Binance, the world’s largest cryptocurrency exchange by volume, is taking on Facebook Inc. with a stablecoin project to rival the social network’s announced Libra.

Called “Venus,” the project has been designed to develop localized stablecoins and digital assets pegged to fiat currencies across the globe. Based on an open blockchain, Binance is seeking governments, corporations, technology companies and other cryptocurrency companies to join them in the project so as “to empower developed and developing countries to spur new currencies.”

Binance comes into the project with experience already offering a number of its own stablecoins on its Binance Chain blockchain platform. Where Venus differs is that it was attempting to build a direct competitor to Libra complete with support.

“Binance will provide full-process technical support, compliance risk control system and multi-dimensional cooperation network to build Venus, leveraging its existing infrastructure and regulatory establishments,” the company said in a statement.

Like Facebook, Binance is certainly ambitious. Co-founder Yi He told Coindesk that “we believe that in the near and long term, stablecoins will progressively replace traditional fiat currencies in countries around the world, and bring a new and balanced standard of the digital economy.”

Stablecoins are in vogue at the moment but they haven’t always been without controversy either, and that’s before Facebook’s Libra was compared to the 9/11 terrorist attacks.

The most popular and largest stablecoin by market capitalization is Tether by Bitfinex. Stablecoins, by their very nature, are meant to be pegged to fixed assets, usually currency such as the U.S. dollar but occasionally other securities as well. Tether made this promise as well, but for years it was rumored that it wasn’t holding an equivalent value against its worth until eventually in April the company admitted that it dipped into the reserve funds to cover a loss.

Tether’s tale is not necessarily one that stablecoins are inherently bad, just that they need regulation At the moment there is no law that states that a stablecoin provider must hold equity against its value, something Bitfinex itself has pointed out.

With the attention given to Libra in particular, regulation may be required to ensure that companies entering the stablecoin market do deliver on promises such as holding equity in reserve to guarantee the currency’s value.

Image: 149561324@N03/Flickr