The funds go directly to the activist: Agora does not hold or route them at any time.
Agora supports silent Bitcoin payments, although few wallets implement it today.
A new Bitcoin-based system promises to make it easier for activists, political prisoners and human rights defenders to receive donations from anywhere in the world without depending on traditional banks or applications. This is Agora, a platform presented on June 2 at the Oslo Freedom Forum event, developed by the company Soapbox and promoted by the World Liberty Congress (international network of pro-democracy organizations) with the collaboration of the Human Rights Foundation’s freedom technology program.
The platform combines two technologies. On the one hand, Bitcoin, as a decentralized payment network that operates without banks or intermediaries and that no government, company or person can unilaterally close, and, on the other, Nostra communication protocol also decentralized based on public key cryptography that has no central server or entity that controls it.
On Agora, this combination fulfills a specific function: when an activist creates an account on this platform, the system mathematically derives a Bitcoin address from your Nostr private key, without the intervention of any external server, in accordance to the Agora website.
The activist controls that key and therefore controls the funds they receive (no one else can move them). According to the Agora website, at the time the account is created, the address is ready to receive donations from anywhere in the world.
The donor sends bitcoin from any wallet directly to the activist’s Bitcoin address, which Agora presents as a QR code on the campaign page. The platform ensures that it does not retain or route funds at any time.
Agora, according to the advertisementis available on the agora.spot website and on the ZapStore, a decentralized application store for Android compatible with the Nostr ecosystem.
Two ways to donate: public or leave no trace
The campaigns that activists present at Agora can include two endpointswhich are payment reception points with different privacy properties, encoded in the same QR code.
The first is a standard Bitcoin address, visible on the chain to anyone. The second follows the silent payment scheme (BIP-352)through which different and random addresses are generated every time the receiver receives a transaction with bitcoin (BTC) and He is not publicly linked to the campaign nor does he appear on donor lists.
When the donor scans the QR, your wallet detects both endpoints and automatically uses silent payments if it supports it.
For activists in high-risk environments, the distinction is relevant: a public donation on the Bitcoin network leaves a permanent and irreversible trace. However, currently, few wallets (Sparrow Wallet, Cake Wallet, and Bluewallet) implement BIP-352, which limits its practical use.
Finally, at launch, the platform includes active campaigns from organizations in Uganda, Nicaragua, Zimbabwe, Cambodia and Palestine, as well as campaigns from members of the World Liberty Congress network. The source It does not specify how many campaigns are active or amounts raised. It also does not detail whether there is any process to verify the legitimacy of the published campaigns, nor does it explain how the operation of the platform is financed. Agora is not available for iOS at launch.