As FB’s cryptocurrency initiative keeps losing expert talent, venture capitalists are rewarding alumni with large sums of money to pursue their own interests.
Mysten Labs, a cryptocurrency and blockchain-based technology setup created by 4 former Facebook employees. One of these is Evan Cheng who was director of research and development at Facebook’s Novi financial products unit.
Evan Cheng, CEO of Mysten, started the business with Sam Blackshear, Adeniyi Abiodun, and George Danezis. All of them worked together at Novi and have recently left. In an interview with CNBC, Cheng stated that Mysten had recently received 36 million dollars in a funding round headed by Andreessen Horowitz. The funding will assist the 4 founders in developing foundational technologies that allow other cryptocurrency and blockchain technology startups to provide technologies. Cheng also told CNBC that they are constructing infrastructure that, based on an earlier study, will overcome several restrictions.
As the cryptocurrency market is exploding with fresh start-ups and investment, Facebook (now known as Meta) has turned into a supplier of engineers, programmers, and strategists.
Novi’s Head, David Marcus, submitted his retirement last week after 7 years with the company. Marcus co-founded the Novi digital wallet & the Diem crypto. Kevin Weil & Morgan Beller, two of the company’s co-founders, resigned the year before. Nassim Eddequiouaq & Riyaz Faizullabhoy resigned from Novi in October to join Andreessen’s crypto project, named a16z Crypto. Over the previous few years, they’ve done an outstanding job of attracting elite personnel. The investment firm’s co-founder, Marc Andreessen, stays on Meta’s board.
Initially, Facebook stated that it wanted to introduce its digital wallet & cryptocurrency in 2020. The Novi digital wallet, backed by Coinbase, was released in October.
Diem crypto, which has now been managed by such an autonomous association, is still not available to the general public. Andreessen Horowitz announced a new 2.2 billion dollars cryptocurrency fund in June. Several of the firm’s ventures can profit from Mysten’s technology. The company has already been collaborating with Celo, an Andreessen-backed startup developing a global payments network.
Cheng stated that Mysten is implementing the same business model as many other cryptocurrency projects. Instead of getting profits from goods & services, the firm intends to retain tokens for the many blockchain systems with which it is collaborating and benefit as their value goes up. Cheng stated that, while he loved his tenure at Meta and feels optimistic about the firm’s initiatives in cryptocurrencies, launching Novi and Diem was extremely challenging “given the regulatory framework.”