LIBRA WHITE PAGES
Libra White Paper
Introduction
Libra’s mission is to enable a simple global currency and financial infrastructure that empowers billions of people.
This document outlines our plans for a new decentralized blockchain, a low-volatility cryptocurrency, and a smart contract platform that together aim to create a new opportunity for responsible financial services innovation.
Problem Statement
The advent of the internet and mobile broadband has empowered billions of people globally to have access to the world's knowledge and information, high-fidelity communications, and a wide range of lower-cost, more convenient services. These services are now accessible using a $40 smartphone from almost anywhere in the world.1 This connectivity has driven economic empowerment by enabling more people to access the financial ecosystem. Working together, technology companies and financial institutions have also found solutions to help increase economic empowerment around the world. Despite this progress, large swaths of the world's population are still left behind — 1.7 billion adults globally remain outside of the financial system with no access to a traditional bank, even though one billion have a mobile phone and nearly half a billion have internet access
For too many, parts of the financial system look like telecommunication networks pre-internet. Twenty years ago, the average price to send a text message in Europe was 16 cents per message.3 Now everyone with a smartphone can communicate across the world for free with a basic data plan. Back then, telecommunications prices were high but uniform; whereas today, access to financial services is limited or restricted for those who need it most — those impacted by cost, reliability, and the ability to seamlessly send money.
All over the world, people with less money pay more for financial services. Hard-earned income is eroded by fees, from remittances and wire costs to overdraft and ATM charges. Payday loans can charge annualized interest rates of 400 percent or more, and finance charges can be as high as $30 just to borrow $100.4 When people are asked why they remain on the fringe of the existing financial system, those who remain “unbanked” point to not having sufficient funds, high and unpredictable fees, banks being too far away, and lacking the necessary documentation.5
Blockchains and cryptocurrencies have a number of unique properties that can potentially address some of the problems of accessibility and trustworthiness. These include distributed governance, which ensures that no single entity controls the network; open access, which allows anybody with an internet connection to participate; and security through cryptography, which protects the integrity of funds.
But the existing blockchain systems have yet to reach mainstream adoption. Mass-market usage of existing blockchains and cryptocurrencies has been hindered by their volatility and lack of scalability, which have, so far, made them poor stores of value and mediums of exchange. Some projects have also aimed to disrupt the existing system and bypass regulation as opposed to innovating on compliance and regulatory fronts to improve the effectiveness of anti-money laundering. We believe that collaborating and innovating with the financial sector, including regulators and experts across a variety of industries, is the only way to ensure that a sustainable, secure and trusted framework underpins this new system. And this approach can deliver a giant leap forward toward a lower-cost, more accessible, more connected global financial system.
The Opportunity
As we embark on this journey together, we think it is important to share our beliefs to align the community and ecosystem we intend to spark around this initiative:
We believe that many more people should have access to financial services and to cheap capital.
We believe that people have an inherent right to control the fruit of their legal labor.
We believe that global, open, instant, and low-cost movement of money will create immense economic opportunity and more commerce across the world.
We believe that people will increasingly trust decentralized forms of governance.
We believe that a global currency and financial infrastructure should be designed and governed as a public good.
We believe that we all have a responsibility to help advance financial inclusion, support ethical actors, and continuously uphold the integrity of the ecosystem
Introducing Libra
The world truly needs a reliable digital currency and infrastructure that together can deliver on the promise of “the internet of money.”
Securing your financial assets on your mobile device should be simple and intuitive. Moving money around globally should be as easy and cost-effective as — and even more safe and secure than — sending a text message or sharing a photo, no matter where you live, what you do, or how much you earn. New product innovation and additional entrants to the ecosystem will enable the lowering of barriers to access and cost of capital for everyone and facilitate frictionless payments for more people.
Now is the time to create 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 billions of people. Libra is made up of three parts that will work together to create a more inclusive financial system:
1. It is built on a secure, scalable, and reliable blockchain;
2. It is backed by a reserve of assets designed to give it intrinsic value;
3. It is governed by the independent Libra Association tasked with evolving the ecosystem.
The Libra currency is built on the “Libra Blockchain.” Because it is intended to address a global audience, the software that implements the Libra Blockchain is open source — designed so that anyone can build on it, and
billions of people can depend on it for their financial needs. Imagine an open, interoperable ecosystem of financial services that developers and organizations will build to help people and businesses hold and transfer Libra for everyday use. With the proliferation of smartphones and wireless data, increasingly more people will be online and able to access Libra through these new services. To enable the Libra ecosystem to achieve this vision over time, the blockchain has been built from the ground up to prioritize scalability, security, efficiency in storage and throughput, and future adaptability. Keep reading for an overview of the Libra Blockchain, or read the technical paper. See (Exhibit A)
The unit of currency is called “Libra.” Libra will need to be accepted in many places and easy to access for those who want to use it. In other words, people need to have confidence that they can use Libra and that its value will remain relatively stable over time. Unlike the majority of cryptocurrencies, Libra is fully backed by a reserve of real assets. A basket of bank deposits and short-term government securities will be held in the Libra Reserve for every Libra that is created, building trust in its intrinsic value. The Libra Reserve will be administered with the objective of preserving the value of Libra over time. Keep reading for an overview of Libra and the reserve. See (Exhibit B)
The Libra Association is an independent, not-for-profit membership organization headquartered in Geneva, Switzerland. The association’s purpose is to coordinate and provide a framework for governance for the network and reserve and lead social impact grant-making in support of financial inclusion. This white paper is a reflection of its mission, vision, and purview. The association’s membership is formed from the network of validator nodes that operate the Libra Blockchain.
Members of the Libra Association will consist of geographically distributed and diverse businesses, nonprofit and multilateral organizations, and academic institutions. The initial group of organizations that will work together on finalizing the association’s charter and become “Founding Members” upon its completion are, by industry:
Payments: Mastercard, Mercado Pago, PayPal, PayU (Naspers’ fintech arm), Stripe, Visa
Technology and marketplaces: Booking Holdings, eBay, Facebook/Calibra, Farfetch, Lyft, Spotify AB, Uber Technologies, Inc.
Telecommunications: Iliad, Vodafone Group
Blockchain: Anchorage, Bison Trails, Coinbase, Inc., Xapo Holdings Limited
Venture Capital: Andreessen Horowitz, Breakthrough Initiatives, Ribbit Capital, Thrive Capital, Union Square Ventures
Nonprofit and multilateral organizations, and academic institutions: Creative Destruction Lab, Kiva, Mercy Corps, Women’s World Banking
We hope to have approximately 100 members of the Libra Association by the target launch in the first half of 2020.
Facebook teams played a key role in the creation of the Libra Association and the Libra Blockchain, working with the other Founding Members. While final decision-making authority rests with the association, Facebook is expected to maintain 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 its behalf on top of the Libra network.
