Import trust. Don’t manufacture it.

The problem we started from

The structures that actually deliver mutual support exist on every continent under different names — chamas and harambee circles in Kenya, stokvels in South Africa, susus in West Africa and the Caribbean, tandas in Latin America, hui in Chinese communities, giving circles and alumni funds everywhere. Nearly all of them run on a WhatsApp thread, a paper ledger and one overworked treasurer. Open social networks have scale without trust; real circles have trust without tooling.

Tyknit’s founding idea is that nobody needs to create trust between strangers. The trust already exists. What it lacks is a record that cannot be quietly edited, a fair way to admit and remove people, and a way to ask for help that remembers who showed up. Every mechanic in Tyknit either imports trust (vouching, vetting, probation) or protects it (staked recommendations, visible standing, an append-only ledger, secret ballots).

The rules we will not break

• Tyknit never holds your money. Contributions settle on the circle’s own rails — M-Pesa, bank, cards through Paystack, UPI, Pix, SEPA, cash. We are the ledger, not the bank.
• Belonging is free, forever. Joining, participating, asking for help, receiving help, introductions, vouching and chat are never charged. Circles pay for infrastructure — reports, reminders, storage — never for trust.
• No feeds, no followers, no strangers. Members join only through another member’s vouch. There is no public score and no leaderboard.
• Platform staff cannot read your circle. Chat, asks, ballots and statuses are closed to us by access rules; side chats are end-to-end encrypted so even the rules are not the only protection.
• Compassion flows are free. Medical, bereavement and emergency fundraisers carry a 0% platform fee, always.

Who builds Tyknit

Tyknit is built and operated by Eagmark, a software company that builds tools for the communities people already belong to — circles, cooperatives, associations — wherever in the world they are. Tyknit is the part of that work aimed at the circle you already belong to. The product is designed with founding circles — chamas, stokvels, family and diaspora groups using it every week on several continents — rather than for a hypothetical user.

We are early: the web app is live at app.tyknit.net, the Android app is on Google Play, the iOS shell is in preparation, and the founding circles are on Tyknit free while the product is shaped around them. If you run a circle and want to be one of them, write to us.

Where the words come from

“Tyknit” is tight-knit, said the way it is heard. A circle where everyone was vouched for by someone with skin in the game stays tight-knit at any size. The wordmark’s trailing thread is the only knitting you will ever see in the product.