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Open Conversations: Technology for Life Outside Institutions (Alisher S.)

Funding the CommonsMon, Feb 9, 2026, 12:00 AM

Most aid and fintech tools assume people have smartphones, steady internet, and formal ID. Many refugees don’t. When those basics are missing, people can’t receive aid or access their money. Alisher S. explains how refugees manage money without phones, how shared devices and trusted people fill the gaps, and why Keycard was created as an offline, self-hosted hardware wallet that works without relying on platforms or state systems. Filmed at the Funding the Commons Builder Residency, Buenos Aires, November 2025. Relevant Projects Status: https://status.app Keycard: https://keycard.tech Logos: https://logos.co Funding the Commons: https://www.fundingthecommons.io Thank You to Our Sponsors Protocol Labs: https://www.protocol.ai human.tech by Holonym Foundation: https://human.tech/ Stellar Development Foundation: https://stellar.org Drips: https://drips.network Octant: https://octant.app NEAR Foundation: https://near.foundation Logos: https://logos.co

Transcript

States are not provide what they designed for and we [music] see it for the last 300 years. So it makes sense for us for people that work in technology build our own tools and provide [music] them all that needed most. My name is Adishar. I work in status and keyart and contribute to logos and all of these project are parts [music] of institute of free technology ecosystem. Keyart is a hardware wallet.

[music] It's self-hosted. It's decentralized, very secure and private. A lot of refugees don't have phones, [music] so they can do their transactions by themselves. And this way they isolated from the aid distribution ecosystem. [music] And with this cards, uh they can go for example to NGO representative or to maybe one family member they trust [music] that have phone and they can uh make transaction and sign documents using their phone.

I learned a lot about digital life of refugees, how they live, how they survive in many in many hot [music] spots in the world in many displaced communities. It's resonated with me not only on technology level and not only on opportunity to contribute like technology but also on the personal level because uh my family and I had a very similar experience in start of the '90s when my family flee the war from Tajikistan. [music] So it gave me a lot of energy and inspiration and I started uh researching use cases collecting [music] collecting ideas collecting materials and when I saw that finding the commons making this residency I I I think I was the first one to apply. [music] So we know that that our world is not a perfect place and it's very important to when you're building to have [music] people around that altruistic and optimistic Heat. Heat.

[music]

Automatic transcript — names and jargon may be misspelled.