Fedi Launches A Bitcoin Operating System For Communities

Following a year of incubation, “Community Superapp” Fedi officially launched yesterday and has announced plans to open source its freedom technology stack.

Introduced back in 2022, Fedi is a financial platform looking to empower individuals with financial access and resources by leveraging the power of local communities.

Engineered with a privacy-first mindset, the release of Fedi is a major step forward in promoting grassroots economic development and individual freedom. The Fedimint consensus protocol allows community leaders to organize common resources, support its participants’ sovereignty and stimulate social opportunities.

“A single piece of software that can replace multiple legacy apps with safe and secure alternatives powered not by corporations, but communities.”

Yesterday’s release focused on the individuals behind this effort and their unique vision for the project. In a presentation available on Fedi’s website, the company highlights how different partners including humanitarian groups are exploring ways to make communities more sustainable using the application.

“Those of us who have the care, vision and determination to make it happen,” says the company’s co-founder Obi Nwosu.

In the image of its communities

At the core of Fedi is the idea that individuals should have better agency in choosing who to trust with their money and data. In Madeira, Portugal, a non-profit organization is connecting entrepreneurs, merchants and Bitcoin enthusiasts using the Fedi application.

Free Madeira operates a federation that offers different services supporting the local Bitcoin economy. Everything is centered around the community and its members. While applications such as custody, payments, and messaging have historically been the purview of corporations and opaque service providers, Fedi allows neighbors, groups and local associations to use its technology at the service of others.

Unlike other Bitcoin protocols attempting to eliminate trust, the project seeks to enable the potential of real-world relationships and connections between its users.

“We recognize that the most advanced technology there is is community. Communities on their own are creative, innovative, and resourceful. All they need is a tool that would help raise them up and raise their potential,” shared Mary Imasuen, Global Marketing Manager, during the project’s virtual event.

Operators, called guardians, can customize their community’s experience, allowing each federation to tailor the platform to its participant’s needs. For Chef Lopez in Togo, the application is used to pioneer new microlending initiatives that improve access to agricultural resources in his region. Farming cooperations organize through the Fedi application and pool resources for delegated representatives to purchase the supplies required to sustain their operations.

To facilitate the onboarding of these communities, Fedi also revealed details about the “Fedi Order”, a group of technically skilled individuals deployed around the globe to assist with the process.

A radically new approach

Fedi is supported by a novel technology architecture based on the Fedimint protocol originally created by Bitcoin developer and Fedi co-founder Eric Sirion. Recognizing the challenges of existing self-custody solutions and being conscious of the risks associated with centralized custodians, Fedi introduces an alternative referred to as “community custody”.

Fedi relies on a federation of guardians to assume shared control of its members’ assets and eliminates trust in a single party using threshold signatures.

Think of it as a community multi-signature wallet. To improve on existing custodial solutions, the project leverages Chaumian eCash, a privacy-preserving form of digital cash that represents claims on the community’s bitcoin reserves. This allows transactions between community members to remain private and protects balances from being revealed to observers.

Before Bitcoin and blockchains, computer scientist Nick Szabo had identified the potential of using micro-organizations to secure financial operations, an idea he had dubbed “Secure Property Titles with Owner Authority”. More recently, the concept of federations was popularized by Blockstream’s implementation of the Liquid sidechain.

Beyond private, fast and highly scalable payments, Fedi’s consensus system creates a versatile platform that can unlock a variety of use cases. Thanks to its highly performant infrastructure, the protocol allows participants to deploy modular “freedom tools” such as a chat interface that supports encrypted messages, private groups and social payments. “Fedi mods” can be used by developers and third-party applications to introduce new features to the platform and distribute them to its network of federations.

“Mods are unique web apps that integrate seamlessly with Fedi and personalize your experience. They let you do things like top-up your phone, save money with friends, and buy gift cards.”

More than a simple wallet, Fedi becomes an operating system for the communities it supports, empowering them, often for the first time, to participate in the digital economy.

Notable features introduced during yesterday’s presentation are the ability to perform offline payments and “Stable Balance” used to peg users’ balances to their local currency.

The Fedi app is available today on iOS and Android. Community leaders and organizations interested in building with Fedi are encouraged to sign up for the program. A grant is available to help federations develop.