Facebook buys blockchain startup Chainspace in apparent first

• This is the first blockchain-related acquisition of Facebook.
   
• Facebook is hiring only the core team of Chainspace but none of the firm’s technology

Social media giant Facebook has reportedly acquired blockchain startup Chainspace. As per trusted sources, this is the first blockchain-related acquisition of the company.

Reportedly, the deal is more of an ‘acqui-hire’ than a full-fledged acquisition. People familiar with the development claimed that Facebook is hiring only the core team of Chainspace but none of the firm’s technology.

It is also being reported that four of the five researchers that prepared the academic whitepaper of Chainspace will be joining Facebook. The social media giant has reportedly stated that it has hired employees from Chainspace; however, it refused to comment on specific hires.

According to a report published by CoinTelegraph, Facebook had listed five new blockchain-related job openings on its careers page in late 2018. The positions included a data engineer, a data scientist role, and two software engineer posts, all at the firm’s headquarters in Menlo Park, California. The Head of Facebook Messenger, David Marcus had previously commented that the firm had created a group to discover the best ways to leverage blockchain across Facebook.

For the record, Chainspace is a blockchain startup established by researchers from University College London. The firm reportedly works on blockchain scalability issues, especially by applying sharding to smart contracts. Moreover, the core team at the firm appears to have been developing a secure and faster type of blockchain technology after publishing a whitepaper online in the year 2017.  

Reportedly, the authors of the whitepaper are now working at the London office of Facebook. In fact, two of the four researchers, including George Danezis and Alberto Sonnino, have already updated their LinkedIn profiles to list social media network as their official employers. Their roles are mentioned as ‘Blockchain Researchers’.