ILF Ambassador Gavin Chait is a passionate advocate for financial inclusion. With Hop Sauna, he is developing a core technical platform that enables developers to create federated, community-managed web shops that offer customised digital objects of their design.

At the core of Hop Sauna is the idea of community-moderated commerce. This is a bold step towards establishing a more inclusive and diverse e-commerce landscape.

Gavin’s journey towards developing software for financial inclusion began in 2015, after he wrote his first novel, intending to self-publish it. He soon realised that existing platforms weren't suitable for his needs.

"I built the first version of a self-publishing web app where you could read the book with a minimal interface," he says.  The challenge with selling books and short-form stories online is that micropayments still incur high minimum transaction fees. Gavin continued to grapple with these issues, and when Grant for the Web was launched in 2020, he saw an opportunity to rebuild. However, he encountered new barriers, such as the requirement for users to "earn" content by spending time on the site. Paying to read a novel by the word is not something anyone wants.

These experiences highlighted the two main challenges of building a web shop: high transaction costs and difficulty attracting users. Gavin realised that centralised platforms, despite their large user bases, don't provide significant added value. Instead, these platforms create a gravitational pull that's hard to escape. This insight sparked his interest in exploring the opportunity of federated platforms for creators.

Gavin envisions a community-focused commercial platform that enables creators to connect more meaningfully with their audiences. "Hop Sauna is about reimagining e-commerce and social media. We're taking a step back to reconsider how these platforms can be rebuilt in a federated and community-led way. Ultimately, this will benefit both creators and their customers," he explains.

In Gavin's vision, communities would set up their own creator spaces running software built on Hop Sauna, moderate their own content and establish their own rules. "Imagine every Amazon seller 'shop' being a different website," he says. "Just as Mastodon and ActivityPub-based social media sites connect and interact invisibly and seamlessly, web shops could operate similarly, as if they are one place joined by interoperable interactions." These websites would be communities of creators with shared interests, such as a group of African science fiction writers.

This would enable communities to maintain independence while interacting with others. Diversity would arise naturally, since instead of one centralised company algorithmically deciding on a common “culture”, communities would each express their own independent creativity. The outcome would be a more inclusive and diverse e-commerce experience. Each community could also decide on their own approach to releasing new work. "Our rules could be that we don’t permit anything to be sold on our site until at least one other member of our community has reviewed that product,” adds Gavin.

Gavin points out that current e-commerce platforms are restrictive and often exclude certain groups due to monopolisation. He states that these platforms prioritise algorithmic promotion over community-driven discovery. "Monopolisation of the distribution platforms means that if Amazon doesn’t serve Uganda, for example, then Ugandans can’t sell on Amazon," he notes.

Hop Sauna's federated architecture would promote greater autonomy and cultural relevance for local communities. And Open Payments and Interledger are core to this. “Open payments financial services are completely interoperable, so if African creators need to use mPesa or mobile money, and European buyers want to pay with their credit cards, then each can still trade without worrying,” he says. This combined federated discovery and payment stack allows each community to cater to their specific needs without losing access to the world.

This model would also help communities respond more effectively to bad actors while being flexible and open to new entrants.  "What Hop Sauna enables is both access and equity," says Gavin. "Access, because open payments allow Africans to trade with the same market access as anyone else, and equity because peer communities can collectively decide to exclude bad-faith actors and preserve their independence."

Gavin hopes Hop Sauna will become an incubator for new ideas about economic interactions. His ambition for this initiative is sizeable. He aims to bring together a group of African authors to enhance their visibility and sell their work. "I hope to collaborate with other self-publishing authors and create more independent, community-driven publishing imprints, all federated and aligned with the same ethos," he states.

The long-term viability of Hop Sauna is crucial for Gavin. He sees it as an extension of Mastodon, the "commercial" aspect of social media. "Sustainability is more than money. It means that other developers start contributing to it, adapting it, copying it, and changing it," he says.