As previously reported, Meta has ended the pilot for Novi, the company’s digital wallet and the last remaining part of its troubled cryptocurrency project. bloomberg, On Novi’s website, Meta says that the wallet is closing on September 1, 2022, and asks users to withdraw their funds “as soon as possible.”
Users will lose access to their accounts in September, and will no longer be able to add money to Novi from July 21. If someone forgets to withdraw their balance, Meta says it will “attempt to transfer” their funds to a bank account or debit card added to the service.
Meta introduced a “small pilot” of Novi to users in the US and Guatemala last October. Novi was originally created to support fast and free transactions using the meta-backed cryptocurrency, Diem, but regulatory challenges led the company to partner with Coinbase to use the Paxos stablecoin (USDP) instead. forced to do. While Meta clarified that it Still Diem. plans to add support for At a later date, things began to fall apart in late 2021 and into 2022 (more than ever).
Before Facebook’s parent company was known as Meta, Diem was also known by another name: Libra. The cryptocurrency project faced scrutiny over its relationship with Facebook, so much so that the independent group behind Libra rebranded the project to Diem in an attempt to distance itself from the social network.
Members of the US Senate called on Meta to shut down its Novi project shortly after its October 2021 launch, stating that the company “cannot be trusted to manage the cryptocurrency.” David Marcus, Meta’s head of cryptocurrency projects, left the company a month later. Diem sold his estate earlier this year for about $200 million, ending the project.
The end of Diem doesn’t mean that Meta is giving up on the idea of developing its own digital asset and accompanying wallet. META spokeswoman Lauren Dixon said in an emailed statement ledge Meta will use the technology it developed in conjunction with the project on “new products, such as digital collectibles,” as it looks to “build the metaverse.”
Meta has already started testing NFTs (fungible tokens) on Instagram and recently launched support for NFTs on Facebook for select creators based in the US. The company is also reportedly working on a digital currency called “Zuck Bucks”, which is not based on blockchain.
Last month, Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg also hinted at creating a digital wallet that can help you manage and store “digital clothing, art, videos, music, experiences, virtual events, and more.” The wallet will be interoperable across different Metaverse experiences, reflecting the goals of the Metaverse Standards Forum that Meta and a group of other companies helped form, which calls for industry-wide standards in virtual reality and augmented reality experiences.