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Details on existing problems & proposed solution:

Many people in the formal and informal sectors in Africa engage in Esusu (Obtaining credit) in order to pursue a specific objective such as purchasing assets, starting a business, expanding their trade or even sorting out diverse bills. They often resort to Esusu since they find it hard to obtain loans from banks, however, there is no way of obtaining credit through this traditional means without TRUSTING, KNOWING participants or RISKING capital, hence many are discriminated against joining these traditional credit unions or accessing credits

The solution we proffer is decentralized access to credits without risking capital via crowd-staking powered by Cardano smart contract. Here, any user will be able to set the conditions and constraints.

Why build a solution around savings?

Saving is synonymous with foresight. Its importance lies in the possibility of having money for emergencies or unforeseen expenses that may arise in the future, it represents a surplus in the future. There will be good and bad times, that is why saving is vital to have a healthy economy throughout life.

savings = income - expenses.

Despite the emergence of formal micro-finance institutions, these traditional credit cooperatives are still very popular among religious groups, rural & urban communities, market-places, the informal and formal sector.

Well-invested financial savings can provide an interest that helps to maintain the value of what is saved over a period of time. This interest usually varies according to the risk and the official interest rate set by central banks.

Higher risk can provide higher interest, but there is also the danger of losing part of what has been saved.

Why build a solution with the Crowd-Staking Mechanism?

Crowd-staking leverages the Cardano staking mechanism and smart contract to eliminate the problems currently experienced with using the traditional Esusu/Ajo system. Problems like trusting & knowing participants, decrimation and risking capital.

Saving is more convenient and credit obtainment is risk-free than it would be in the formal financial system or the traditional system like Esusu. Cardano's staking is an excellent mechanism that can be applied to these types of savings finances.

Develop a crowd-staking savings and financing mechanism using Plutus SCs and deliver it to local communities through a mobile wallet for underdeveloped countries without access to the traditional financial system, with a special focus on Africa.

Detailed solution to the problem:

A decentralized, smart-contract powered implementation of defi credit union; a proprietary, improved model of traditional African cooperative (Ajo/Esusu system), that gives access to cash advance without risking capital.

More details on the solution:

• Term Definition

CSG - Crowd Stake Group

• Description

An investment vehicle in Thrift wallet which advanced the Esusu cooperative system; It allows a predetermined number of savers to contribute a constant or equal amount to a CSG, within a set duration for rewards.

Stake pool rewards from the CSG pool are bundled together to reward one random contributor in the CSG at a time (weekly, fortnightly, monthly or bi-monthly), till all contributors are rewarded. Once all contributors are rewarded, the Time locked contributors capital is released to the contributors, unless they unanimously commit their funds to the same CSG for another cycle.

Why is it good to concentrate rewards on one individual each time?

Advantages of obtaining more capital at a specific time. Savers looking to grow capital to solve their problems or collect faster cash advance without risking their capital.

Any user should be able to set the conditions and constraints in terms of contributors, duration and total amount required.

Example:

A saver initiates a crowd stake group (CSG) which will be broadcasted within the Thrift Network (Wallet owners), with the following conditions: CSG will last a month, 4 contributors are allowed and 500 ADA is required to participate.

After the First week: Contributor A will take rewards of participant B, C and D.

Second week: Contributor B will take rewards of participant A, C and D.

Third week: Contributor C will take rewards of participant A, B and D.

Fourth Week: Contributor D will take rewards of participant A, B and C.

Then the CSG is dissolved and contributors can take their capitals out from the pool.

NOTE: The participants to receive rewards are selected randomly by the algorithm and contributors can only receive rewards once in a Crowd Stake Group cycle.

Listen to our interview with Cardano Source podcast

https://share.transistor.fm/s/556788ca

The Roadmap:

1 month

Start development of the smart contracts to support the Crowd-Staking mechanism, with the necessary logic for generating the token and managing the delegation process and distribution of rewards.

