Cyber Security Magazine
Technology has completely revolutionized the world, it is easier to send messages, images, and documents but it’s never been easy to transfer money.
How different world would be if we made money truly global, stable, and secure. What if we give access to everyone with equal financial opportunities and invite them to the Global economy platform.
This thought ignited the idea of launching a global cryptocurrency called Libra, it is made for the digital world and working with a mission to make money fast and accessible for everyone no matter in which part of the world they are living in.
Libra is built on Blockchain technology to make it safer and accessible for everyone without considering distance as an issue.
Join the world of Libra where money works for everyone.
Vision of Libra
To introduce a simple global currency and financial infrastructure which has the ability to emancipate billions of people.
- 31% of the world’s population is still unbanked, the people who have bank accounts are facing the problem of high transaction charges. Approximately it costs 7% to transfer money internationally.
- 85% of the global transactions happen in the form of cash, to move and store cash is a complicated thing but cash can be stolen easily. US retail businesses face $40 billion annual losses due to the theft of cash.
- For unbanked and poor charges are even higher, they pay $4 extra fees per month for cash access.
- In this situation making digital financial services accessible to everyone will have a huge impact.
- It also adds $3.7 trillion for the improvement of the economy and generates 95 million job opportunities.
- It increases people’s earning capacity by 20% and reduces poverty by 22%.
The Libra Blockchain
The Libra Blockchain is a decentralized, programmable database delineated to back a more stable cryptocurrency that will have the potential to serve as a well-organized channel of exchange for billions of people all around the world.
There is a Libra protocol to contrivance the Libra Blockchain and focuses to build a financial infrastructure that encourages innovation, nether hurdles to entry, and improves access to financial services.
To verify the Libra protocol, the Libra core is executed hoping for global integration to improve this new ecosystem.
The Libra Association
As we discussed, Facebook has recently unveiled its new cryptocurrency called Libra, it will be managed by an association called The Libra Association. Facebook has joined together with 27 other working partners like Lyft, Mastercard, Vodafone, eBay and Spotify, PayPal, Visa, Uber, Coinbase, etc. Libra aims to have 100 members in their association by 2020.
The duty of the association is to bring together the validator nodes, to make attempts for evolving and safeguard the network and to promote their joint view of financial inclusion.
The two significant fields of governance and coordination are:
- Technical – To work for the improvement of the open-source community around the network’s technical roadmap and validator nodes.
- Financial – To maintain the reserve and generate funds for social development.
The main ambition of this association is to develop the financial situation of unbanked people all over the world.
The association looks after the Libra reserve focusing on value conservation as its main goal. The association mints Libra as per required with the growth of assets and basket of currencies.
The daily routines of the association are controlled and regulated by reserve management policy and it can be changed only by the higher majority of association members.
The investors who buy the Libra Investment Tokens but not seeking to operate the validator node and meanwhile if he returns and decides to operate the validator node will make him as a founding member instantaneously.
A well-written and safe software is important to safeguard the Libra Blockchain, in other terms, all other nodes could experience the same vulnerability. A set of proven techniques, variation and engineering disciplines will help you in improving secure and safe software.
The software can be protected by using general and proven technologies. The association has made their mind to improve the Libra core, based on the studies made on the development of the protocol.
The Libra association depends on the certified cryptography protocols. The EdDSA mark plan is used to protect the transactions. Noise is used to prevent a validator node from copying another node.
The Libra Reserve
The purpose of building a reserve is to maintain the value of Libra stable. In order to keep Libra’s value stable, the reserve is backed by stable and constant assets.
Money gets in to reserve mainly via two sources, investors in the separate Investment Token and secondly from the users of Libra.
The association will grant incentives in Libra coin to Founding Members to encourage the adoption by merchants, developers, and users. From a private placement, funds will be raised for coins and given to investors.
The purchase of Libra for fiat and transfer of fiat to reserve should be equal to generate a new Libra. This results in the growth of reserve according to the user’s demand to increase Libra. The only way to create more Libra is by purchasing more Libra for fiat and growing the reserve.
Security and Privacy
The Libra Blockchain is an assigned system that controls both ownership of Libra and the transfer of Libra from one user to another. It is an important thing that all the users of Libra should acknowledge the consistent view of the system. Otherwise, a spiteful actor might claim he was paid when he didn’t even send funds. This is called a “double spending attack”.
Blockchain helps stops these types of attacks with the help of LibraBFT, an adaptation of HotStuff Byzantine Fault Tolerant agreement protocol. Several years of research went into developing LibraBFT, the research was focused on the behavior of the computer when they work together despite a few computers have faults in their functioning.
The ability to tolerate the faults and disruptive behavior in a minority of numbers is referred to as Byzantine.
The Libra Association continuously works to prepare counter to potential attacks. For example, the association will organize a plan for discussing the abnormal situation that one-third of the validator nodes act willingly and cause a fork.
This strategy would include momentarily ceasing the processing of transactions from the Libra reserve, controlling the extent of damage from the attack, and publishing a suggestion as how to update software should be applied to fix the fork.
To get detailed information on Libra, please check the following infographic developed by Karthik at Mrbtc.org. Also, please let us know your thoughts on it.
