Meta, formerly Facebook, may have bid adieu to its cryptocurrency project Diem, but it is not done with blockchain yet. In a recent filing with the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) the social media company said its future initiatives including digital wallet Novi may use "blockchain-based assets" such as the USDP stablecoin issued by the Paxos Trust Company.

"Our future initiatives to support commerce in the metaverse also may use blockchain-based assets in digital payments. Use of blockchain-based assets in payments are a relatively new and unproven technology, and the laws and regulations surrounding them are uncertain and evolving," the company said in the filing.

Meta has stated that such efforts to revolutionise digital payments have been previously met with regulatory scrutiny from governments and regulators across geographies, and it expects the resistance to continue. It's filing with the SEC also explicitly mentions that, while Meta is adequately responding to all entities, regulatory and government actions are likely to have repercussions on its business as well.

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The company goes on to mention that uncertainty surrounding the market adoption of its digital payment systems is why they cannot commit whether the products will be released in "a timely manner, or at all."

Meta's first digital payments project, Diem (formerly known as Libra in 2019), was abandoned mid-development by partners like PayPal, Visa, Mastercard, eBay, which was a massive blow to the initiative. It was also shot down by regulators and governments not limited to the US, the UK, and Europe.

Andreas Antonopoulos, an advocate of Bitcoin, went on to express that Libra wasn't a crypto project at all. It was lacking on multiple fronts, including fundamentals, neutrality, public nature, censorship, and borderless nature.

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Ross Buckley, Professor of Disruptive Innovation at the University of New South Wales in Sydney, cautioned readers in his paper. He wrote, "Libra is perhaps the ultimate example of something that is highly likely to move from 'too small to care' to 'too big to fail' in a very short period of time

Many viewed the Diem project as Meta's attempt at forcing its way into the global payment ecosystems. Others were of the opinion that Meta would wield too much power since day 1, given the sheer number and geographic spread of its users.

Stephane Kasriel, Head of the Novi wallet project, tweeted on February 1, that the company will be "continuing to execute" its "existing fintech plans" with a focus on metaverse-based projects. This indicates that Meta will continue to pedal on with some projects, specifically its blockchain-backed digital payment wallet Novi. However, how they will be received remains to be seen.

The company has also been using platforms such as Instagram to explore the non-fungible tokens (NFTs) space.

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(Edited by : Jomy Jos Pullokaran)