru
> Linking to a monetary basked is another idea borrowed from economics that is
> based on the less than accurate understanding there of how monetary systems
> actually work.

What do you mean? That's essentially how index-fund ETFs work. Is there a
reason you think it's not suitable for a currency?

------
namanaggarwal
A bit off topic, in the list people are from "Singapore University". Which
Singapore university are they referring to. Singapore has several universities
none of them is named just "Singapore University"

~~~
dchest
SUTD (I googled the names, took two seconds)

~~~
namanaggarwal
Yes googling the names provide the info, my point was more on the website.
Saying just "Singapore University" could imply more prestigious university
like National University of Singapore, which is not the case here.

------
a13n
So you're going to build Libra and market it under the same name with "Open"
tacked on the front? Sounds like obvious trademark infringement. I'll bet they
get a cease and desist before the week's over.

It's like selling hamburgers and fries at OpenMcDonalds. How is that not super
confusing to the public?

------
roadbeats
Cryptocurrency community likes to label and market every fork, every iteration
of these coins as a brand new innovation and celebrate so early.

Even I have zero sympathy for Facebook, their credibility on building tech is
incomparable to this sort of opportunist movements.

------
yosoyubik
Here some pictures[1][2] at devcon5.

\- [1]
[https://twitter.com/lrettig/status/1181771915557367808](https://twitter.com/lrettig/status/1181771915557367808)

\- [2]
[https://twitter.com/santisiri/status/1181771115749728256](https://twitter.com/santisiri/status/1181771115749728256)

~~~
dotdi
The first reply to tweet #1 is

> Imagine how good this would be if Lucas hadn’t already exitscammed from his
> previous project in 2018?

Can somebody shed some light on that?

~~~
toxicFork
Another tweet below talks about ICOs
[https://twitter.com/alee/status/1181784770902016000](https://twitter.com/alee/status/1181784770902016000)

" My friends and I invested $1M in Lucas’ @wirelineio ICO in 2018

I haven’t heard from Lucas Geiger in months

Lots of false promises made by their advisor @zaoyang \- such as @JUN_Omise
would lead their marketing, @ethereumecf would be their investor "

~~~
codebolt
I've never heard of Wireline before, but looking at the above tweet and a
quick glance at their website
([https://www.wireline.io](https://www.wireline.io)) makes this whole thing
smell like a team of amateurs running a scam. Why anyone would think it would
be a good idea to dump a million USD into any ICO is beyond me.

~~~
andrewlee500
hey hey it was me :)

1\. they promised this would be ethereum community fund's first ever
investment 2\. they promised q2 2018 token release guidance 3\. they promised
jun hasegawa would mentor Lucas Geiger to lead a huge marketing campaign 4\.
they promised other investors were in the round: golem, augur, matt mullenweg,
wendell davis, david lee (refactor), dhvc, hashed, qtum and others are
investors. i never confirmed if they really were all invested, but this is
what was marketed to me

~~~
andrewlee500
since then - i simply cannot reach lucas geiger or the advisor sizhao, who was
the creator of farmville and has a ton of followers on twitter for thought
leader type posts. sizhao said he invested in wireline, but now the company
denies he ever did. he has since blocked me and doesn't respond

~~~
haasted
Pretty good demonstration of why at least SOME regulation of the ICO space is
a good idea.

~~~
andrewlee500
again i take full responsibility for the losses. i invested with the selfish
motive of making a return, for my personal benefit, and it didn't go as
planned.

however, they did falsely market the investment to me and that is something i
do feel is illegal and not okay

absolutely they're under the jurisdiction of the SEC as they took money from
US citizens

~~~
byproxy
For what it's worth, I'll take a tenth of the funding and promise to deliver
just as much.

~~~
andrewlee500
lol i don't doubt you

------
biolurker1
a open platform for financial inclusion is running successfully for a decade
now. It's OSS and you know the name already

------
1ba9115454
It's a nice marketing twist, Libra but not managed by Facebook. Not sure that
will be enough though.

Looming at the repo this is implemented in Rust, along with Libra itself. Nice
to see Rust being used on a big oroject like this.

~~~
cameronbrown
Facebook's implementation of Libra used Rust too.

~~~
StreamBright
Factually correct. not sure why this is being downvoted.

[https://github.com/libra/libra/blob/master/Cargo.toml](https://github.com/libra/libra/blob/master/Cargo.toml)

~~~
mkl
> Looming at the repo this is implemented in Rust, _along with Libra itself._

It seems to be just repeating something from the comment it's a reply to
(though it is worded unusually, so I may have misunderstood in the opposite
direction).

------
gremlinsinc
I'd rather see a state like California try to create their own crypto, make it
mandatory that brick/mortar stores accept it, and add some FDIC type
protection layer and then figure out a way to bake in guaranteed basic income.
That would be world-changing.

It would need some centralization to ensure gamers don't double dip and get 2x
benefits from the dole.

There have been a gazillion discussions on how to ensure single identity in a
coin that has basic income baked into it, and as far as I can tell nobody has
a good solution, some web of trust protocols are promising but still way early
in being useful.

