Bonafide Foundation
Our plan to move stewardship of the Bonafide protocol to a non-profit.
Why a foundation
A protocol that one company controls still has the "trust me" problem. Part of the ethos behind this technology is that we need to move past that kind of trust relationship.
Bonafide Technologies Inc. is the sole steward of the specification today. We intend to transition stewardship of the spec to a non-profit Bonafide Foundation.
What it would do
- Hold the specification on behalf of everyone who builds on Bonafide.
- Run the change process with broader, more formal participation. Today review and final decisions are internal to Bonafide Technologies. We will post every submission, discussion, decision, and rationale publicly, but we don't have the resources for an outside review board.
- Publish and maintain domain specifications. When a developer creates a new domain, it's shared back through the Foundation so others can build with it and the ecosystem doesn't fragment.
- Make sure the protocol outlasts any single company, including ours.
Where this stands
The Foundation doesn't exist yet. The transition depends on finding sponsors and donors to fund it. Maintaining and evolving a protocol takes more than a small company can sustain alone, and a Foundation is how that scales and stays true to its mission.
Until then, we remain responsible for how the change process runs, including the final decision on every proposal, and for two public commitments: router federation and the handshake key fix, both planned for the end of 2026.
Support the Foundation
We're looking for sponsors and donors. If you'd like to support an open and neutral protocol like this, we'd like to hear from you. Get in touch →