Once the Libra network launches, Facebook, and its affiliates, will have the same commitments, privileges, and financial obligations as any other Founding Member. As one member among many, Facebook’s role in governance of the association will be equal to that of its peers.
Blockchains are described as either permissioned or permissionless in relation to the ability to participate as a validator node. In a “permissioned blockchain,” access is granted to run a validator node. In a “permissionless blockchain,” anyone who meets the technical requirements can run a validator node. In that sense, Libra will start as a permissioned blockchain.
To ensure that Libra is truly open and always operates in the best interest of its users, our ambition is for the Libra network to become permissionless. The challenge is that as of today we do not believe that there is a proven solution that can deliver the scale, stability, and security needed to support billions of people and transactions across the globe through a permissionless network. One of the association’s directives will be to work with the community to research and implement this transition, which will begin within five years of the public launch of the Libra Blockchain and ecosystem.
Essential to the spirit of Libra, in both its permissioned and permissionless state, the Libra Blockchain will be open to everyone: any consumer, developer, or business can use the Libra network, build products on top of it, and add value through their services. Open access ensures low barriers to entry and innovation and encourages healthy competition that benefits consumers. This is foundational to the goal of building more inclusive financial options for the world.
The Libra Blockchain
The goal of the Libra Blockchain is to serve as a solid foundation for financial services, including a new global currency, which could meet the daily financial needs of billions of people. Through the process of evaluating existing options, we decided to build a new blockchain based on these three requirements:
Able to scale to billions of accounts, which requires high transaction throughput, low latency, and an efficient, high-capacity storage system.
Highly secure, to ensure safety of funds and financial data.
Flexible, so it can power the Libra ecosystem’s governance as well as future innovation in financial services.
The Libra Blockchain is designed from the ground up to holistically address these requirements and build on the learnings from existing projects and research — a combination of innovative approaches and well- understood techniques. This next section will highlight three decisions regarding the Libra Blockchain:
1. Designing and using the Move programming language.
2. Using a Byzantine Fault Tolerant (BFT) consensus approach.
3. Adopting and iterating on widely adopted blockchain data structures.
“Move” is a new programming language for implementing custom transaction logic and “smart contracts” on the Libra Blockchain. Because of Libra’s goal to one day serve billions of people, Move is designed with safety and security as the highest priorities. Move takes insights from security incidents that have happened with smart contracts to date and creates a language that makes it inherently easier to write code that fulfills the author’s intent, thereby lessening the risk of unintended bugs or
security incidents. Specifically, Move is designed to prevent assets from being cloned. It enables “resource types” that constrain digital assets to the same properties as physical assets: a resource has a single owner, it can only be spent once, and the creation of new resources is restricted. The Move language also facilitates automatic proofs that transactions satisfy certain properties, such as payment transactions only changing the account balances of the payer and receiver. By prioritizing these features, Move will help keep the Libra Blockchain secure. By making the development of critical transaction code easier, Move enables the secure implementation of the Libra ecosystem’s governance policies, such as the management of the Libra currency and the network of validator nodes. Move will accelerate the evolution of the Libra Blockchain protocol and any financial innovations built on top of it. We anticipate that the ability for developers to create contracts will be opened up over time in order to support the evolution and validation of Move.
To facilitate agreement among all validator nodes on the transactions to be executed and the order in which they are executed, the Libra Blockchain adopted the BFT approach by using the LibraBFT consensus protocol. This approach builds trust in the network because BFT consensus protocols are designed to function correctly even if some validator nodes — up to one-third of the network — are compromised or fail. This class of consensus protocols also enables high transaction throughput, low latency, and a more energy-efficient approach to consensus than “proof of work” used in some other blockchains.
In order to securely store transactions, data on the Libra Blockchain is protected by Merkle trees, a data structure used by other blockchains that enables the detection of any changes to existing data. Unlike previous blockchains, which view 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 accessing the blockchain, allowing them to read any data from any point in time and verify the integrity of that data using a unified framework.
The Libra Blockchain is pseudonymous and allows users to hold one or more addresses that are not linked to their real-world identity. This approach is familiar to many users, developers, and regulators. The Libra Association will oversee the evolution of the Libra Blockchain protocol and
network, and it will continue to evaluate new techniques that enhance privacy in the blockchain while considering concerns of practicality, scalability, and regulatory impact.
For more details, read the technical paper on the Libra Blockchain. Detailed information is also available on the Move programming language (See Exhibit C) and the LibraBFT consensus protocol (see Exhibit D). We’ve open sourced an early preview of the Libra testnet, with accompanying documentation. The testnet is still under development, and APIs are subject to change. Our commitment is to work in the open with the community and hope you will read, build, and provide feedback
The Libra Currency and Reserve
We believe that the world needs a global, digitally native currency that brings together the attributes of the world’s best currencies: stability, low inflation, wide global acceptance, and fungibility. The Libra currency is designed to help with these global needs, aiming to expand how money works for more people around the world.
Libra is designed to be a stable digital cryptocurrency that will be fully backed by a reserve of real assets — the Libra Reserve — and supported by a competitive network of exchanges buying and selling Libra. That means anyone with Libra has a high degree of assurance they can convert their digital currency into local fiat currency based on an exchange rate, just like exchanging one currency for another when traveling. This approach is similar to how other currencies were introduced in the past: to help instill trust in a new currency and gain widespread adoption during its infancy, it was guaranteed that a country’s notes could be traded in for real assets, such as gold. Instead of backing Libra with gold, though, it will be backed by a 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 one Libra will not always be able to convert into the same amount of a given local currency (i.e., Libra is not a “peg” to a single currency). Rather, as the value of the underlying assets moves, the value of one Libra in any local currency may fluctuate. However, the reserve assets are being chosen to minimize volatility, so holders of Libra can trust the currency’s ability to preserve value over time.
The assets in the Libra Reserve will be held by a geographically distributed network of custodians with investment-grade credit rating to provide both security and decentralization of the assets.
The assets behind Libra are the major difference between it and many existing cryptocurrencies that lack such intrinsic value and hence have prices that fluctuate significantly based on expectations. Libra is indeed a cryptocurrency, though, and by virtue of that, it inherits several attractive properties of these new digital currencies: the ability to send money quickly, the security of cryptography, and the freedom to easily transmit funds across borders. Just as people can use their phones to message friends anywhere in the world today, with Libra, the same can be done with money — instantly, securely, and at low cost.
Interest on the reserve assets will be used to cover the costs of the system, ensure low transaction fees, pay dividends to investors who provided capital to jumpstart the ecosystem (read “The Libra Association” see Exhibit E), and support further growth and adoption. The rules for allocating interest on the reserve will be set in advance and will be overseen by the Libra Association. Users of Libra do not receive a return from the reserve.
