By Alexander Chiejina
Fedi Inc., a firm that empowers people to collaborate within their communities to take control of their money, their data, and their digital lives while driving community-empowering financial and data technology, said it has raised $17 million in a Series A round of financing, and is set to pre-launch an Alpha version of Fedi for builders later this month.
Obi Nwosu, chief executive officer of Fedi said: “We are excited that with so much interest in this round, we were able to select investors who are fully aligned on the future we are trying to create with Fedi, the world’s first federated operating system.”
Fedi aims to be the world’s first federated operating system. It will empower individuals to collaborate through “federations”—made up of friends, families, neighbours, nonprofit organisations, social clubs, businesses, conferences and other forms of community—to take control of their money, their data, and their digital lives while still protecting user privacy and autonomy. It provides a resilient, privacy-protecting, and simple way for people who don’t have access to or don’t trust centralised alternatives to secure and use their data and money.
Because Fedi is built on the open-source Fedimint protocol, it makes it easy for developers to build additional apps and modules to complement Fedi’s offerings and give more options to users.
“The Bitcoin community already knows the tremendous potential of the protocol,” Nwosu said. “But what’s most exciting about Fedi is that you don’t have to be an existing Bitcoiner, or even particularly tech-savvy, to quickly start using this to solve real problems within your community.”
The financing round was led by Ego Death Capital, with participation from TBD, part of Block, Kingsway, Trammell Venture Partners, and Timechain. The Series A brings the total amount raised by Fedi to $21.21 million. Earlier seed round investors included Ten 31, Hivemind, Steve Lee, and Recursive Capital. Fedi is led by Nwosu, who co-founded the company with Eric Sirion and Justin Moon.
Fedi gives the world a scalable and secure alternative to third-party cryptocurrency exchanges, cloud backup services, and encrypted messaging apps. Initially Fedi will focus on a few core functions like securely storing and transacting bitcoin; protecting and utilising your data; and communicating securely with friends, family, and coworkers. But the underlying technology is readymade for rapid expansion, and can be adapted to do virtually all of the other things you currently use your smartphone or your computer to do.
Built on top of the powerful Lightning Network, Fedi scales bitcoin and provides a way in for vast numbers of potential adopters around the world who can’t access or don’t want third-parties to hold their money or their data. Fedi’s community or “second-party” custody model answers the security, privacy, and trust deficiencies of these alternatives, bringing users benefits similar to self-custody without the technical or financial barriers to entry.
“Bitcoin offered a truly decentralised currency. Lightning offered truly decentralised payments for bitcoin. And Fedi is offering a truly decentralised and federated way not only to custody bitcoin, but to take back control of everything that matters in your digital life,” said Jeff Booth, cofounder of Ego Death Capital and lead investor for this series. “It’s hard to overstate what this combination of technologies makes possible, and while I expect Fedi to be at the forefront, I’m just as excited by what people are going to build around it. It is truly something that can bring value and a brighter future for billions of people”.
Fedi changes the equation for people and nonprofits living and working in the world’s most challenging environments.
Both Fedi and the open-source protocol on which it is built were originally created for communities facing poverty, oppression, and loss of financial autonomy. Those communities will be important early adopters of the product, giving them a means to overcome the forces and dysfunctional systems currently limiting their agency.
“Empowering communities everywhere is our first and most important goal,” said Nwosu. “The idea is that any community with a handful of smartphones and a few members with basic technical literacy could secure and use money and data anywhere in the world, no matter their starting point. It’s about levelling up humanity.”
Some of Fedi’s early use cases include managing remittances, savings, and microlending for disadvantaged communities and the nongovernmental organisations (NGOs) that work with them. Fedi offers new ways of thinking and organising for businesses, affinity groups, and temporary communities
The way Fedi is built makes it equally valuable for businesses, nonprofits, and any affinity group built on mutual trust and common goals. One possibility, for example, could be “event-based communities” like conferences or festivals, whose organisers want a common platform to facilitate commerce and community over the course of an event limited in time and space.
Fedi Alpha will pre-launch for the builder community, setting the stage for a wave of innovation. Nwosu teased Fedi Alpha, a version aimed at the builder community to be rolled out later in May, promising additional details in the coming weeks.
“We are still finalising details, but we’ll have a pre-launch for builders or pioneers to create their own federations or to play with a test federation inside of the product. We anticipate a high level of interest, and we’re super excited to see what the developer community will create,” Nwosu said.