I think the only way GBI will ever work though is via some sort of crypto,
waiting for the governments to enact anything will probably fail, and crypto
being electronic it drives cost down even more (no printing of checks required
- all automated).

~~~
nostrademons
The thing is that the _mechanics_ of how to implement a cryptocurrency are
changing rapidly, and the most common cryptocurrencies still have major
technological flaws, and I'd hate to see a state enshrine those flaws into
law.

Proof-of-work has a bunch of issues surrounding electricity usage, transaction
scalability, and latency. It's not acceptable for a commonly-used currency to
take 11 minutes to confirm transactions, nor is it acceptable for it to use
more electricity than Ireland to do so. There's a bunch of research on fixing
this, from various proof-of-stake systems to new consensus protocols to Nano's
precomputed proof-of-work to Iota's tangle. But none of them have the track
record that Bitcoin does, nor do we know if they're secure under concerted
attack, nor do we know whether they'll lead to eventual centralization of
power and the ability of a few actors to rewrite the ledger. I'd like to see
more experimentation in this space and some actual usage with special-purpose
applications before it gets rolled out by fiat across the world.

The other thing I'd really like to see is automated central banking. I don't
buy the "you never need a central bank; let's just have a deflationary
currency!" arguments, but at the same time central banks have a lot of
problems with measurement, fairness, and incentives. I'd love to see the whole
institution replaced by a computer that automatically maintains stable prices
by giving money to everyone to expand the money supply and sucking it out
(taxation?) to contract it, which was Milton Friedman's original idea when he
came up with monetarism. To my knowledge nobody's really building this,
though, and it requires solving some thorny problems in how exactly you
measure price levels.

~~~
gremlinsinc
that would be a pretty cool concept, but then you have to trust the banking
authority, if all money is electronic, of course if you're not a criminal and
if we don't have china-like social network in place it may be fine.

I think this could work, if all are taxed then all will feel more equal, the
system could maybe funnel a little more $$ at the lower echelons of society
than the upper's -- maybe have it simply raise networth's to some arbitrary
minimum... make sure everyone has at least 1k in the bank at all times for
instance to cover rent regardless of socio-economic factors.

We'd need to do away w/ cash though, or people could game the system by just
withdrawing it all to appear 'poor'.

------
democracy
>> the most respected blockchains technologies such as Ethereum, Cosmos,
Wireline, and Radicle / Oscoin.

The most outstanding thing about Etherium was the owner jumping the ship with
the millions of real paper dollars. Him and the light coin guy. Now that was
really impressive.

~~~
spookthesunset
Wait, I remember the lite coin guy cashing out. Did Vitalik do the same thing?

------
wyck
>>Surveillance finance. One's ability to engage financially (e.g. borrow in
Libra) will potentially be determined by their social graph and online
activity.

Say what?

------
zelly
It's called Bitcoin.

------
xorcist
How are they going to maintain the peg without the resources of
Facebook/Paypal/Visa etc.?

If they won't then it doesn't really compete with what Libra aspires to be.

------
handelaar
I fear someone not smart enough to think of "Libre Libra" instead, might not
be smart enough to get it done

------
Uptrenda
I don't recognize any of these team members as having made any substantive
contributions to major areas in blockchain security or scaling; Having raised
a lot of money in funding is not relevant experience here; Nor is building a
few side-chains and inefficiently linking them together.

Reading between the lines here: the real message seems to be that a bunch of
opportunist nobodies decided to get together to exploit Libras public image
for their own benefit. It's the same pattern I've seen done many times over
the years. "Hey, these people are really evil for being so wealthy. We of
course secretly want to be wealthy too but we're totally different to they
are." Then when you reach your goal you become the new "villain" for someone
else and the cycle repeats.

Blockchain companies love to paint themselves as the hero. Completely outside
the reach of regular politics or capitalistic desires. It's even been a
popular launch tactic for a while now. Dark wallet did it to great effect; And
every iteration of dark web market has done it since; You can even see it in
the 'us' vs 'them' mentality inherent in most "decentralized" system design.
Only, here the architects are the main influences and not the regulators...
But lets be honest here: this group shouldn't be trusted any more than a
normal, profit-seeking company. And I see no reason to believe this team could
deliver a more secure or scalable cryptocurrency than any that already exists.

Tl; dr, gimme money and prestige plz.

~~~
haasted
Interestingly, the list of team members appear to have vanished from the
homepage.

------
ilaksh
I thought we already had a ton of "open platforms for financial inclusion".
They are called "cryptocurrencies". Like Bitcoin, Ethereum, Monero, Litecoin,
etc.

------
datasolo
(XLM) Stellar is an existing alternative.

------
sneak
What problem does Libra solve? What problem does this project solve better?

~~~
hihatn
Facebook wants money, this makes them money faster than their other business.

------
pointerpointer
If you want to present yourself as an alternative for FB's libra, this is way
too cheap. Even the worst alt coins have a better website and more info.

> Our core team and community

I mean, how can anyone take this serious? The core team could easily be just 1
person in the list. And the 'community', are that some far relatives who said
"yeah good idea!"?

The website is made within an hour or so, writing the text has taken longer
for sure. This is a scam. Just some smart guys trying to launch and cash in on
an alt coin that is a made up solution for FB's libra coin.

~~~
rethab
oh come on, the repository linked to from "contribute to our codebase" has one
contributor and four commits!! ;-)

~~~
tsukurimashou
don't forget "follow our progress" -> link to twitter -> "Open Libra hasn't
twitted yet". I wonder what are all those names listed on the website.

------
spraveenitpro
No Thanks.

------
adamkas
troll? fb will sue the shit out of this project just because of the name :D

------
chipperyman573
Plot twist, releasing this was the plan all along and Facebook's failure was
just marketing.

------
Isonomix
Meditate on who you want to control our financial future or create the first
real one world currency. I sure as hell choose Zuckerberg dead last. I would
rather a Kim Jung oom ffs. I will support Open Libra and anything that goes
against Facebook