The Libra Association
To make the mission of Libra a reality — a simple global currency and financial infrastructure that empowers billions of people — the Libra Blockchain and Libra Reserve need a governing entity that is comprised of diverse and independent members. This governing entity is the Libra Association, an independent, not-for-profit membership organization, headquartered in Geneva, Switzerland. Switzerland has a history of global neutrality and openness to blockchain technology, and the association strives to be a neutral, international institution, hence the choice to be registered there. The association is designed to facilitate the operation of the Libra Blockchain; to coordinate the agreement among its stakeholders — the network’s validator nodes — in their pursuit to promote, develop, and expand the network, and to manage the reserve.
The association is governed by the Libra Association Council, which is comprised of one representative per validator node. Together, they make decisions on the governance of the network and reserve. Initially, this group
consists of the Founding Members: businesses, nonprofit and multilateral organizations, and academic institutions from around the world. All decisions are brought to the council, and major policy or technical decisions require the consent of two-thirds of the votes, the same supermajority of the network required in the BFT consensus protocol.
Through the association, the validator nodes align on the network’s technical roadmap and development goals. In that sense, it is similar to other not-for-profit entities, often in the form of foundations, which govern open-source projects. As Libra relies on a growing distributed community of open-source contributors to further itself, the association is a necessary vehicle to establish guidance as to which protocols or specifications to develop and to 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 association is the only party able to create (mint) and destroy (burn) Libra. Coins are only minted when authorized resellers have purchased those coins from the association with fiat assets to fully back the new coins. Coins are only burned when the authorized resellers sell Libra coin to the association in exchange for the underlying assets. Since authorized resellers will always be able to sell Libra coins to the reserve at a price equal to the value of the basket, the Libra Reserve acts as a “buyer of last resort.” These activities of the association are governed and constrained by a Reserve Management Policy that can only be changed by a supermajority of the association members.
In these early years of the network, there are additional roles that need to be performed on behalf of the association: the recruitment of Founding Members to serve as validator nodes; the fundraising to jumpstart the ecosystem; the design and implementation of incentive programs to propel the adoption of Libra, including the distribution of such incentives to Founding Members; and the establishment of the association’s social impact grant-making program.
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 to financial inclusion and competition.
An important objective of the Libra Association is to move toward increasing decentralization over time. This decentralization ensures that there are low barriers to entry for both building on and using the network and improves the Libra ecosystem’s resilience over the long term. As discussed above, the association will develop a path toward permissionless governance and consensus on the Libra network. The association’s objective will be to start this transition within five years, and in so doing will gradually reduce the reliance on the Founding Members. In the same spirit, the association aspires to minimize the reliance on itself as the administrator of the Libra Reserve.
What’s next for Libra?
02 Introducing Libra
03 The Libra Blockchain
04 The Libra Currency and Reserve
05 The Libra Association
06 What’s Next for Libra?
07 How to Get Involved
08 Conclusion
Today we are publishing this document outlining our goals for Libra and launching libra.org as a home for the association and all things Libra. It will continue to be updated over the coming months. We are also open- sourcing the code for the Libra Blockchain and launching Libra’s initial testnet for developers to experiment with and build upon.
There is much left to do before the target launch in the first half of 2020.
The Libra Blockchain:
Over the coming months, the association will work with the community to gather feedback on theLibra Blockchain prototype and bring it to a production-ready state. In particular, this work will focus on ensuring the security, performance, and scalability of the protocol and implementation.
The Libra Association will construct well-documented APIs and libraries to enable users to interact with the Libra Blockchain.
The Libra Association will create a framework for the collaborative development of the technology behind the Libra Blockchain using the open-source methodology (See Exhibit F). Procedures will be created for discussing and reviewing changes to the protocol and software that support the blockchain.
The association will perform extensive testing of the blockchain, which range from tests of the protocol to constructing a full-scale test of the network in collaboration with entities such as wallet services and exchanges to ensure the system is working before launch.
The association will work to foster the development of the Move language and determine a path for third parties to create smart contracts once language development has stabilized — after the launch of the Libra ecosystem.
Together with the community, the association will research the technological challenges on the path to a permissionless ecosystem so that we can meet the objective to begin the transition within five years of the launch.
The Reserve:
The association will work to establish a geographically distributed and regulated group of global institutional custodians for the reserve.
The association will establish operational procedures for the reserve to interact with authorized resellers and ensure high-transparency and auditability.
The association will establish policies and procedures that establish how the association can change the composition of the reserve basket.
The Libra Association:
We will work to grow the Libra Association Council to around 100 geographically distributed and diverse members, all serving as the initial validator nodes of the Libra Blockchain.
The association will develop and adopt a comprehensive charter and set of bylaws for the association on the basis of the currently proposed governance structure.
We will recruit a Managing Director for the association and work with her/him to continue hiring for the association’s executive team.
We will identify social impact partners aligned with our joint mission and will work with them to establish a Social Impact Advisory Board and a social impact program
How to get involved
The association envisions a vibrant ecosystem of developers building apps and services to spur the global use of Libra. The association defines success as enabling any person or business globally to have fair, affordable, and instant access to their money. For example, success will mean that a person working abroad has a fast and simple way to send money to family back home, and a college student can pay their rent as easily as they can buy a coffee.
Our journey is just beginning, and we are asking the community to help. If you believe in what Libra could do for billions of people around the world, share your perspective and join in. Your feedback is needed to make financial inclusion a reality for people everywhere.
If you are a researcher or protocol developer, an early preview of the Libra testnet is available under the Apache 2.0 Open Source License, with accompanying documentation. This is just the start of the process, and the testnet is still an early prototype under development, but you can read, build, and provide feedback right away. Since the current focus is on stabilizing the prototype, the project may initially be slower to take community contributions. However, we are committed to building a community-oriented development process and opening the platform to developers — starting with pull requests — as soon as possible.
The association will work with the global community in the coming months and continue to partner with policymakers worldwide to further the mission.
Conclusion
This is the goal for Libra: A stable currency built on a secure and stable open-source blockchain, backed by a reserve of real assets, and governed by an independent association.
Our hope is to create more access to better, cheaper, and open financial services — no matter who you are, where you live, what you do, or how much you have. We recognize that the road to delivering this will be long, arduous, and won’t be achieved in isolation — it will take coming together and forming a real movement around this pursuit. We hope you’ll join us and help turn this dream into a reality for billions of people around the world.
Exhibits
Exhibit A
The Libra Blockchain
Abstract
The Libra Blockchain is a decentralized, programmable database designed to support a low-volatility cryptocurrency that will have the ability to serve as an efficient medium of exchange for billions of people around the world. We present a proposal for the Libra protocol, which implements the Libra Blockchain and aims to create a financial infrastructure that can foster innovation, lower barriers to entry, and improve access to financial services. To validate the design of the Libra protocol, we have built an open-source prototype implementation — Libra Core — in anticipation of a global collaborative effort to advance this new ecosystem.
