Can I bring my own guardians into Manifold?

Bringing your own guardians is definitely something Manifold has on its roadmap. However, in its current form, Manifold fills every guardian seat from the pool of Guardian Hosts that passed Fedi Verification, and the Fedi app spreads those seats across different hosts on purpose, so that no single host holds more than one guardian in your federation. There is currently no way to hand a seat to a particular person.

Note that people in your community can still take part. Anyone with the right hardware can run the Manifold Fedimint Guardian software, become a Guardian Host, and open guardian seats of their own – but those seats will join the open pool like any other, and Manifold cannot direct them to your federation today.

Keep in mind that this only applies to federations created with Manifold. If you already run a federation whose guardians you chose yourself, nothing about it changes.

To see how the guardian set is assembled instead, read How does the Fedi app choose my guardians?