Fedimint Intends to Scale BTC in the Global South
The community-owned storage protocol Fedimint wants to scale the Bitcoin network to a billion users located in the south of the world.
"Bitcoin is for billions, not billionaires," a phrase first coined by investment researcher Lin Alden, could soon become a reality, Fedimint believes.
The protocol, which aims to scale Bitcoin (BTC) and make it more private, was supported by an initial round of $4.2 million for the Fedi application.
Obi Nwosu, co-founder and CEO of Fedi, said of the "incredible group of inspiring people we work with to support their efforts to increase freedoms in some of the most oppressed regions of the world." He believes that the Fedi mobile app can solve problems related to scaling, storage and privacy.
In short, the Fedi wallet app connects users to Fedimint "federations". The Fedimint protocol (whose name comes from the words "federated" and "mint") uses multisig technology and trusted community members called "guardians".
How the "federations" of Fedimint are united. Source: Twitter
Nwosu said Fedi hopes to have the greatest impact on those "in the global south" and that the firm is "uniquely positioned to help" by planning to pay "special attention to deployment in these communities."
According to one of the community members, it is almost impossible to purchase a hardware wallet in "poor parts of the world". Hardware wallet distributors, including Ledger, ColdCard and Trezor, are not represented on the African continent, despite the fact that "Africa has the fastest growth in adoption, and Togo, for example, is among the 10 countries with the fastest adoption per capita," according to the Chainalysis report for 2021.
Volumes of P2P transactions per capita from July 2020 to June 2021.
The Fedi application can somehow solve these problems by allowing more widespread use of Bitcoin in Africa, Naburema continued:
"Fedimint solves many of our problems in one system. It offers us an additional layer of security so that the purchase and ownership of bitcoins is completely decentralized, anonymous, and also offers an additional level of ownership."
Naburema clarifies that the "federative wallet method" draws inspiration from traditional savings methods used in Africa and in the emerging markets of the Caribbean and Latin America. Known as "tontine" in French-speaking West Africa, "susu" in Nigeria or "zu-zu" in Trinidad and Tobago, these public savings tools help thousands of people plan for their future. This is one of the oldest peer-to-peer savings technologies:
"This model has helped millions of people, especially women, who have traditionally been excluded from the banking system, to finance their businesses, their children's education, and purchase real estate, among other things."
Fedimint takes a community-supported approach to financing, but uses a decentralized immutable currency, i.e. bitcoin.
"In addition, Fedimint adds an additional layer of security and, more importantly, privacy, since custodians can keep the amount they own completely confidential from others," Naburema emphasizes.
Nuru, founder of Bitcoin Senegal, a massive bitcoin adoption campaign based in the densely populated West African city of Dakar, said the community-backed Fedimint approach is a reflection of how some bitcoin enthusiasts manage nodes.
However, how groups of trusted community members called "guardians" interact with Bitcoin using Fedi remains unclear at this stage and may pose risks, he explained.:
"In this case, the guardians will have more authority than other network users, which may create problems with centralization. In addition, there may be a risk that some people will abuse their increased responsibilities."
But the head of the Fedi project did not explain exactly how these risks are eliminated. Instead, he stated that the protocol would "complement the Bitcoin and Lightning networks."
"Fedimint is a federated storage protocol that complements the Bitcoin money protocol and the Lightning payment protocol to provide a complete solution for storing, using and protecting Bitcoin on a global scale," explained Nwosu.
Storage from the community is a completely new development in the bitcoin protocol, while multi-signature (in which two or more signatures are required to move bitcoins) has been around for almost a decade.
While Africa is a clear candidate for Bitcoin scaling and community-supported promotion, Nwosu said thatLeopoldo Lopez, a Venezuelan opposition leader who co-founded the Primero Justicia political party in 2000, has also shown interest in technology. It is reported that the solution offered by Fedi can "fully meet the needs of Latin Americans."
Naburema concluded that Fedimint would be "a salvation for millions of citizens living in developing countries and, most importantly, for those who face brutal authoritarianism from their government, which tends to control their money and how they use it."
https://coin-signal.com/cryptonews/fedimint-intends-to-scale-btc-in-the-global-south/
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