Libra Association Forms New Technical Steering Committee

The governing body of Facebook’s stablecoin, the Libra Association, has formed a Technical Steering Committee (TSC) to coordinate the design of the Libra platform, the firm wrote in a blog post on 16 January.

According to the announcement, the association’s governing council voted to establish the committee, and elected its five members from various firms in the fintech and blockchain industries, on 16 December 2019.

The new group will have the job of overseeing the technical roadmap for the Libra network, guide codebase development and try to develop and engage the Libra development community. The association further stated that the creation of a separate committee is in line with the Libra project’s goal of being decentralized and self-governing.

The new committee is composed of Anchorage co-founder Diogo Monica, Bison Trails founder Joe Lallouz, Calibra core product lead George Cabrera III, Mercy Corps emerging technology director Ric Shreves, and Union Square Ventures partner Nick Grossman.

Even before Libra’s public debut in June 2019, Facebook’s developers had established the project’s technical underpinnings. The newly-established TSC is planning to publish its technical governance framework, and other relevant documents, before the end of March 2020.

These documents will also include the process by which the open source community can “propose technical changes to the network and a transparent process for evaluating those proposals”.

The Thursday announcement is the latest incremental update to the Libra roadmap since last October, when a number of the association’s founding members left the project. The reason behind the defection was pressure from regulators around the world. Last year, a legislation was introduced by U.S. lawmakers, which would regulate the Libra token under the securities laws.

After the introduction of this bill, the Libra Association quietly updated the token’s whitepaper, and removed the dividends payable to the early investors. This change was most likely aimed at addressing the concerns that Libra could be classified as a security.