Facebook’s Calibra team have published a research paper outlining a new method for Byzantine fault tolerance, or BFT, testing. Dubbed “Twins”, Claibra’s innovation comprises a lightweight method for testing a network’s BFT implementation. Calibra pioneers BFT testing strategy The paper asserts that while BFT systems “have seen extensive study for more than two decades,” the field “lack[s] a principled strategy for testing BFT implementations.” The testing method runs two instances of a node with the same identity to emulate Byzantine behavior — “including equivocation, double voting, and losing internal state.” Calibra asserts that Twins allows its operator to “systematically generate …

Leading figures in India’s crypto industry are reading positive signs from Facebook’s $5.7 billion investment in India's largest mobile operator. First reported on April 22, Facebook’s deal with Jio Platforms — the digital technology unit of billionaire Mukesh Ambani’s oil-to-retail conglomerate Reliance Industries — represents the largest-ever foreign direct investment in India’s tech sector. Facebook will take a 9.9% stake in the business, whose services include the mobile network Reliance Jio, which has drawn 388 million users to date. Last fall, Reliance Jio Infocomm had installed what Ambani claimed was ostensibly one of the world’s largest blockchain networks “with tens …

Binance Research dove into Libra's most recent whitepaper, surfacing with a lenghty report, in part claiming Facebook's proposed asset could significantly alter the payments world. "Libra’s envisioned global payment system could do to the payment industry what SpaceX did to the space industry: shake the foundations of a well-established sector with high entry barriers," the April 22 report said, adding: "The mere advantage of issuing widely-available programmable money would already initiate manifold efficiency gains." Libra's outlook after a year of regulatory pushback After releasing its initial whitepaper in June 2019, regulating bodies quickly flooded in, putting a halt on the …

Facebook’s Calibra is looking to create 50 new roles for its workforce in Ireland, as the firm seemingly bucks the trend of private-sector layoffs during the coronavirus crisis. An Irish Times report on April 20 revealed that Calibra’s small team in Dublin is set to be significantly expanded this year, with Facebook noting that its Irish operations are “critically important” for its roadmap. Calibra’s Irish expansion still depends on regulators’ cooperation Based in Ireland since 2009, Facebook employs 5,000 people in the country across its various partner firms, such as Instagram and WhatsApp. Founded in 2019, Calibra has been at …

A United States congresswoman has said that she will keep working to brand Facebook’s planned stablecoin Libra a security. Facebook and the Libra Association may well have to deal with the SEC In an April 16 announcement, Representative Sylvia Garcia (D-TX) denied that recent updates to Libra’s whitepaper had substantively changed the yet-to-be-released stablecoin’s status as a security. Garcia contends that the newly proposed version of Libra still derives value from a “basket of currencies” subject to change from the Libra Association, which hangs the value of the coin on the work of a third party i.e. a security under …

After a rocky road with the United States Securities and Exchange Commission, key decision-makers at Libra have gone back to the drawing board to re-tool their cryptocurrency platform to be more palatable to regulators. First of all, Libra has applied for a payment system license from Swiss regulator FINMA (Swiss Financial Markets Supervisory Authority). This is a huge milestone on the way to some publicly usable Libra payments system, but there is still work to be done. Libra’s licensing process will continue to require input from other central banks and financial regulatory authorities around the world. But the traction is …

Economist and academic John Vaz believes Bitcoin (BTC) still faces stiff competition from Facebook’s troubled Libra project. Vaz told Cointelegraph that Bitcoin has scaling challenges in terms of payments and was used disproportionately as a vehicle for speculation. By contrast he said Libra has been purpose-built to scale as a payments network and could quickly emerge as a major competitor despite its ongoing issues with regulators. “Libra isn’t dead,” he said,“they’re just navigating the regulatory nightmare.” However, Vaz dismissed central bank digital currencies (CBDCs), describing them as a weak “defensive posture” in response to the threat crypto assets posed to …

Dapper Labs, the team behind CryptoKitties and the Flow Blockchain, has revealed a partnership with Facebook’s Libra stablecoin project to share open-source technology. Speaking to Cointelegraph, Dapper Labs’ CTO Dieter Shirley revealed that Dapper’s Flow blockchain will adopt Libra’s Move as it’s virtual machine (VM), while Libra could utilize Dapper’s smart contract programming language Cadence in a technology-sharing partnership. Shirley stated that Flow will benefit from Move’s performance efficiency, while Libra could benefit from Cadence’s developer-friendly design. Both teams found inspiration in linear type theory Dapper Labs had been developing Cadence for roughly a year before launching the language through …

Stablecoins can pose risks to financial stability and need to be adequately regulated, according to the Group of 20. The G-20’s Financial Stability Board issued a comprehensive stablecoin study on April 14, presenting 10 recommendations to regulate them effectively. The regulators were spurred by the introduction of Facebook’s Libra, which would create an independent stablecoin based on a basket of currencies. Though Libra has since relented on this particular idea, worldwide governments continue to be vigilant over the project. The FSB report notes that existing financial rules generally apply to stablecoins as well, mirroring similar statements from United States regulators. …

The European Parliament has published a study identifying a number of legislative blind spots pertaining to crypto asset oversight in the European Union. The report identifies stablecoins, token-based fundraising, and the threat of money laundering through crypto mining among recent industry developments necessitating a regulatory response. Crypto mining identified as money laundering risk The report asserts that cryptocurrency mining may be used as a vehicle by criminal organizations to “create clean cash”: “Newly mined coins are by definition ‘clean’, so if someone (e.g., a bank) is willing to convert them into fiat currency or other crypto-assets, the resulting funds are …

Several members of the Facebook-backed Libra Project have announced their alliance with a rival stablecoin project known as Celo. Since the middle of March, members that have joined the Celo Alliance for Prosperity include, among many others, Coinbase Ventures, Anchorage Mercy Corps, Andreessen Horowitz and Bison Trails Co. The shift in interest from one project to the other may signal the ultimate demise of Libra, as several companies have departed the project. In October of last year, the Libra Association took a major hit when five of its most prominent backers — PayPal, Visa, Mastercard, Stripe and eBay — left. …

In early March, the Bank of England’s governor-designate, Andrew Bailey, said that Bitcoin has no intrinsic value. He controversially stated that any investor that holds Bitcoin should be prepared to lose all of the money. Bailey said, “If you want to buy it, fine, but understand it has no intrinsic value. It may have extrinsic value, but there is no intrinsic value.” Throughout the past several years, many high-profile investors and government officials such as billionaire Mark Cuban, Berkshire Hathaway’s Warren Buffett and United States President Donald Trump have criticized Bitcoin for its lack of real value. Argument for why …