Company Name: Fedi
Founders: Obi Nwosu, Justin Moon and Eric Sirion
Date Founded: June 2022
Location of Headquarters: Fully remote
Amount of Bitcoin Held in Treasury: N/A
Number of Employees: 27 full-time staff members
Website: https://www.fedi.xyz/
Public or Private? Private
Just a couple of years back, Obi Nwosu was running Coinfloor, an effective, long-running bitcoin exchange, out of the UK. But something annoyed Nwosu. He understood that he might be doing a lot more with freedom innovations like Bitcoin to assist individuals around the globe.
So, he and 2 partners established Fedi, a business that’s just recently launched a “community superapp,” as Nwosu calls it, that offers a simple and personal method to not just to handle cash however to interact digitally and satisfy the various requirements of neighborhoods worldwide.
“We created Fedi because it solved a problem that we could see,” Nwosu informed Bitcoin Magazine.
“That problem was how to empower disempowered communities around the world and how to get millions of people that were using [bitcoin] exchanges and give them a path to go from third parties to self-custody,” he included.
“We realized that the middle ground was community. If we could find a way to empower communities — to provide an offering which was as good, or in some ways better, than the centralized offerings that are by far still the [custodians that the] vast majority of people use, [and replace them with] parties who individuals trust more than they trust these third parties — that would be the path. That was the beginning idea, and the rest is history.”
To a little change Nwosu’s words, one may state that the rest is history in the making.
After over 2 years of establishing the Fedi superapp, the business took it survive on August 6, 2024. And what the app provides even in its very first version is possibly more than even Nwosu himself imagined when he carried out the job.
What Is Fedi?
Fedi the business has 2 primary parts, according to Nwosu.
“It has the app, also called Fedi, and it has a network of experts who are local and can support users,” he discussed. “We call them the Fedi Order.”
The app leverages what Nwosu describes as “freedom technologies” like Bitcoin, Lightning and Nostr. It also uses the Fedimint procedure, which makes it possible for users to share custody of bitcoin; make use of the Lightning Network; and mint ecash, digital tokens pegged to the worth of bitcoin, fiat currencies or other properties that are utilized to protect personal privacy in deals.
Beyond that, it lets users send out messages independently and has other performances, functions and even other apps within the app — thus the term “superapp.”
“You don’t have to install multiple apps to get things done,” discussed Nwosu. “[With Fedi,] you have one app and you can, in one place, do all the different things you need to do.”
Imagine having WhatsApp, Twitter and Venmo all in one app. This is what Fedi provides, albeit with various, more freedom tech-orien variations of messaging, social networks and payment apps.
However, since a few of this innovation is brand-new and challenging to utilize — especially Bitcoin, Lightning and ecash mints — Fedi offers community assistance by means of the Fedi Order, made up of “Fedi Knights,” which functions as a “decentralized Genius Bar,” according to Nwosu.
“If you’ve got an iPhone and have a problem with it, you can go to an Apple store and walk up to the Genius Bar and someone who is knowledgeable can help you solve that given problem,” he stated.
“We wanted to replicate that feel. That’s what the Fedi Order does. They provide on the ground community support, which you need if you want to take Bitcoin beyond expert users or enthusiasts,” Nwosu included.
This kind of assistance is especially beneficial for the guardians of Fedi neighborhoods.
Guardians And The Federated Custody Model
To achieve Nwosu’s preliminary prepare for Fedi — assisting to move bitcoin off of exchanges and into the self-custody of its owners — the business makes use of a federated custody design, or a multisig setup in which different “guardians” hold the secrets to bitcoin funds.
Community members choose individuals to be guardians, and these guardians run the Fedi software application together so that trust is dispersed among them. They’re also in charge of custodying the community’s bitcoin and minting ecash. Together, the guardians form a federation, a custodial design without a single point of failure.
“[Each guardian is] individually trustworthy, otherwise they wouldn’t be in those roles,” stated Nwosu.