The Libra protocol allows a set of replicas — referred to as validators — from different authorities to jointly maintain a database of programmable resources. These resources are owned by different user accounts authenticated by public key cryptography and adhere to custom rules specified by the developers of these resources. Validators process transactions and interact with each other to reach consensus on the state of the database. Transactions are based on predefined and, in future versions, user-defined smart contracts in a new programming language called Move.
We use Move to define the core mechanisms of the blockchain, such as the currency and validator membership. These core mechanisms enable the creation of a unique governance mechanism that builds on the stability and reputation of existing institutions in the early days but transitions to a fully open system over time.
Exhibit B
The Reserve
This document contains several parts: (1) What is the purpose of the reserve? (2) How is it getting set up? (3) How do entities interact with it? And (4) How will it change over time?
What Is the Purpose of the Reserve?
Many cryptocurrencies today (e.g., Bitcoin and Ether) have no underlying assets to back them. As a result, speculation and investment have been primary use cases, as with a potential for substantial appreciation many people have acquired these coins hoping to sell them at a higher price later. As beliefs over the longterm value of these currencies and success of their networks fluctuate, so too have their prices, yielding at times massive swings in value.
To drive widespread adoption, Libra is designed to be a currency where any user will know that the value of a Libra today will be close to its value tomorrow and in the future. Just as consumers in Europe know the number of Euros it takes them to buy a coffee today will be similar to the number of Euros it will take them tomorrow, holders of Libra, too, can be confident the value of their coins today will be relatively stable across time.
The reserve is the key mechanism for achieving value preservation. By fully backing each coin with a set of stable and liquid assets (described later) and by working with a competitive group of exchanges and other liquidity providers, users can have confidence that they will be able to sell any Libra coin at or close to the value of the reserve at any time. This gives the coin intrinsic value on day one and helps protect against the speculative swings of other cryptocurrencies. The mechanics of the reserve and the various actors in the system are described later in this section, but, at the outset, it is important to highlight why the reserve was created in the first place — to support stability and value preservation.
How Is the Reserve Getting Set Up?
There are several parts to this section. First, where is the money for the reserve coming from? Second, how will the reserve be invested? Third,
where is it being held? And fourth, what are the actual assets backing each Libra coin?
Where is the money for the reserve coming from?
The money in the reserve will come from two sources: investors in the separate Investment Token, and users of Libra. The association will pay out incentives in Libra coin to Founding Members to encourage adoption by users, merchants, and developers. The funds for the coins that will be distributed as incentives will come from a private placement to investors. On the user side, for new Libra coins to be created, there must be an equivalent purchase of Libra for fiat and transfer of that fiat to the reserve. Hence, the reserve will grow as users’ demand for Libra increases. In short, on both the investor and user side, there is only one way to create more Libra — by purchasing more Libra for fiat and growing the reserve.
How will the reserve be invested?
Users of Libra do not receive a return from the reserve. The reserve will be invested in low-risk assets that will yield interest over time. The revenue from this interest will first go to support the operating expenses of the association — to fund investments in the growth and development of the ecosystem, grants to nonprofit and multilateral organizations, engineering research, etc. Once that is covered, part of the remaining returns will go to pay dividends to early investors in the Libra Investment Token for their initial contributions. Because the assets in the reserve are low risk and low yield, returns for early investors will only materialize if the network is successful and the reserve grows substantially in size.
How is the reserve being held?
The reserve will be held by a geographically distributed network of custodians with investment-grade credit rating to limit counterparty risk. Safeguarding the reserve’s assets, providing high auditability and transparency, avoiding the risks of a centralized reserve, and achieving operational efficiency are the key parameters in custody selection and design.
What are the actual assets that will be backing each Libra coin?
The actual assets will be a collection of low-volatility assets, including bank deposits and government securities in currencies from stable and reputable central banks. As the value of Libra will be effectively linked to a basket of fiat currencies, from the point of view of any specific currency, there will be fluctuations in the value of Libra. The makeup of the reserve is designed to mitigate the likelihood and severity of these fluctuations, particularly in the negative direction (i.e., even in economic crises). To that end, the above basket has been structured with capital preservation and liquidity in mind. On the capital preservation point, the association will only invest in debt from stable governments with low default probability that are unlikely to experience high inflation. In addition, the reserve has been diversified by selecting multiple governments, rather than just one, to further reduce the potential impact of such events. In terms of liquidity, the association plans to rely on short-dated securities issued by these governments that are all traded in liquid markets that regularly accommodate daily trading volume in the tens or even hundreds of billions. This allows the size of the reserve to be easily adjusted as the number of Libra in circulation expands or contracts.
How Do Entities Interact With the Reserve?
Users will not directly interface with the reserve. Rather, to support higher efficiency, there will be authorized resellers who will be the only entities authorized by the association to transact large amounts of fiat and Libra in and out of the reserve. These authorized resellers will integrate with exchanges and other institutions that buy and sell cryptocurrencies to users, and will provide these entities with liquidity for users who wish to convert from cash to Libra and back again.
The association does not set monetary policy. It mints and burns coins only in response to demand from authorized resellers. Users do not need to worry about the association introducing inflation into the system or debasing the currency. For new coins to be minted, there must be a commensurate payment of fiat by resellers into the reserve. Through interaction with authorized resellers, the association automatically mints new coins when demand increases and destroys them when the demand contracts. Because the reserve will not be actively managed, any
appreciation or depreciation in the value of the Libra will come solely as a result of FX market movements.
The association will encourage the listing of Libra on multiple regulated electronic exchanges throughout the world. These exchanges offer both web portals and mobile apps for users to buy and sell Libra. The association is also discussing ongoing relationships with principal cryptocurrency trading firms and top banking institutions as authorized resellers to allow people the opportunity to exchange their local currencies for Libra as easily as possible.
Consumer Financial Protection and Law Enforcement
Consumers of financial services and products can be vulnerable. There is a commitment to strong consumer protection in the Libra ecosystem, and the Libra Association recognizes that regulators charged with consumer protection will be keen to engage with those building services to be offered in their jurisdictions. In the early development of the Libra network, its Founding Members are committed to working with authorities to shape a regulatory environment that encourages technological innovation while maintaining high standards of consumer protection.
As with any currency or financial infrastructure, bad actors will try to exploit the Libra network. While the network is open and accessible to everyone with internet access, the network's main endpoints, in the form of exchanges and wallets, will need to follow applicable laws and regulations and collaborate with law enforcement. In addition, like many other blockchains, the ledger of transactions on the Libra Blockchain will be publicly accessible so that it is possible for third parties to do analysis to detect and penalize fraud.