3 months

Start testing Plutus Smart Contracts.

Have a working MVP version of the Crowd-Staking mechanism.

Deploy and end2end on the testnet network.

Design partner models for stake pool operators.

Progress Demo:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R6gs_smTfmw&t=91s

Adoption:

Stake pools feedback:

Crowd Stake contracts allow the concentration of different stake sources to jointly delegate to a specific stake pool.

This union empowers the decision of the participants, since the total amount collected will drive the chosen stake pool, in the same way that the users themselves benefit from carrying out this activity together, the stake pool will benefit from these practices.

As part of the project, a partnership plan with single stake pool operators will be designed. Thus supporting and boosting the most needy stake pool businesses.

In the case that a contract does not reach a significant stake, partners with larger stake will be used to try to maximize rewards.

Local adoption:

Support for local languages that drive the use of the decentralized savings system with Cardano through mobile devices.

Blocking problem and evidences:

The connection between mobile applications and smart contracts requires libraries compatible with languages such as Java and Swift.

These libraries take longer to implement, so we will first see the connector available for web applications.

The final integration of smart contracts to put the mobile savings system into production will depend on the availability of the PAB (Plutus Application Backend) implementation by IOHK and, subsequently, adapted by the dcSpark connector .

Future plans:

• Integrate Crowd-Staking mechanism with the Thrift Wallet.
• Fully functional personal finance wallet; monitor, budget, plan, understand and make informed financial decisions.
• Aggregated Lending.
• P2P Crypto to fiat exchange and vice versa.
• Crowd-funding vetted projects (DAO).
• Utility bill payments.

Desired outcome:

Smart Contracts: Plutus Developers = 9 000 USD

Legal registration and licenses = 200 USD

-> Total: 9 200$

Timeline:

6 months development since the time funds are received.

The Team:

Project Manager & Growth Hacker: Odosu Josiah is an active member of the Cardano community, Plutus Pioneer, Founder of Thrift.finance, founder of two businesses on ground in Nigeria focused in bridging IT and e-commerce gaps for local businesses with previous experience in the banking sector (GTBank).

https://www.linkedin.com/in/cjosiah/

Plutus Smart-Contract and Back-end Developer: Greg Nwosu is a Plutus pioneer, pro programmer with over 19 years experience using various languages, including Haskell in diverse fields like the banking sector, machine learning, advertising and marketing. He is a Big Data and infrastructure engineer for Barclays and RBS and senior Java developer for IG Index exchange.

https://www.linkedin.com/in/greg-nwosu/

Business Intelligence Analyst: Fola Ijaiya is a business intelligence analyst, he has 5 years experience in business intelligence, IT and finance space, currently contracted as a B.I Analyst with a team involved in finance. He has been in the crypto-currency space since 2017.

https://www.linkedin.com/in/adefolajuwon-ijaiya-481b9b1a5/

Wallet Developer: Jaime Caso Onzain is the founder of C64 wallet, Cardano ambassador, Cardano stake pool operator (BOOST), full-stack developer, Emurgo Academy alumni, genesis founding member & tester for Mina protocol and a blockchain developer at Ardana.

https://www.linkedin.com/in/jaime-caso/

​​Intellectual property: Open source

Project Links: https://linktr.ee/thrift.finance

References:

https://www.researchgate.net/publication/316847980_The_Rise_of_Financial_Services_in_Africa_An_Historical_Perspective_The_Importance_of_High-Impact_Entrepreneurship

https://qz.com/africa/1392527/africas-ancient-practices-are-being-digitized-for-the-future/

https://www.afdb.org/fileadmin/uploads/afdb/Documents/Project-and-Operations/Financial_Inclusion_in_Africa.pdf

https://sustainabledevelopment.un.org/content/documents/2655SDG_Compendium_Digital_Financial_Inclusion_September_2018.pdf

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0305750X12000496

https://www.researchgate.net/publication/322818490_Esusu_-_Global_Encyclopaedia_of_Informality