Libra council members update: Libra secures signature from 21 members

Libra council members meeting on 14th Oct in Geneva, Switzerland was attended by all remaining 21 members. The members formally signed the charter. Additionally, the council appointed the board of directors for the Libra project. The 5 person board includes:

• Calibra cofounder David Marcus,
• Andreessen Horowitz general partner Katie Haun,
• Kiva chief strategy officer, Matthew Davie.
• PayU general counsel Patrick Ellis, and
• Xapo CEO Wences Cesares. 

Additionally, members also appointed three Bertrand Perez, Dante Disaprte, and Kurt Hemecker as executive members to Libra Association. Perez will act as an interim managing director as well as a chief operating officer while the group searches for a permanent chief executive.

At the beginning of this month, the Libra asked all council members to reaffirm their commitment to the project. Due to ongoing rumors of some association members reevaluating their position to participate in the project, Facebook‘s Libra team arranged the first council meeting on Oct 14, 2019, where the charter was to be formally signed.

Libra losing its cover as members flee the project:

What followed was Facebook’s worst nightmare. Just days before the first council meeting, members – eBay, Visa, Mastercard, PayPal, Stripe, Mercado Pago and recently Booking Holdings announced their departure from the Libra project.

It was no surprise given the policymakers around the world raised their concern over the project and firms especially payment firms wanted to avoid the regulatory spotlight on them. Irrespective of regulatory backlash on the project, getting Libra council members formally commit indicates that Facebook is pushing forward its plan to develop Libra stable coin.

Expect no more than 100 – 150 entities running Libra node

Last month, the Libra association published its milestone to mainnet launch. Starting with pre-mainnet, the team expects to start with 5 partners to host full nodes and grow to 100 nodes by mainnet launch. The project is soon planning to launch the testnet phase. It is expected that the Libra team will work with all remaining council members to set up the full node and start testing the stability and reliability of the Libra network.

As per the earlier reports, as many as 1,500 entities have indicated enthusiastic interest to participate in Facebook’s Libra initiative. The evaluation of which ones will be accepted in the council is underway but expect no more than 100-150 entities running Libra node given the limitation of BFT design used in Libra could slow down the network as the node count increases.