The OpenLibra project has come under fire after one of its co-founders is accused of leading a million dollar scam. Lucas Geiger acquired millions of dollars with the Wireline initial-coin offering. However, there hasn't been communication with investors for months and the company has no product. The accusations come from Web3Journal founder Andrew Lee who invested one million dollars in Wireline.
On top of that Lee claims that he received several private messages with other complains about the project. These anonymous sources are not involved with OpenLibra, despite being mentioned in the presentation.
Geiger is also working on OpenLibra, while still working under the name of Wireline. Wireline is a peer-to-peer network for open-source applications. On its website Wireline doesn't refer to a Github page, which is normally a standard for open-source projects. The company did present itself at the Ethereum Foundation Devcon, resulting in the reveal of OpenLibra.
Back in October 2017 Wireline launched its initial-coin offering (ICO). It managed to gather 51 million dollars worth of cryptocurrencies. So far Wireline has not product to show for, and adviser Sizhao Yang has made numerous false promises that the company didn't live up to.
Geiger announced OpenLibra this week. They think that Facebook might succeed, despite the backlash it’s currently receiving from governments worldwide. The team behind OpenLibra wants to be an alternative that takes away the major concerns about Facebook’s Libra.
The problem is that Facebook and its partners want to create a digital currency to reach 4 billion people. This would make Facebook and these 21 companies extremely powerful. Their coin could replace existing financial structures and compete with traditional banks. However, major corporations own the project. Therefore we can't speak of a decentralized network. In addition it requires permissions to interact with, and there are no privacy guarantees. Those are the problems that OpenLibra wants to solve.
