David Marcus, the former head of Facebook Messenger, is setting up a small internal team dedicated to exploring blockchain.
The executive announced the move in a Facebook post on Tuesday.
According to sources familiar with the matter, Instagram’s VP of Engineering, James Everingham, and Instagram’s VP of Product, Kevin Weil, are also joining Marcus's team. Marcus is the former CEO of PayPal, and has been serving on the board of Coinbase, a major cryptocurrency exchange, since December last year.
The move builds on an earlier pledge by Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg to “go deeper and study the positive and negative aspects” of controversial technologies.
Facebook is the biggest social network in the world with a market capitalization of more than $513 billion.
By Nadya Astam