Key Takeaways:
- Former employees of Facebook were unable to work under the company’s restrictions.
- They started their venture, Mysten Labs.
- Mysten Labs has plans of developing its blockchain.
Four former Facebook employees joined hands to create a startup focusing on Web3 and blockchain infrastructure. They took this initiative as they were unhappy with the administration in their previous company. Recently, they have also shared plans of launching a blockchain in future.
Even Cheng, the co-founder and CEO of Mysten Labs, along with Sam Blackshear and Adeniyi Aboidun, and George Danezis, was working on Facebook’s Novi Financial team. They developed the Diem blockchain and Moving programming language, a cross-platform intelligent contract language developed to provide developers security against exploitation.
However, these former employees felt that is difficult for them to work under so many restrictions at Meta and therefore started a separate venture. Cheng said, “Some of our dreams couldn’t be realised at Facebook due to regulatory pressure and the company being unable to adopt cutting edge technology aggressively.” “So, we thought about doing a startup because we have done work in the space and want to share it.” The co-founders also said they have had “technical breakthroughs” after leaving their previous employer.
Mysten Labs started with the aim to develop a new blockchain infrastructure to scale the Web3 space and was founded in November 2021, just a few months after the Diem was sold to Silvergate Capital Corp in late January.
The blockchain they are working on is expected to be launched in late March, and developer activity on-chain and building by this April or May. It will first have a test net, then beta net and finally mainnet after a few months. Cheng added, “We are building our blockchain that will be comparable to Ethereum, Solana, and so on, but we want the capability to go beyond that.”
