The text below is a direct excerpt from Marty’s Bent issue 1193: “I’m very bullish on Chaumian Mints.” Subscribe to the newsletter here.
We’ve talked about Chaumian Mints in this rag in the past, especially MiniMint (based on the FediMint protocol), and expressed how optimistic we are about the concept and the benefits it could bring to Bitcoiners in terms of confidentiality and scalability. Well, we meet here in this dark corner of the internet to reiterate our optimism about the project and to provide you with an update from the folks working on the protocol.
Above is a timestamped YouTube video that begins with a keynote from Obi Nwosu outlining why he believes FediMint can provide the open source Bitcoin ecosystem with the missing third pillar of the decentralized stack: custody. The Bitcoin base layer provides an open-source, distributed, and censorship-resistant settlement layer. The Lightning Network provides a distributed, censorship-resistant second payment layer. FediMint, if successful, could provide the stack with an open-source, distributed, and censorship-resistant custody layer.
FediMint achieves this by creating a Chaumian Mint that allows technically competent managers of a given community to easily create a multi-signature federation to process transactions from less technically competent community members. Members of the Federation do not know who enters or leaves their Mint and they cannot tell who transacts there. It is impossible to target and censor specific individuals taking advantage of a mint hotel. These are just a few of the benefits that come with Chaumian Mints.
I highly recommend freaks check out Obi’s talk and the panel with Eric Sirion and Casey Rodarmor led by Aaron van Wirdum that follows. Very high signal for forty minutes.