From someone who only has a very high-level understanding of how fedimints work: I think of it as the Bitcoin version of community banks or credit unions — so basically a group of people with some kind of community or affiliation that want to pool their resources together for the benefit of the collective. In traditional banking, this would primarily mean granting loans and earning some interest on savings.

Fedimints, on the other hand, could be a way to remove the technical and financial burden of using bitcoin for a group of people who would rather trust (and possibly pay fees to) a guardian or group of guardians to do the work. It makes a lot of economic sense if you consider how much work and upfront capital it requires for an individual to self-custody on Lightning today. The value proposition here is a member gets more say and visibility into the custody of their funds in return for some trust and possibly fees. The multi-guardian model also distributes custodial risk, but doesn’t remove it entirely.

I think fedimints, if viable, could be useful for onboarding communities, both traditional and virtual, to bitcoin. I’ve even thought about how groups of musicians could set up mints so they don’t individually have to run nodes or use a handful of custodians just to try Lightning. I could see this model working for other groups of tradespeople and retailers, too.