How Will the Reserve Change Over Time?
The reserve will remain fully backed across time. This means that today, tomorrow, and in the future, users can have confidence that any Libra coin they hold can be sold for fiat currency at a narrow spread above or below the value of the underlying reserve, when a competitive market for exchanges is present. The association may occasionally change the composition of the basket in response to significant changes in market conditions (e.g., to respond to an economic crisis in one of the represented
regions), but the goal will always be value preservation. Further, such a change would require exceptional circumstances and a supermajority vote by the association's council.
Importantly, the size of the reserve is determined by the size of the balances that users are holding in Libra. Hence, unlike some other cryptocurrencies, supply is not restricted by outside factors. This has the important role of allowing the Libra ecosystem to grow or shrink with demand. It also discourages “runs on the bank” since the typical rationale behind a run is that a coin is only fractionally backed, so users want to get their backing out before others do. With a fully backed coin and a competitive ecosystem of exchanges, it will be possible to convert coins back to fiat at a narrow spread above or below their current value, no matter how many coins are in circulation or how many people have already sold their Libra. The market value of the reserve always supports the value of the fiat currency that users receive if they sell their Libra.
Our goal is for Libra to exist alongside existing currencies. Since Libra will be global, the association decided not to develop its own monetary policy but to inherit the policies of the central banks represented in the basket. As discussed earlier, the mechanics of interfacing with our reserve make our approach very similar to the way in which currency boards (e.g., of Hong Kong) have operated. Whereas central banks can print money at their own discretion, currency boards typically only print local currency when there are sufficient foreign exchange assets to fully back a new minting of notes and coins. Two of the major reasons for implementing such a system are stability — as the underlying assets are selected for their lower volatility — and protection from future abuse (e.g., printing of additional coins in the absence of backing).
A key objective of the project is to provide billions of people with access to a low-volatility cryptocurrency that can serve as a low-friction medium of exchange on an international basis from day one, and can support new digital-native use cases such as micropayments. The Libra Reserve plays a vital role in supporting value preservation, building trust, and protecting the resources users, merchants, and developers bring to the network. Over time, as the network moves to permissionless (see Moving Toward Permissionless Consensus), the association will explore ways to further increase the geographic distribution and resilience of the reserve to
economic shocks and to improve how it achieves stability and value preservation for its users.
Exhibit C
Move: A Language With Programmable Resources
Abstract
We present Move, a safe and flexible programming language for the Libra Blockchain. Move is an executable bytecode language used to implement custom transactions and smart contracts. The key feature of Move is the ability to define custom resource types with semantics inspired by linear logic: a resource can never be copied or implicitly discarded, only moved between program storage locations. These safety guarantees are enforced statically by Move’s type system. Despite these special protections, resources are ordinary program values — they can be stored in data structures, passed as arguments to procedures, and so on. First-class resources are a very general concept that programmers can use not only to implement safe digital assets but also to write correct business logic for wrapping assets and enforcing access control policies. The safety and expressivity of Move have enabled us to implement significant parts of the Libra protocol in Move, including Libra coin, transaction processing, and validator management.
Exhibit D
State Machine Replication in the Libra Blockchain
Abstract
This report presents LibraBFT, a robust and efficient state machine replication system designed for the Libra Blockchain. LibraBFT is based on HotStuff, a recent protocol that leverages several decades of scientific advances in Byzantine fault tolerance (BFT) and achieves the strong scalability and security properties required by internet settings. LibraBFT further refines the HotStuff protocol to introduce explicit liveness mechanisms and provides a concrete latency analysis. To drive the integration with the Libra Blockchain, this document provides specifications extracted from a fully-functional simulator. These specifications include state replication interfaces and a communication framework for data transfer and state synchronization among participants. Finally, this report provides a formal safety proof that induces criteria to detect misbehavior of BFT nodes, coupled with a simple reward and punishment mechanism.
Exhibit E
Overview: The Association & Council
The Libra Association is an independent, Swiss not-for-profit organization with the mission to empower billions of people through the creation of a simple global currency and financial infrastructure. The association membership is made up of the validator nodes of the Libra network. Initially, these are global companies, social impact partners (SIPs), and academic institutions — the Libra Association's Founding Members. Eventually, the association will include any entity that operates a validator node and holds sufficient stake in Libra.
The association's role is to coordinate among the validator nodes the efforts to develop and secure the network and to promote their joint vision of financial inclusion. The two main areas of coordination and governance are 1) technical: drive toward alignment among the validator nodes and open-source community around the network's technical roadmap; and 2) financial: manage the reserve and allocate funds to social-impact causes (more below).
In these early years of the Libra network, there are additional roles that need to be performed by the association: the recruiting of Founding Members to serve as validator nodes; the raising of funds from the members as well as other investors through the sale of Libra Investment Tokens (a token that grants rights to a share of the future interest accumulated in the Libra Reserve); the design and implementation of incentive programs, including the distribution of such incentives to Founding Members; and the distribution of dividends to Libra Investment Token investors. As the Libra network grows and matures into a fully permissionless blockchain in which anyone can serve as a node, these roles may no longer be required.
The governing body of the Libra Association is the Libra Association Council, which is comprised of a representative of each member of the association. Operating and policy decisions of the council require various voting thresholds depending on the importance of the decision.
A note on Facebook, Inc.'s role — Facebook teams played a key role in the creation of the Libra Association and the Libra Blockchain, working with the other Founding Members. While final decision-making authority rests with the association, Facebook is expected to maintain a leadership role through 2019. Facebook created Calibra, a regulated subsidiary, to ensure appropriate separation
between social and financial data and to build and operate services on its behalf on top of the Libra network. Once the Libra network launches, Facebook, and its affiliates, will have the same commitments, privileges, and financial obligations as any other Founding Member. As one member among many, Facebook's role in governance of the association will be equal to that of its peers.
The following sections outline in detail the proposed specifics of responsibilities, roles, and governance mechanisms of the Libra Association. This proposal will serve as a basis for discussion among the association's members, leading to the modification of its charter and formulation of its bylaws.
1: Goals and Principles
A: Goals
The association will strive towards:
The transition to permissionless governance and consensus node operation, lowering the barriers to entry for participation and reducing the reliance on Founding Members.
Minimizing the association's role as manager of the Libra Reserve by fully automating reserve management.
Over time, the objective is for the association's primary role to be the coordination of the open-source community to define and develop the technical roadmap of the Libra network.
B: Principles
Principles of the association's governance:
Mission:
o Create a simple global currency and financial infrastructure that empowers billions of people. To accomplish its mission, the association aspires to create tight partnerships with organizations whose goal is to promote financial inclusion and with developers and researchers who wish to contribute their talent to the development of applications and tools that will bring the vision to life.
