The Core Pledge Explained

Understanding Open Libra's Foundation

The Core Pledge

We Took Libra from Facebook
To Fulfill the Promise of Good Capital
By Producing the Best Open Asset
Which is Fiercely Independent,
Uses Modern Tools,
Has Plans Measured in Centuries
To Become an Unstoppable Force In Society

What do you mean "We hard-forked Facebook out of Libra."?

Facebook spent hundreds of millions of dollars to create a clean-slate extreme high performance blockchain. Much of the public worried about what their stable coin would mean for the future of finance. I, on the other hand, saw that there was an opportunity to steal it back from them, to create a perpetual asset which, like bitcoin, had a much longer-term view.

The starting point was: if we don't need to spend hundreds of millions on technical R&D, how do we design the best asset for all generations to come?

What does "good capital" mean?

Capital is anything physical or immaterial that provides value to the owner. One of the fascinating features of Bitcoin when invented was that an immaterial right was not a "title" granted by someone else and later revoked. "Your keys, your coins" is an improvement on intangible capital.

To be good capital you need to try harder: create assets that are not securities and place them in environments where people want to produce rent in abundance. A car is not a security; a car in the desert produces no rent. A car in a city easily produces rent.

The crypto industry could try harder to create good capital, but their current recipe seems to work fine for near-sighted goals. Here at LIBRA, I think it's best just to move on and focus on launching a new industry: Open Assets.

What is an "Open Asset"?

It's the thing that comes after crypto. LIBRA is an accessible and perpetual digital property. It is carefully designed for its purpose: capital. Prosperity comes from people saving and planning for transformation.

The entire LIBRA supply has already been produced, and remarkably our users saved, pledged, or donated 95% of their assets for the future.

What do you mean "pledged to the future"?

At the end of bootstrapping (V7), between slow wallets, infra escrow pledge, and different donor-directed accounts, the network had 95% of the capital locked for the future. Bootstrapping was slow, nearly 3 years of mining. At V7 upgrade, approximately 5% LIBRA was circulating unrestricted.

What do you mean by "government proof"?

A free mined asset that never raised capital is not a philosophical question; it's a commercial opportunity. If you want to take your asset mainstream it has to be safe and reputable. Safe: If no one ever needs to look over their shoulder at governments, then you can begin gaining the trust of the 95% who think anything related to blockchain is a scam.

We make correct choices because we don't owe anything to anyone.

  • Government proof: every coin was mined and no money ever raised.
  • No Labs or Foundation: yes to moral authority and meritocracy.
  • So long, Crypto industry: we'll play games the world wants to play.
  • No thanks, VCs: we have no rush, and infinite possibilities.

Having our own Layer-1 blockchain ensures LIBRA's freedom. We've been running high-performance Diem and Move networks since 2019. The chain is meant to have all the smart contracts anyone would need to use, save, plan with LIBRA, but none of the nonsense to distract us. Think LIBRA, not Blockchain.

We play a long game that few have patience for. There is a desert to cross, though the prize is worth the sacrifice.

You surely don't mean "measured in centuries"?

Yes, of course we do. There are plenty of types of capital that last generations: buildings, land titles, financial firms, bonds. There are existing government bonds that have been paying out continuously for 400 years. But one thing nearly never does: technologies, and technology companies.

The thing that outlives technology is content. And financial content is simply another word for assets. To me, the most compelling thing about the assets on blockchain is an overlooked fundamental property: their risk of disappearing is very low. They don't die like companies.

All future generations should have dependable capital for interventions in society. Having power in society requires capital. In the next century, I expect this to continue being true, if not more so.