To my ignorant eyes, it seems like this uses nostr a connective layer to connect a user's account on a chat app like WhatsApp to lightning or to other npubs or to a webclient. I'm certainly not qualified to evaluate whether it's very secure, but it sure looks cool.
Why Beacon?
On the island of Pharos the Ptolemies lit a beacon that turned Alexandria into the nerve-centre of the ancient world, guiding mariners safely into the port of liberty, knowledge and freedom. With free acess to information we can find our own solutions and build our own freedom. The library of Alexandria once represented this freedom but was lost to time. The goal of the project is to relight a similar flame on the internet. To take closed, controlled networks and guide people towards free information, free networks and freedom money.Wherever a handset can send a text, Beacon can deliver knowledge, coordination, and untraceable freedom money. The tower is gone; but the light will remain.Beacon is intended to be an open protocol to allow communities to offer access to freedom tech, with no on device install and minimal barrier to entry inside applications you already use.
Purpose
The purpose of beacon is not to be "the wallet to end them all" it is to provide a pragmatic entry point.It was born out of an initial frustration of trying to deliver sophisticated apps in places where the regular user couldn't afford internet, the internet was bad when they did have it, smartphones barely existed and the only single thing that ever worked reliably was WhatsApp.Turns out Zuckerberg already pays for subsidized access to a limited, controlled pastiche of the internet. so lets put some freedom tech in it.