Davis Marcus, Former Head of Facebook’s Messenger to Lead the Company’s New Blockchain Group

Facebook seems to be all set and prepared for moving to the next-generation blockchain technology as the company is said to have created a new Blockchain Group internally within the company where the former head of the Facebook Messenger - David Marcus will be leading the project.

In an official post on his Facebook page, Marcus wrote: “After nearly four unbelievably rewarding years leading Messenger, I have decided it was time for me to take on a new challenge. I'm setting up a small group to explore how to best leverage Blockchain across Facebook, starting from scratch.”

Joining Marcus for this new project will be less than a dozen employees which include Kevin Weil, Instagram’s vice president of product and James Everingham, Instagram’s vice president of engineering.

Facebook using the blockchain technology will certainly give a new boost to the tech industry in adopting this next generation platform. However, not much details are available at the moment as to how Facebook plans to use the blockchain technology ahead but one of the key applications areas would be encrypted data storage.

In addition to being the former head of Facebook Messenger, Marcus is also a board member at one of the world’s biggest cryptocurrency exchange Coinbase. Marcus joint Coinable last year end in December 2017 and has shown a great interest in the blockchain technology.

According to the report from Recode, Facebook starting a new blockchain group is a part of the major overhaul the company is making in its operations. The company is seen pushing the long time Facebook executives to new responsibilities and roles while getting new people at their place.

According to Recode, these changes come after the latest exposure of the Cambridge Analytica Scandal wherein data of millions of Facebook users was used to influence the U.S Presidential Elections for Donald Trump.

After having gone through much user backlash and Zuckerberg facing Congressional Hearings, the company has decided to re-evaluate its management system in order to prioritize on issues of data secrecy and privacy.

As a part of the overhaul, the company will now onwards operate under three divisions: a “family of apps” group, "central product services" and “new platforms and infra”.

At the start of 2018, Mark Zuckerberg had made his intentions clear about studying the cryptocurrencies and especially its underpinning blockchain technology. Zuckerberg said: "My personal challenge for 2018 is to focus on fixing these important issues. We won't prevent all mistakes or abuse, but we currently make too many errors enforcing our policies and preventing misuse of our tools. If we're successful this year then we'll end 2018 on a much better trajectory.”