Barkauf
SailfishOS app, the first Bitcoin wallet for the system to support Lightning, built entirely from scratch using the native SailfishOS SDK. Supports onchain, ark, lightning, scanning, NFC tap to pay, notifications, mempool accelerator for stuck transactions, VTXOs refresh, and a native user interface that features almost all the most important features of a Bitcoin wallet.
Payments are already gatekept heavily; you can‘t hook into Google Wallet and add a card that speaks Bitcoin over NFC and work with the magic “tap to pay”. There are thousands of different things you can’t do; some of them you don‘t even notice. Ever noticed how the Clock app on iPhone shows the current time? That’s a private API. Camera app? It works because there is an if statement in the kernel that gives it special memory permission. AI integrations in Xcode? First-party extension - you can‘t create your own. Web browser? Sorry, only Apple can make a web browser engine.
We don’t own our technology. We owned it years ago, but now we don‘t. Sure, we can buy a ThinkPad and run only free and open-source software on it, but how many people will go out of their way to bring a laptop to pay for groceries?
Once sideloading apps is locked only for developers who pay, complete KYC, and are approved by Google - which is the last step - we already lost the bootloader unlock and essentially any permissions on our “own” devices; we will be one terms-of-service change away from self-custodial wallets getting banned. And Bitcoin falls under so many different “categories”.
It is P2P, it is 3rd party content, it is contacting custom servers, it is running in the background, it is money - all and any of these could be banned or require extra regulation to stay in the app store.
That’s why we need to fight on the other end too, not only for open finance but also for open technology in general, as one can‘t work without the other, and both of them work in favor of us - humans.
That’s why I‘ve selected a rather niche target: to offer open finance on an open platform for people who want that.
Everything needs a reform similar to the one that Bitcoin brought to the financial system. Everything needs to be more open - and no one will do that if we won’t do that ourselves.