Experts Weigh in on Facebook’s Acquisition of Blockchain Company

It was recently reported that Facebook has acquired Chainspace, its first company acquisition in the blockchain space. Chainspace is a smart contract protocol development and research firm. This announcement goes further to confirm Facebook’s interest in blockchain, previously highlighted by a number of blockchain related job posts.

This acquisition did not go unnoticed by the blockchain industry. “The recent news on Facebook’s acquisition of the smart contract platform Chainspace is indicative of blockchain’s ability to transform industries such as legal, banking, & healthcare,” said Casey Kuhlman, Co-founder and CEO of Monax. “The fact that Facebook is leveraging experts in blockchain and smart contracts shows they’re one step closer to reaping the benefits of the technology when it comes to efficiency, collaboration, and the streamlining of processes.”

According to Elias Haase, Co-founder and Community Manager of B9lab, it’s not just Facebook who are validating the future of blockchain, saying, “With hindsight, it was inevitable that big companies would get involved with blockchain – both Amazon and Pfizer have obvious use cases in supply chain. But there are other, less obvious and more sophisticated applications that an injection of large company money can accelerate. Their real impact on the community as a whole will depend on what they eventually choose to build and on what protocol. All and all, it’s a positive move for the industry as we seem to be setting ourselves up to create for the long term rather than react to FOMO.”

This was echoed by Rutger van Zuidam, Founder and CEO of Odyssey who noted, “The impact of major players such as Facebook, Amazon, and Pfizer entering the blockchain space completely depends on their perception as to why blockchains exist in the first place. We have learned that the most ambitious and best quality talent in this space wants to change the way we organize our society and economy.”

Facebook’s blockchain initiatives are currently being lead by David Marcus, who was formerly in charge of Facebook Messenger.