Facebook announced Tuesday morning that it has changed the name of a key component of its ambitious cryptocurrency project known as Libra. From now on, the company’s digital wallet, which it hopes to launch later this year, will be known as “Novi” instead of “Calibra.”
David Marcus, a former PayPal chairman who now runs Libra, stated in a Facebook post that “the old name was too close to the name of Libra.”
The wallet service in question is a critical part of Facebook’s plan to create a new global payment service based on blockchain technology. While the Libra network is being developed in such a way that anyone can create a compatible wallet, the Calibra / Novi wallet will be the default offering, meaning it will likely be the one adopted by billions of Facebook users.
Facebook announced the Libra network last June in hopes of launching its cryptocurrency in 2019, but the project was soon embroiled in political and regulatory controversy, prompting several high-profile partners, including Visa, Stripe, and PayPal, to join. cut ties.
More recently, Libra has regained some momentum, adding e-commerce giant Shopify to its list of partners. Facebook also appears to have partially appeased regulators by changing Libra from a single global currency to a number of national cryptocurrencies. It has also moved away from its initial plan to turn Libra into a decentralized, Bitcoin-like network and has instead pledged to control it more strictly.
Calibra’s rebrand also follows complaints in 2019 from a banking startup called Current, which pointed to notable similarities in the logos of the two brands. In the case of Novi, which Marcus says is an acronym for the Latin words “novus” (new) and “via” (way), his logo is clearly different from Current and Calibra:
Court records suggest that Facebook and Current settled a legal case regarding an alleged trademark infringement earlier this month.
In response to a query from Fortune, a Facebook spokesperson did not address whether the name change was due to trademark issues. Instead, the spokesperson said the new name was intended to avoid confusion between Calibra and Libra.
This story has been updated to reflect the status of Facebook and current trademark litigation.
