Free banking on Bitcoin rails — discount houses, bills of exchange, redeemable notes. In the lineage of Scotland, 1716–1845.
Block explorer · Faucet (free test coins) · Source
FreeBank is a credit-creation layer: independent discount houses post reserves on-chain, issue redeemable notes against them, and discount bills of exchange — short-dated, self-liquidating commercial credit. Solvency is enforced by consensus: reserve attestation on a cadence, redemption at par while a house stands, seniority for note-holders when it doesn't. The monetary aim is old and simple — money and credit priced by competition and backed by visible reserves, not by decree.
It runs as a Bitcoin drivechain (BIP 300/301): pegged funds come from the mainchain, security comes from blind merged mining, and exit is always by withdrawal to L1.
The sidechain was proposed and activated with these M1 values, which you can check against the blocks and the release artifacts yourself:
| slot | 130 |
| title | FreeBank |
| version | 0 |
| hash_id_1 | b293aa27b2e40dd8afa878ff16af1cde59ca7554d76e81bcb170c82b13674c89 = sha256 of freebank-0.2.2-x86_64-linux-gnu.tar.gz |
| hash_id_2 | 2e9bb4ca0d33c29b64154da4e25f393483de4f52 = source commit of the v0.2.2 release |
« verify » curl -LO https://github.com/mbdrivechains/freebank/releases/download/v0.2.2/freebank-0.2.2-x86_64-linux-gnu.tar.gz sha256sum freebank-0.2.2-x86_64-linux-gnu.tar.gz # = hash_id_1
Binaries for Linux x86-64 and macOS arm64, plus source, are on the release page. The node is a Bitcoin-Core-lineage daemon; the wallet UI lives at freebank-gui.
To follow the FreeBank signet with your own mainchain node:
bitcoind -signet \ -signetchallenge=00149048fe50778b4fee7156a5847d1d7dc1de789b3f \ -addnode=ecxfreebank.com:38333
FreeBank's own P2P listens on ecxfreebank.com:8455.
Experimental, pre-audit software. The chain runs on test coins only — deposit nothing you care about. Reserve and solvency parameters are provisional pending simulation. The signet's block signing key is held by the project; like every test signet, the chain may be reset. This page, the code, and the chain are the work of one determined operator and a tireless AI co-builder.
Problems → issues · ideas → discussions · vulnerabilities → SECURITY.md
FreeBank ☉ — MIT licensed. Unit of account: the gram of gold, redeemable in chain coin. Names on the door: bills, notes, houses. Everything else is subject to the ledger.