“Bitcoin is for billions, not billionaires,” a phrase first invented by Lyn Alden, could soon become a reality, according to Fedimint, a community custody protocol, that wants to scale the Bitcoin network to a billion users located in the global south. The procedure that wants to scale Bitcoin (BTC) while making it more private, has been maintained by a $4.2 million seed round for the Fedi application.
Cointelegraph spoke to the co-founder and CEO of Fedi, Obi Nwosu, about the “incredible group of inspiring people who we are working with to support their activities to increase the freedoms of some of the most oppressed regions of the world,” and why the mobile app Fedi could solve scaling issues, custody, and privacy.
Lyudmyla Kozlovska, head of the Open Dialogue Foundation — which emphasizes supporting people in post-soviet Europe — Farida Bemba Nabourema, a Togolese human rights activist, and Fadi Elsalameen, president of the Palestinian Security Project and a fellow at the Foreign Policy Institute at the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies, support the Fedi app’s development and its impact in the global south and developing economies.
In brief, the Fedi wallet app joins users to Fedimint “federations.” The Fedimint protocol (which takes its name from “federated” and “mint”) uses multi-signature (multisig) technology and trusted community members called “guardians.”
Nwosu told Cointelegraph that Fedi anticipates having the biggest impact on those located in the global south and that the firm is “uniquely placed to help which is why we will put special focus on deploying into these communities.”
Farid Nabourema, a Togolese human rights activist, clarified to Cointelegraph that in “poor parts of the world,” receiving a hardware wallet is almost impossible. Hardware wallet distributors including Ledger, ColdCard, and Trezor are not present on the continent of Africa, in spite of the fact that “Africa has the fastest growing adoption rate and Togo, for example, was listed among the top 10 countries having the fastest adoption per capita based on the 2021 Chainalysis report.”
Nabourema details the “federated wallet method” inspired by the traditional savings methods used across Africa and emerging markets in the Caribbean and Latin America. Recognized as a “tontine” in francophone West Africa, a “sousou” in Nigeria, or a “zu-zu” in Trinidad and Tobago, these community savings tools secured thousands of people for their future. It’s among the oldest peer-to-peer savings technologies:
“This model has helped millions of people, especially women who were traditionally excluded from the banking system to fund their businesses, their children’s education, to acquire properties among others.”
Fedimint uses this community-backed method to finance but uses a decentralized, immutable currency i.e., Bitcoin. “In addition, Fedimint adds an extra layer of security and more importantly privacy as the custodians can keep the amount they own totally private from others,” Nabourema claims.
Nourou, the founder of Bitcoin Senegal, told Cointelegraph that Fedimint’s community-backed method is a reflection of how certain Bitcoin enthusiasts run nodes.
Nonetheless, the way in which the groups of trusted community members called “guardians “relate with Bitcoin using Fedi remains unclear at this stage and could pose risks, he explained:
“In this instance, guardians would have more powers than others on the network, which could create centralization challenges. Plus, there could be a risk of certain people abusing their elevated responsibilities.”
Nwosu clarified that “Fedimint is a federated custody protocol that complements the Bitcoin monetary protocol and Lightning payments protocol to provide a complete solution to holding, using, and securing Bitcoin at the global scale.” Community custody is a brand-new development in the Bitcoin protocol while multisig, (in which two or more signatories are required to move Bitcoin), has existed for almost a decade.
While Africa is a clear candidate for Bitcoin scaling and community-backed advancements, the Venezuelan opposition leader Leopoldo Lopez, who co-founded the political party Primero Justicia in the year 2000, has also shown interest Nwosu told Cointelegraph. Reportedly, the solution that Fedi poses could “meet the needs of the people in Latin America at scale.”
Nabourema decided that Fedimint will be “a lifesaver for millions of citizens living in developing worlds and most importantly those that face brutal authoritarianism at the hands of their government which tends to control their money and how they use it.”
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