By
Temitope Olatunji
April 18th, 2024
According to the sources familiar with the matter, the two companies have been discussing the creation of a fork in the Stellar blockchain while letting Facebook develop its indigenous digital token on a separate blockchain.
It has been a while after Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg announced about the company’s interest in studying cryptocurrency-related technology. So far the social media giant has not been much vocal regarding its progress in the cryptocurrency space, however, some of the recent developments give us highlights into what can be expected ahead.
Yesterday’s report from Business Insider suggests that executives from Facebook’s blockchain division have met with Stellar for discussing how the social media giant can effectively use and deploy distributed ledger technology (DLT) for its payments system.
As per some of the unnamed sources, the two companies discussed how Facebook can use the Stellar blockchain and fork into it while creating its own cryptocurrency. This is much similar to what the chat app Kik did by developing an indigenous blockchain for its Kin digital currency tokens instead of deploying it on the Stellar blockchain.
Business Insider also noted that the social media mogul has also been rapidly expanding its blockchain strategy. One of the job listings from the company talks of the endeavor “is a startup within Facebook, with a vision to make blockchain technology work at Facebook scale and improve the lives of billions of people around the world.”
However, another report coming later on August 10 from Cheddar says that Facebook has denied the news of its association with Stellar for any sort of cryptocurrency project. One of the Facebook spokespeople was quoted saying that the company is “not engaged in any discussions with Stellar, and we are not considering building on their technology.”
Moreover, another report from earlier this week suggested that Davis Marcus – Facebook vice president and former head of the company’s Messenger division – has stepped down from the position of the board of directors from the Coinbase exchange, citing conflict of interest.
After Zuckerberg announced Facebook’s plan to foray into the blockchain space, Marcus was put at the helm of affairs of expanding the company’s blockchain strategy. Then there were also reports that Facebook has been working on developing its native digital currency.
Last month, a series of new developments had triggered the price of Stellar Lumens to surge to new highs. The Stellar Foundation became the first one to obtain Sharia certification which gives the crypto firm a direct access into the financial banking sector of UAE. As a part of this certification, Stellar will be using its own blockchain technology to develop Sharia-compliant applications for Islamic financial institutions.
In collaboration with IBM and financial firm Stronghold, Stellar also announced a new stablecoin project dubbed Stronghold USD which is deployed on the Stellar blockchain. The Stellar-based Stronghold USD token will be used for making cross-border payment and settlements.
The two companies said that the reason to launch this project was that they wanted to create something using the best of both – the crypto and the fiat economies. Being based on the cryptocurrency infrastructure, the Stronghold USD will allow for instant payments, functioning under the regulatory observation of the U.S authorities.