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The last two points apply to any crypto, but the first two, Scale and Network, are plausible. Basically the tl;dr is facebook and the other "tech titan" validator nodes provide a large, existing distribution channel, and presumably they can unleash their armies of developers to make all the techie crypto stuff Just Work. A long running bitcoin criticism has been that it's been like PGP -- built on sound principles, but the usability has just been too hard. Coinbase took off because it made crypto easy to the average joe... HN people understand you should never leave your bitcoin on a centralized exchange, but the average user has difficulty understanding the idea of keys, wallets, dongles, etc. If Libra's going to succeed, it's going to be because they're going to do what Apple did to Unix: take the good parts, leave them available to the powerusers, and wrap the rest with really friendly usability. And they've already done something like this: one of the advantages of React has been the developer tooling. There's always going to be a subset of users that prefers to string a bunch of tools together themselves, but with a corporate backer, you can invest in solid developer experience. |
Network first and technology later vs. most of the industry's 'build first and get the stakeholders later' approach could be the sole differentiation in this thing flying off