21 BTCFedimint
In plain words
Fedimint is an open-source protocol for federated ecash: a group of guardians jointly holds bitcoin and issues private ecash notes, so no single operator controls the funds. It connects to Lightning through gateways.
How it works
Guardians run a consensus and need a threshold (for example 3 of 4) to move funds. Users deposit on-chain or over Lightning and receive blind-signed notes, like Cashu. fedimint-clientd gives a server or an AI agent a REST API for ecash, Lightning and on-chain. Trust is spread, not removed: a colluding majority of guardians could still take the funds.
See also
- CashuCashu is an open-source ecash protocol for Bitcoin. A mint holds bitcoin and issues blinded tokens that are private, instant and can be passed around as plain text; the trade-off is that the mint is custodial.
- MultisigMultisig means a payment needs several keys out of a set, for example any 2 of 3. Losing one key, or having one stolen, does not lose the coins.
- Lightning NetworkLightning is a payment network built on top of Bitcoin. Two parties lock bitcoin in a shared channel and then pay each other instantly and cheaply off-chain; payments can hop across channels to reach anyone.
- AI agents and BitcoinAI agents are programs that do work on their own and increasingly need to pay for it: an API call, a page of data, a minute of compute. They cannot open a bank account, but they can hold a Bitcoin key and pay over Lightning in amounts far smaller than a card can handle. That is the case for why the next billion Bitcoin users may not be people. It is a strong argument with real caveats.
References
- fedimint.org fedimint.org
- Fedimint (GitHub) github.com
- fedimint-clientd (GitHub) github.com