Civkit, a project trying to revitalize the global peer-to-peer economy, has announced the release of its first alpha version after more than a year of custom development. The protocol aims to enable peer-to-peer trading in a decentralized manner, eliminating the need for a central order book. The design is built around Nostr and Lightning, with a reputation system at its core.
A team of anonymous developers, led by Nicholas Gregory (Commerceblock, MercuryLayer), are working behind the scenes to bring this vision to life. “The project is funded by people in the Global South,” says Gregory. “Much of the work has involved understanding their actual needs rather than imposing our assumptions.” “Ray Youssef and Nunes have provided funding to some developers, including one who lives in the Global South, allowing us to test areas where this solution is needed most.”
Civkit Node provides a user interface for creating P2P trade orders. You can use this to create buy/sell orders for peer-to-peer trades, pay waiting invoices, chat with a trading partner, confirm receipt of banknotes to release payment, raise disputes (in the chat app), and view other trade orders. .
Using a custom Nostr event type, CivKit allows requests to be shared between Nostr relays that accept these types to create a global request log. The escrow system returns BOLT11 invoices, with 5% of the trade amount locked in a reservation invoice that is released when the trade is completed. A URL is provided to access the encrypted chat, which includes basic dispute features.
The team expects to release the alpha version of the Civkit reputation system within two weeks. Next, the focus will shift to unifying the order book and escrow with Fedimint, and then integrating eCash support.
“This is a very ambitious project that still has a long way to go, but it is exciting to see our first tangible results,” Gregory adds.
