Evan Cheng, engineering director at Facebook, seems to have a new job within the company, director of engineering position in the blockchain.
The platform became very interested in the blockchain technology this year, and Cheng’s new position is the most recent proof.
Back in May, David Marcus received a small team for investigating the blockchain technology and in June Kevin Weil took on the title VP of Product, Blockchain.
Chang who was the director of engineering, programming languages, and runtimes before, is now the director of engineering, blockchain according to his LinkedIn profile.
Facebook hasn’t released any official information about all this new position on the platform’s press page.
Mark Zuckerberg revealed an increased interest in crypto and blockchain
At the beginning of 2018, Mark Zuckerberg revealed that he was analyzing crypto and decentralized systems. While dealing with the latest major problems that have been plaguing Facebook’s reputation, he said that
“There are important counter-trends to this – like encryption and cryptocurrency – that take power from centralized systems and put it back into people’s hands.”
“One of the most interesting questions in technology right now is about centralization vs. decentralization. A lot of us got into technology because we believe it can be a decentralizing force that puts more power in people’s hands … Back in the 1990s and 2000s, most people believed technology would be a decentralizing force, “ Zuckerberg also stated at the time.
Of course, there may also be other reasons for this interest that Facebook is showing in the blockchain.
The image of the company has been in trouble, and the blockchain technology is getting a lot of attention for the potential to be a transparent and trustless technology. It would indeed make sense that Facebook would start using blockchain to try and make it up for what happened lately regarding users’ privacy.