“The fact that you require two of the three or three of five [to sign off on transactions] increases your trustworthiness significantly. We see this way of working occur in organizations, companies, governments, military and families time and time again,” he included.
“You can add more guardians to increase the level of redundancy and resilience.”
Guardians will also make choices for their community concerning how to use the various modules, or “mods”, that Fedi provides.
“Modules are a way of upgrading their Fedi with [more] capabilities,” stated Nwosu.
For context, all Fedimints included 3 modules: the Bitcoin module, which offers federated access to bitcoin; the Lightning module, which offers neighborhoods with access to the Lightning Network; and the mint module, which offers users the capability to mint ecash.
Nwosu shared that there are also extra modules, among which is a stability swimming pool module, that offers what Fedi terms a “Stable Balance” for properties.
Using the Stable Balance function, neighborhoods can peg their bitcoin to the worth of a fiat currency, or the worth of another property — an especially crucial function for neighborhoods that may not wish to stomach bitcoin’s volatility.
“As long as there is a price feed between Bitcoin and an asset, a stability pool can be set up to provide price stability to the asset,” discussed Nwosu.
“That could be USD, but it could be the local currency. It could be gold. It could be Tesla stock. Different people will use it in different ways,” he included.
Open-Sourcing Fedi
One may believe that a business that’s put in the time to construct a superapp would wish to keep that code under covers.
Not Fedi, however.
It prepares to open-source its code — code that’s currently openly auditable. Part of the company’s inspiration in doing so is to additional make the trust of the neighborhoods it serves, however it also has 2 other significant factors for taking this action.
The initially focuses on the business’s approach.
“First of all, philosophically, our number one objective is to build a tool that takes the best of the freedom technologies out there and merges them into one,” discussed Nwosu.
“We believe that for many people, privacy and being reliable is really key when it comes to something that’s handling your communication, money and more. The only way to ensure that is at the highest levels is for Fedi itself also to eventually become open-source,” he included.
The other primary factor pertains to following the pattern in the Bitcoin and wider freedom tech area.
“The second part is we’re part of the freedom technology community and Bitscoins.netmunity,” stated Nwosu.
“Five years ago, the idea of open-sourcing [code] would have seemed really strange, if not crazy, for an organization like us. Our prediction is that in five years time, it will be crazy to be closed-source, and we’re seeing this transition,” he included.
“That is the future — we’re just getting ahead of it.”
In a world where it will be a lot easier to duplicate applications, Nwosu isn’t scared that prospective Fedi copycats will eclipse what the business needs to provide.
“We realized that the things that are going to still have enduring power are network effects and the human elements of your business,” stated Nwosu. “So, we built a business model that really leverages human networks, which are not so easy to replicate.”
Global Adoption
Though Fedi presently focuses the majority of its efforts on The Global South — that includes areas such as Africa, Latin America and Southeast Asia — it has its sights set on “everyone, everywhere” ultimately utilizing it, according to Nwosu.
However, the business is beginning with The Global South since it prepares to very first satisfy the requirements of those typically thought about last, which will assist it to satisfy the requirements of everybody.
“When you’re looking at the pyramid of users and needs, if you focus on the top percentage of users, it’s going to be very difficult for you to drive down to a set of users who maybe have less resources, less assets,” discussed Nwosu.
“If the car you’re making is a Ferrari, it’s very hard to make that car for everyone. But if the car you’re making is a VW Golf, then it’s very easy for someone who can afford more than a VW Golf to continue to use a VW Golf,” he included.
“By focusing on some of the most disempowered communities, you end up with a product or tool which is useful for everybody, as opposed to useful [only for a] subset. When aiming for the widest funnel, you should try to go for the broadest reach you can, which means that we start focusing on the people who normally are not focused on first, but focused on last.”
Also, individuals are having a hard time to handle and utilize their bitcoin all over the world, and Fedi’s technique in supplying human assistance for its users will assist bitcoin do what it was developed to do, function as peer-to-peer electronic money.
“You cannot just solve this with software,” stated Nwosu. “If you want people to use this as medium exchange you have to solve a combination of software and people.”
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