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Comment by drcode | Hacker News Reader

> I suspect Facebook’s longer term plans, were they to actually launch Libra, are to move to a permissionless proof-of-stake model much like the one used by Cosmos

It seems really naive to think that if FB were to get a foothold in the currency markets with a permissioned product that they would later on go against their own interests and transition to a permissionless alternative (not to mention the massive legal and technical hurdles that this transition would require)

...but I don't know why I'm arguing against Libra, it's such an all-around terrible product, I should just keep my mouth shut. Facebook is tarnishing the idea of a "corporatecoin" for the next few years and doing all of us a favor in the process.

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They have explicitly stated that a move to a permissionless system is their end goal.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Libra_(cryptocurrency)#Blockch...

Doesn't matter; there are no technical details for this, and so far nobody has a solution on how to do this. Yes, permissionless networks exist; but no network has transitioned from a permissioned to a permissionless network. While transitioning from a permissioned to a permissionless network, you open your gates to a horde that are financially incentivized to exploit this newfound permission. How then are you going to secure yourself from an attack? Nobody has this figured out. It's mathematically unsound.

It doesn't make any strategic sense either: The whole point of being "permissionless" is to increase initial adoption by providing protections against "vendor lock in".

But if you are capable of doing an initial launch on an permissioned ledger and achieve the initial network effects anyway, what's the point of providing such guarantees later on?

There is nothing mathematically unsound, I would even say that it should be trivial to transition to a permissionless setting. You just need to implement a proof of stake algorithm. The only questions are: what scheme do we want to implement and when does it make sense to transition. Libra launching as permissionless would be DOA.

tell me how to transition from pow to pos

why? Libra is not pow.

> They have explicitly stated that a move to a permissionless system is their end goal.

Of course, they were very happy to make all kinds of vague, rosy promises right out of the gate... it doesn't cost them anything to do so.

Or, the regulatory obstructions and general enmity towards anything crypto would make it impossible to launch a permissionless one. Actually, several govts have been explicit that even the permissioned is ex ante banned

> "corporatecoin"

Call it like it is: Company scrip.

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