Decision making:
o Power of validators: Validator nodes, represented in the council, have the ultimate power. The council delegates many of its executive
powers to the association's management but retains authority to override delegated decisions and keep key decisions to itself, with the most important ones requiring a greater than two-thirds supermajority.
o Proportional power: The voting powers in the council are proportional to stake (initially in the Libra Investment Token and, in the future, in Libra), which is a reflection of the level of commitment of the member (validator node) toward the network. However, voting rights are capped for any one Founding Member to avoid concentration of power.
o Open and collaborative: Decision making is transparent to the larger community and collaborative amongst members (validator nodes).
o Efficient: The association aims to make decision making as streamlined as possible and will leverage its members for the execution of its decisions to the extent possible.
Technology:
o Open source: The code and specification for the technology behind the Libra Blockchain will be open source and advanced by an open-source developer and research community.
o Development: The association will fund and foster new research and development in the space to ensure that the Libra Blockchain is being updated to best serve its mission and constituents.
C: Reserve Management
The Libra Reserve is managed by the association with the goal of value preservation.
As fiat money enters the economy, the reserve — a basket of currencies and other assets — grows, and the association mints Libra accordingly.
The association is capable of burning Libra when it serves as “buyer of last resort” in exchange for other assets in the reserve.
The activities of the association are governed and constrained by a Reserve Management Policy that can only be changed by a supermajority of the association members.
2: Libra Association Council
A: Council Membership
To be a member of the council, one needs to have financial stake in the success of the network.
Founding members:
o The initial members of the council are the Founding Members and serve as the network's initial validator node.
o To be such a node, an entity needs to make an investment of at least $10 million in the network through purchasing Libra Investment Tokens.
o Each $10 million investment entitles one vote in the council, subject to a cap (see below).
o The Libra Association Council will prevent related entities from presenting themselves as two distinct Founding Members in order to avoid the circumvention of the above measure.
o Investors who purchase the Libra Investment Tokens but initially choose not to operate a validator node and later decide to start operating one will then turn immediately into Founding Members, according to the same investment key and subject to the same voting cap described.
As the Libra ecosystem grows, membership in the council will gradually transition to reflect the relative share of Libra held in custody by, or delegated to, a validator node.
o New members will be added to the council — representing the parties who hold Libra in custody and operate validator nodes — upon the achievement of certain network growth milestones, including the adoption by the council of a technical plan for becoming permissionless.
o The pace of transition, as well as the technical and network growth milestones, will be determined by the Libra Association Council. By the fifth anniversary of the network, at least 20 percent of the voting power in the council will be allocated to node operators based on the quantity of Libra held by them, not just the quantity of investment tokens.
Irrespective of the Libra Investment Tokens and/or Libra held by it, a single Founding Member can only be represented by the greater of one vote or 1
percent of the total votes in the council. The cap does not apply to validator nodes that are not Founding Members, i.e. that join the network only through holding Libra in custody.
o This cap is designed to prevent concentration of voting power in the hands of one party. It does not limit the financial return received from the Libra Investment Tokens, which is proportional to the size of the investment.
o Founding Members who hold Libra Investment Tokens and/or Libra at a value that entitles them voting power exceeding the above cap will make the excess votes available to the Libra Association Board for delegation.
o The board, based on the recommendation of the Libra Social Impact Advisory Board (SIAB, see below), may delegate some of or all these votes to SIPs (see below) or research institutions, provided that:
They are capable and committed to operate a validator node and, hence, participate in governance but are not able to make the minimum investment of $10 million;
They meet the other eligibility criteria for a participating SIP or research institution
SIPs and research institutions are subject to the same voting cap as Founding Members; and
The aggregate voting power assigned to such SIPs and research institutions is not higher than one-third of the overall voting power in the council.
o The delegation of voting power under this scheme:
Does not entitle a participating SIP to receive dividends associated with the Libra Investment Token.
Can only be revoked by the council if a participating SIP or research institution no longer meets the validator node eligibility criteria, following the same process described below for removing Founding Members.
o Excess votes made available to the board and not delegated to SIPs or research institutions may be distributed by the board among other Founding Members equally to maintain the relative aggregate voting power of Founding Members compared to that of the other validator nodes.
The Libra protocol is expected to have a limitation on the number of active validator nodes (and thus on the number of council members) for at least several years. The number is expected to grow over time. The council will define a limit as to the number of active nodes based on testing. From time to time, the council will update this limit. If this limit is exceeded, the council member to whom the fewest votes are assigned will be removed from the council until the number of members is under the limit. Ties will be broken by removing the member who has served for the shortest continuous duration.
In order to prevent the number of inactive validator nodes in the network from growing to a level that could jeopardize the effectiveness of the consensus protocol, any member whose node has not participated in the consensus algorithm for 10 consecutive days may be automatically removed from the council by the Libra protocol. The member is free to rejoin once their node is operational.
A party entitled to be represented in the council can delegate its voting power to another party.
Members of the council are expected to assign a specific person to represent them. The representative can be replaced by the member at any time.
B: Roles & Authorities
The council will have the following roles and authorities:
o Elect and remove members of the Libra Association Board.
o Appoint and remove the association's Managing Director, and set her compensation.
o Approve the budget of the association annually.
o Delegate permissions allowing components of the Libra Association to perform their respective duties — for example, the permission to mint Libra, to mint Libra Investment Tokens, or to pay a Founding Member from the incentive pool.
o Publish recommendations on behalf of the association suggesting that Libra clients should change the rules by which they determine the Libra Blockchain ledger, commonly known as a “hard fork.” This will allow the council to propose breaking changes to the Libra protocol or resolve a situation where compromised validator nodes have resulted in many signed versions of the Libra Blockchain.
o Activate features in the Libra protocol as deployed to the validators, using the vote of the council to trigger a smart contract that implements the feature.
o Collaborate with the developers of the Libra protocol to upgrade or replace the protocol. In particular, collaborate in order to meet the requirement of transitioning to permissionless node operation.
o Remove Founding Members (relevant only to validator nodes whose participation in the network stems from holding Libra Investment Tokens):
A Founding Member that does not comply with the Founding Member eligibility criteria can be removed by a supermajority vote of the council. The recording of this vote on the Libra Blockchain will remove the member's node from the consensus algorithm.
The removal of a Founding Member results in the immediate removal from the council of the council member representing that member.
o Veto or make decisions on behalf of the Libra Association Board.
o Make changes in the Libra Association guiding principles (subject to a supermajority vote), which is comprised of:
The governance and assignment of roles within the association described in this document.
Founding Members eligibility criteria.
Incentives Distribution Policy.
Reserve Management Policy.
o The council may create committees consisting of some of its members and assign/delegate to them any of its authorities except the authority to make decisions that require a supermajority vote.
