After a year of incubation, “Community Superapp” Fedi is officially launched yesterday and announced plans to open source its freedom technology.
Introduced in 2022, It covers is a financial platform that aims to provide people with financial access and resources by harnessing the power of local communities.
Designed with a privacy-first mindset, the release of Fedi is a major step forward in advancing grassroots economic development and individual freedom. The Fedimint consensus protocol empowers community leaders to organize common resources, support participant sovereignty, and foster social opportunity.
“A single piece of software that can replace multiple legacy apps with safe and secure alternatives, driven not by companies, but by communities.”
Yesterday’s release focused on the individuals behind this effort and their unique perspective on the project. In a presentation Fedi’s website describes how various partners, including humanitarian organisations, 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 company co-founder Obi Nwosu.
In the image of her communities
At the heart of Fedi is the idea that individuals should have more say in choosing who to trust with their money and data. In Madeira, Portugal, a non-profit organization is connecting entrepreneurs, traders, and Bitcoin enthusiasts through the Fedi application.
Free wood operates a federation that offers various services to support the local Bitcoin economy. Everything revolves around the community and its members. While applications such as custody, payments, and messaging have historically been the domain of corporations and opaque service providers, Fedi enables neighbors, groups, and local associations to use its technology to serve others.
Unlike other Bitcoin protocols that try to remove trust, the project aims to increase the potential for real relationships and connections between users.
“We recognize that the most advanced technology out there is community. Communities are creative, innovative and resourceful in their own right. All they need is a tool to help them scale and grow their potential,” shared Mary Imasuen, Global Marketing Manager, during the project’s virtual event.
Operators, also known as guardians, can customize their community’s experience, allowing each federation to tailor the platform to the needs of its participants. For Chef Lopez in Togo, the application is being used to pioneer new microcredit initiatives that improve access to agricultural resources in his region. Agricultural cooperatives organize through the Fedi application, pooling resources for delegated representatives to purchase the supplies needed 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 world to assist with the process.
A radically new approach
Fedi is supported by a new technological architecture based on the Confection protocol originally created by Bitcoin developer and Fedi co-founder Eric Sirion. Recognizing the challenges of existing self-custody solutions and the risks associated with centralized custodians, Fedi is introducing an alternative known as “community custody.”
Fedi relies on a federation of guardians to collectively control the assets of its members and eliminates trust in any single party by using threshold signatures.
Think of it as a community multi-signature wallet. To improve upon existing custodial solutions, the project uses Chaumian eCash, a privacy-preserving form of digital currency that represents claims on the community’s bitcoin reserves. This keeps transactions between community members private and protects balances from being exposed 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 called “Secure property titles with owner authority”. More recently, the concept of federations was popularized by Blockstream’s implementation of the Liquid side chain.
In addition to 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 implement modular “freedom tools” such as a chat interface that supports encrypted messaging, 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 the federation network.
“Mods are unique web apps that seamlessly integrate with Fedi and personalize your experience. They let you do things like top up your phone, save money with friends, and buy gift cards.”
Fedi is more than a simple wallet: it becomes an operating system for the communities it supports, enabling them to participate in the digital economy, often for the first time.
Notable features introduced during yesterday’s presentation include the ability to make offline payments and ‘Stable Balance’, which allows users’ balances to be pegged to their local currency.
The Fedi app is available today on iOS And AndroidCommunity leaders and organizations interested in building with Fedi are encouraged to to register for the program. A grant is available to help federations develop.