Company Name: And covers
Founders: Obi Nwosu, Justin Moon and Eric Serion
Date of establishment: June 2022
Headquarter Location: Fully remote control
Amount of Bitcoin in the vault: Not available
Number of employees: 27 full time employees
Website: https://www.fedi.xyz/
Public or private? private
Just a few years ago, Obi Nwosu was running Coinfloor, a long-running, successful bitcoin exchange based out of the UK. But something nagged at Nwosu. He knew he could do more with freedom technologies like bitcoin to help people around the world.
So, he and two partners founded And coversa company that recently released “Super Community App“,” as Noso calls it, “which provides an easy and private way not only to manage money but to communicate digitally and meet the different needs of communities around the world.
“We created Fedi because it solved a problem we could see,” Nwosu told Bitcoin Magazine.
“The problem was how do we empower underserved communities around the world and how do we get millions of people using Bitcoin exchanges and give them a path to move from third parties to self-custody,” he added.
“We realized that the middle ground was community. If we could find a way to empower communities — to provide an offering that was as good, or in some ways better, than the central offerings that still make up the vast majority of people, and replace them with ones that people trust more than they trust these third parties — that would be the right path. That was the initial idea, and the rest is history.”
To paraphrase Nwosu’s words, the rest is history in the making.
After more than two years of developing the Fedi super app, the company launched it on August 6, 2024. And what the app offers even in its first version is probably more than what Nwosu himself envisioned when he took on the project.
What is vid?
Fedi consists of two main components, according to Noso.
“The company has an app also called Fedi, and it has a network of local experts who can support users. We call them Fedi Order,” he explained.
The app leverages what Nwosu calls “freedom technologies” like Bitcoin, Lightning, and Nostr. It also uses Feedmint Protocolwhich enables users to share custody of Bitcoin; use the Lightning Network; and mint ecash, digital tokens pegged to the value of Bitcoin, fiat currencies, or other assets that are used to maintain privacy in transactions.
In addition, it allows users to send messages privately and has other functions, features and even other applications within the app – hence the term “superapp”.
“You don’t have to install multiple apps to get things done,” Noso explained. “(With Fedi), you have one app and you can, in one place, do all the different tasks you need to do.”
Imagine having WhatsApp, Twitter, and Venmo in one app. That’s what Fedi offers, albeit in different, more free-spirited, tech-driven versions of messaging, social media, and payment apps.
However, since some of this technology is new and difficult to use — particularly Bitcoin, Lightning, and ecash mints — Fedi offers community support via the Fedi Order, made up of “Fedi Knights,” which act as a “decentralized bar of geniuses,” according to Nwosu.
“If you have an iPhone and you’re having a problem with it, you can go to an Apple Store and go to the Genius Bar and someone with the knowledge can help you solve that problem,” he said.
“We wanted to replicate that feeling,” Noso added. “That’s what Fedi Order does. They provide real-world community support, which is what you need if you want to take Bitcoin beyond expert or enthusiast users.”
This type of support is especially useful for Fedi community guardians.
Guardians and Federal Custody Form
To accomplish Fedi’s initial plan — to help move bitcoin from exchanges to the self-custody of its owners — the company uses a federated custody model, or a multi-signature setup where multiple “custodians” hold the keys to bitcoin funds.
Community members choose people to be guardians, and these guardians manage the Fedi program together so that trust is distributed among them. They are also responsible for keeping the community’s bitcoin and minting cryptocurrency. Together, guardians form a federation, a custody model with no single point of failure.
“Each guardian is individually trustworthy, otherwise they would not be in those roles,” Nwosu said.
“The fact that you need two out of three or three out of five (to sign off on transactions) increases your credibility dramatically,” he added. “We see this way of working in organizations, corporations, governments, the military, and families over and over again.”
You can add more guardians to increase the level of redundancy and flexibility.
Guardians will also make decisions for their community regarding how to use the various modules, or “mods,” that Fedi offers.
“The modules are a way to upgrade their Fedi system with (more) capabilities,” Nwosu said.
For context, all Fedimints come with three modules: the Bitcoin module, which provides federal access to Bitcoin; the Lightning module, which provides communities with access to the Lightning Network; and the mint module, which gives users the ability to mint cryptocurrency.
Noso noted that there are also additional units, one of which is the Stabilization Assembly Unit, which provides what Fedi calls “stable equilibrium“For the origins.”
Using the stable equilibrium feature, communities can peg their Bitcoin to the value of fiat currency, or the value of another asset — a feature that is especially important for communities that may not want to tolerate Bitcoin’s volatility.
“As long as there is a price feed between Bitcoin and the asset, it is possible to create a stability pool to provide price stability for the asset,” Nwosu explained.
“It might be in US dollars, it might be in local currency. It might be in gold. It might be in Tesla stock. Different people will use it in different ways,” he added.
Open Source Fedi
One would think that a company that took the time to build a breakthrough app would want to keep that code a secret.
But not my video.
The company plans to make its code freely available—code that’s already publicly reviewable. Part of the organization’s motivation for doing this is to gain more trust from the communities it serves, but it also has two other notable reasons for taking the step.
The first is about the company’s philosophy.
“First and foremost, philosophically, our number one goal is to build a tool that takes the best of the freedom technologies out there and combines them into one tool,” Nwosu explained.
“We believe that privacy and reliability are really important to a lot of people when it comes to something that deals with your communications, your money, and more,” he added. “The only way to ensure that at the highest level is for Fedi itself to eventually become open source.”
Another major reason has to do with following the trend in Bitcoin and the broader technology space.
“The second part is that we are part of the freedom technology community and the bitcoin community,” Nwosu said.
“Five years ago, the idea of open source (code) seemed really strange, if not crazy, to an organization like us,” he added. “We expect that in five years, it will be crazy to have closed source software, and we are seeing that shift.”
“This is the future – we are just moving towards it.”
In a world where it will be much easier to replicate apps, Noso is not afraid that potential Vidi imitators will outdo the company’s offerings.
“We realized that the things that will always have power are the network effects and the human elements of your business,” Noso said. “So we built a business model that really leverages human networks, which is not easy to replicate.”
Global adoption
Although Fedi is currently focusing most of its efforts on the Global South — which includes regions such as Africa, Latin America and Southeast Asia — it has its sights set on eventually being used by “everyone, everywhere,” according to Noso.
However, the company is starting with the Global South because it plans to meet the needs of those who are often considered last on the list first, which will help it meet the needs of everyone.
“When you look at the user and need pyramid, if you focus on the top percentage of users, it’s very difficult for you to go down to a group of users who may have fewer resources and fewer assets,” Nwosu explained.
“If the car you’re making is a Ferrari, it’s very difficult to make that car for everyone. But if the car you’re making is a Volkswagen Golf, it’s very easy for anyone who can afford more than a Volkswagen Golf to keep using a Volkswagen Golf,” he added.
“By focusing on some of the most underserved communities, you end up with a product or tool that is useful to everyone, as opposed to products or tools that are useful to (only a subset). When you target broadly, you should try to reach as broadly as possible, which means we start focusing on people we wouldn’t normally focus on first, but rather last.”
Additionally, people have difficulty managing and using their bitcoins around the world, and Fedi’s approach of providing human support to its users will help bitcoin do what it was designed to do, which is act as a peer-to-peer electronic currency.
“You can’t solve this problem with software alone,” Noso said. “If you want people to use this medium of exchange, you have to solve this problem with software and humans.”