C: Council Meetings
The council will have its ordinary meetings biannually at times set by the Libra Association Board at least 25 business days in advance. The board or 10 percent of the council members can summon an extraordinary meeting of the council at least five business days in advance or call an immediate meeting/vote to address an emergency situation (e.g., an attack on the network). The council can decide to cancel or reschedule a future meeting that has already been scheduled.
The meetings of the council will be held at a place and time established in the notice of the meeting. Council meetings will allow members to participate by video conference.
D: Voting
Certain decisions listed above will require a supermajority of the council votes to support the decision. A supermajority is at least two-thirds of total votes of all council members.
All other decisions will require a regular majority of the council votes, which is one of the following:
o At least one-half of the members participating in a vote support the decision, provided that members with at least two-thirds of the total votes are represented at the meeting.
o — OR —
o At least one-half of total votes of all council members support the decision.
To the extent that it is technically feasible, the Libra protocol will enable the council's vote to directly enact on-chain actions (e.g., the addition of new Founding Members). However, votes for “real world” decisions (e.g., the compensation of the Managing Director) may be recorded on the Libra Blockchain, or they may be recorded in the minutes of the relevant council meeting with the method to be selected by the council.
3: Libra Association Board
A: Role
The Libra Association Board is designed to be an oversight body on behalf of the Libra Association Council, providing operational guidance to the association's executive team.
B: Membership
The board consists of no less than five and no more than 19 members, the exact number to be set by the council and can change over time. The members of the board are:
The Managing Director of the Libra Association.
Members of the council, elected by the council.
o The first elections will take place in the first meeting of the council.
o The term of the board members will be one year. Board members can be reelected year after year, indefinitely.
Membership of the board is automatically terminated in the case the board member is no longer a council member or a Managing Director. The council can remove a board member at any point in time by regular majority.
The board's decisions require a regular majority of the board's votes, i.e., one of the following:
o At least one-half of the votes participating in a vote support the decision, provided that board members assigned with at least two-thirds of the total votes are participating.
o — OR —
o At least one-half of total votes of all board members support the decision.
C: Responsibilities
The responsibilities of the board will be determined by the council. The council can assign/delegate to the board any of its authorities except the authority to make decisions that require a supermajority vote. The preliminary roles of the board are to:
o Preapprove the budget of the association ahead of its approval by the council.
o Propose to the council the timing of fundraising rounds through the sale of new Libra Investment Tokens or the cancellation of such sale in the case such fundraising is not necessary for the growth of the Libra ecosystem.
o Receive quarterly updates from the association's executive team on the Libra ecosystem status and progress, and define the topics to be addressed and the information to be provided in these status and progress reports.
o Veto or make decisions on behalf of the Managing Director of the association if brought to its attention.
o Set the agenda of council meetings.
o Call an emergency vote of the council.
o Approve grant/funding recommendations by the Libra Social Impact Advisory Board.
o Approve social impact partners as eligible to become nodes under delegation from Founding Members.
4: Social Impact Advisory Board
A: Role
The Libra Social Impact Advisory Board (SIAB) is designed to be an advisory body on behalf of the Libra Association Council led by social impact partners (known as SIPs), which include nonprofit and multilateral organizations, and academic institutions.
B: Membership
The advisory board consists of five to seven members. The council can change the number of advisory board members. The members of the board are:
o The Managing Director of the Libra Association.
o SIPs and academic institution representatives, elected by the council.
The first elections will take place in the first meeting of the council.
The term of the advisory board members will be one year. Advisory board members can be reelected year after year, indefinitely.
The council can remove an advisory board member at any point in time by a regular majority.
C: Responsibilities
Setting the SIAB longterm strategic agenda in line with the association's mission.
Refining the criteria for how the SIAB will recommend the allocation of grants and social-impact investments.
Building and implementing the process for grant submissions, including selecting grantees (via a peer review so advisory board institutions will still be able to receive grant funding via the SIAB, subject to compliance with conflict of interest rules).
Measuring and reporting on social impact, developing new social-impact initiatives, implementing learnings from grantees across the entire Libra ecosystem, and serving as convening party to bring other SIPs to join the association.
Grant/funding recommendations agreed upon by the SIAB will be brought for approval to the Libra Association Board.
Make recommendations to the Libra Association Board as to which SIPs are approved to serve as nodes under delegation from Founding Members.
5: The Association’s Executive Team
A: Role
The executive team of the association is responsible for the day-to-day operations of the Libra network, including:
o Facilitating the development of the Libra network.
o Operationalizing the Libra Reserve.
o Raising of funds from the Founding Members (as well as other investors) through the sale of Libra Investment Tokens to accredited investors in a private placement.
o Distributing funds back to Founding Members (in the form of incentives, rewarding members for producing growth in usage of the Libra network) and to all investors (in the form of dividends) in strict accordance with the terms and policies set in advance by the association.
The executive team is led and recruited by a Managing Director (MD).
B: Managing Director
The MD is elected by the council every three years or as soon as the person fulfilling such role leaves or is removed from her position.
o The MD will be a full-time employee of the association and a member of the Libra Association Board.
o Any member of the council can propose a candidate for the MD role.
o The MD can be reelected indefinitely.
o Elections for MD will be held in the council's first meeting, i.e., as soon as there are at least five entities signed up to become Founding Members and, hence, entitled to be represented in the council (see above).
C: Managing Director Responsibilities
The responsibilities of the MD and her executive team stem from the powers of the council and will be delegated by the council. A preliminary list includes:
o Libra network management:
Define the process for managing the Libra protocol specification source control repository, including the process for reviewing and accepting changes to the protocol.
Define the process for managing the Libra Core implementation of the Libra protocol, including the process for reviewing and accepting changes to the implementation.
Release and distribute the Libra Core software, and support nodes as needed in the installation and maintenance of the Libra Core software.
Coordinate security reviews, and put products through rigorous security testing.
Engage with development teams to foster and solicit contributions to the Libra protocol and Libra Core, and fund them if necessary.
Propose/recommend to nodes to upgrade the software they run, and coordinate the scheduling of those upgrades.
Explore permissionless blockchain technologies, and recommend to the board and council paths for transition to such technology.
Ascertain if potential members meet the Founding Member eligibility criteria, propose to the council removal of Founding Members that don't meet these criteria, and propose to the council changes in these criteria.
o Libra Reserve management:
Execute the Reserve Management Policy, including:
Oversee the process of minting and burning Libra.
Ascertain that the value of assets in the reserve meets the policy criteria.
Invest reserve assets in low-risk assets while maintaining high liquidity, per policy.
Allow third-party liquidity providers to exchange Libra for assets in the reserve, per policy.
