The Foundation for Interwallet Operability (FIO)

The Foundation for Interwallet Operability (FIO) is an industry consortium founded by Luke Stokes, consisting of leading wallets, exchanges, crypto payment processors, and various other entities and community members dedicated to the pursuit of blockchain usability through the FIO Protocol.

The Foundation was founded by Luke Stokes and includes a Board of Directors that consist of multiple industry leaders.

Luke Stokes founded the Foundation for Interwallet Operability with other personalities in the crypto and blockchain space to realise his vision of making them a mechanism for global non-violent consensus.

The FIO is to operate as a Decentralised Autonomous Consortia (DAC), guided by the community and blockchain ecosystem. FIO encourages everyone to participate in helping define the FIO Protocol and to provide feedback on how to improve blockchain usability.

The FIO Ecosystem consists of wallets, exchanges, crypto payment processors, various applications, and even the support of protocols. FIO Members are a specific group of FIO Ecosystem participants that have chosen to dedicate specific resources and commitments towards the FIO Protocol.

The FIO Protocol runs on its own dPoS blockchain – the FIO Chain. As the internal economic driver, the FIO Token is utilised to pay for all fees necessary to write data to the chain.

While the FIO Token is necessary to utilise the FIO Protocol – users do not need to directly obtain the token, as the FIO Protocol is designed for the ability to accept indirect payments. Users can potentially pay for their FIO Protocol usage through intermediaries, including through the Foundation itself, and through using various other popular cryptocurrencies.

FIO-enabled products may also choose to pay in part, or in whole, the cost of an FIO Crypto Handle registration/renewal.

Luke Stokes explains the vision behind FIO as follows:

“We are trying to make crypto easier. Crypto is complicated. It’s hard to use and frustrating. I have been in blockchain since 2013. It was January 2013 when I first got started. I’m a Science major guy, so I get tech but I also get how often it’s engineers building tools for other engineers. Those are super frustrating. FIO is a human-readable address. They exist as NFTs.

It’s a two-part NFT. Stokes is the domain part. Luke@Stokes would be the crypto handle that I use to send and, importantly, receive crypto. We have the ability to request funds from someone, including an encrypted memo. That’s a feature that people are used to in the traditional financial world, and they don’t have it in traditional crypto. It’s send-only. We have this usability layer sitting on top of your experience.”

Team

Luke Stokes, Founder

Luke Stokes is the Managing Director at FIO, Hive Witness, FoxyCart.com, and Co-Founder of eosDAC Custodian. An early adopter of crypto and blockchain technologies, Luke Stokes strongly believes that these emerging techs can be a mechanism for global non-violent consensus.

Luke Stokes is passionate about voluntary systems of governance and has been involved in bitcoin since early 2013. He’s been a consensus witness for the Steem blockchain since early 2018 and a custodian for eosDAC, a community-owned EOSIO Block Producer and DAC Enabler, since its inception.

With a computer science degree from UPENN, he built, bootstrapped, and co-founded the shopping cart software company FoxyCart over a ten-year period and is now focused on blockchain technology as a means to create a world we all want to live in.

Luke currently lives in Puerto Rico with his wife and three children and enjoys discussing everything from philosophy, to consciousness, to voluntaryism, to love and awakening.