Allocate funds generated from interest on the reserve to fund the association activities, if needed and per an approved budget, and allocate all other such funds for distribution to nodes and investors per Libra Investment Token terms, Incentives Distribution Policy, and council decisions.
Monitor the economic trajectory of the Libra ecosystem and of Libra as a currency on a continuous basis, and provide reporting to the board and council.
Propose to the council changes in the Reserve Management Policy in extreme situations, such that a change may be necessary.
o Fundraising and recruiting of Founding Members:
Reach out and solicit eligible parties to join the Libra network as investors and/or Founding Members.
Manage the sale of Libra Investment Tokens to accredited investors and Founding Members, subject to the Libra Investment Token terms and policy.
o Incentive and dividends management:
Engage with the association's reserve to use the raised capital to purchase Libra.
Oversee the distribution of incentives in the form of Libra to qualifying Founding Members per the Incentives Distribution Policy, and audit Founding Members records as needed.
If and when sufficient income has accumulated in the reserve, oversee distribution of dividends to all investors per the Libra Investment Token terms.
Allocate funds to support the association's activities, per approved budget.
Provide monthly reports to the board regarding the accumulation of investment and the distribution of dividends and incentives.
Propose to the board and council changes in the Incentives Distribution Policy.
o Budget and Administration:
Set and maintain a process and technology for council members to meet.
Propose an association budget, associated roadmap, and hiring plan to the board and the council.
D: Executive Team
The MD will be responsible for recruiting a team to fulfill the association's roles, which will likely include:
o Deputy MD/COO, serving as the MD's replacement in absence; HR and administrative team
o Chief Financial Officer — treasury and currency-exchange team, investor relations team
o Head of Product — software and Libra network management team; developer community management team
o Head of Business Development — BD team, Founding Members relations team
o Head Economist — economics team
o Head of Policy — advocacy and communications teams
o Head of Compliance and Financial Intelligence
o General Counsel — legal team
The association's members will do their best to allocate resources to support the association's executive team in the execution of their responsibilities, to keep the executive team as lean as possible.
Exhibit F
Libra Open Source
The Libra Blockchain is powered by open-source software. The first implementation of the Libra protocol — the technology behind the blockchain — is Libra Core, which is an open-source projectmanaged by the Libra Association using development practices established by the open-source community. Developing the technology behind the Libra Blockchain in this way ensures that the blockchain is accessible to everyone and that technology decisions are fair and transparent.
Open-source software is software that anyone can use, inspect, and modify. Building Libra Core on open-source software means that people can use the Libra Blockchain in new and creative ways. It means that developers can build new applications that support the blockchain and run those applications on any kind of device. It means that the public can inspect how the blockchain works, giving
everyone equal knowledge of the inner workings of the code. It also means that the community of security researchers can work together to make the blockchain more secure. The Libra Association is committed to ensuring that the Libra protocol specification and Libra Core are and always will be open source.
The invention of open-source software sparked a practice of engineers working across countries and across companies to collaborate on the development of ambitious software projects. Projects of this type build a community of developers who work together to make tough technical decisions about the evolution of the project. Because Libra is a platform that will serve many people, this type of community-focused decision making will be essential to make sure that everybody has a fair chance to contribute to the evolution of the platform.
Libra’s Engineering Principles
The technology behind the Libra Blockchain will be free for all to inspect, use, modify, and distribute, and this is understood by all.
Contributions are measured for technical merit and scrutinized for security.
Trust and transparency of decisions will help to make Libra successful.
The Libra Blockchain: Built on Open Source
After reviewing different open-source licenses, the association has chosen to open source the Libra Core under the Apache 2.0 License. The license grants the user of the software the freedom to use the software for any purpose, to distribute it, and to modify it. Individuals and organizations who contribute code, documents, or ideas to Libra Core do so in the form a Contributor License Agreement (CLA). Libra will model its CLA on the Apache CLA. By asking contributors to agree to the CLA, the community can be confident that they are free to use the software.
The Apache License and CLA have a long history in the open-source developer community. It is well understood and trusted by thousands of open-source projects from many of the world’s largest technology companies. The license provides certainty and protection for contributors, maintainers, and all other participants in the open-source ecosystem that choose to invest in technology.
The Libra Association and Technology Decisions
Technology defines the way people interact with the Libra Blockchain. Therefore, decisions about technology are important to the future of the project. The association manages the open-source repositories that hold the technology used by the Libra Blockchain. Activities of the association are ultimately governed by the Libra Association Council, comprised of representatives from organizations running validator nodes on the Libra network. Because the set of validator nodes is designed to be diverse and collectively trusted, the association is an ideal
governance body for the technology behind the Libra Blockchain. However, all developers are welcome to participate in Libra's open-source development.
The role of the association will be to:
Manage the development of the technology. While the open-source structure helps drive day-to-day technical decisions regarding both Libra Core as well as the Libra protocol, the Libra Association Council provides a framework for the governance of the project. The council serves as a check to ensure that the decisions made by the open-source community are aligned with the Libra ecosystem as a whole.
Define the open-source governance process. The open-source decision-making process will evolve as the community around the project grows.
Define how changes are proposed, discussed, and accepted. In the early stage, rapid development is expected with a transition to a more formal process as the technology matures.
Where Are We Now?
Over the past year, engineers from Facebook's Calibra team have designed a blockchain from the ground up to meet the needs of the Libra ecosystem. Facebook has consciously open sourced a prototype of Libra Core early so that the community can influence its direction. Facebook has irrevocably contributed its rights and code to the association under the terms of the Apache License and Apache Contributor License Agreement — just as any other contributor to Libra Core would. The development of Libra is now under the governance of the Libra Association.
Because Libra Core was open sourced early in its life, there remains much to build before the Libra Blockchain can be launched. Most open-source projects begin with a small set of core developers and a simple governance process, which allows the rapid development of the project in its early phases. The association is following this established practice and has asked Calibra to manage the evolution of Libra Core over the coming months.
What’s Next?
The Libra Association governs the technology behind the Libra Blockchain. The governance of the technology behind the Libra Blockchain will evolve over time. The association’s first goal is to ready Libra Core for the launch of the Libra Blockchain and to create a formal Libra protocol specification. Before this launch, it is imperative that the community has a chance to review the decisions that have been made to ensure that the best technological choices have indeed been made. Before the launch of the network, the association is committed to establishing a
fair and transparent process for accepting technical changes to the Libra Blockchain. No single company — including Facebook or Calibra — will have the ability to determine the future evolution of the blockchain. The association is committed to building a strong community that guides the development of the technology so that it can serve as a financial infrastructure for billions of people.
As the project evolves, so will the governance of the ecosystem. The association may create processes so that important technical changes go through a more formal review process. The association will collaborate with the community to find ways to strengthen its commitment to open source and open governance.