Decentralized Sous Sous Savings

Sou Sou - a traditional rotating savings by a group of individuals with one spend per cycle of the "pot" collected by one "hand".

My mother helped grew her good savings habits (and community participation) with this system by participating in such a sou sou savings pool

Sou Sou is normally zero interest bearing with fiat currency. The "pot" (pooled funds) collected every week is awarded to a pre-allocated participant by the "manager" of the pool for the duration of the weeks matching the total number of "hands" in the pool. A manager may sometimes also be a pool "hand" as well and/or take a very small fee for the management of the pool from each pot if they have good community standing as they are trusted with all the money collected each week. 

With the use of DeFi mechanisms and banks like MELD forthcoming, as well as liquidity pools and yield farming through ErgoDEX and others in the back-end, together with on-chain governance voting mechanisms, the traditional system of sou sou can be modernised to produce this management fee by the "pot" organiser to compensate for managing the collection and distribution to "hands" each savings contribution cycle. This system can be  both a stepping stone for the unbanked or those with less trust in modern banking institution mechanisms into the digital age while also reinforcing the development of good savings habits with a traditionally proven method for teaching this as the system is used in many African and Caribbean regions and amongst their diaspora worldwide to this day.

It is hoped that not only "hand" awardees, but also common good goals can also be voted on by each "hand" in the pool through on-chain governance. This can see charitable contributions from any additional revenue generated using the backend DeFi mechanisms to then be used by the community for a shared purpose in allocating these funds. Examples in community good initiatives that could benefit could be purely charitable giving such as raising funds for medical aid to an ailing community member, or to support the funding of community sports events, or could be micro-loan driven like to community businesses that are either now starting up, or may be struggling during the Covid cycle to meet expenses depending on the "hand" proposals and votes made as they decide what would be the best use of these. The use of recognition NFTs or other on-chain incentive mechanisms can be leveraged as well here to further encourage adoption of community positive behaviors. 

Primarily though, the goal is to encourage continue good savings habits among the community while also bringing the community together towards a common good when it can make a difference. The use of identity systems like Atala Prism can keep track records for good savings committments of "hands" and "managers" (those who hold the spend rights for the sou sou wallet on chain), or since all participants have to be trusted as "hands" or "managers" initially have no history, can be used to track the history of their nominee to weight their trustworthiness by others in a "pot" before being accepted as a contributor. This is as it does indeed require some trust in "hands" who have received their "pot" to continue contributing to weekly pots until the full number of cycles have completed.

The project would start with a small circle of trusted "hands" as both project members and developers, with each "hand" moving on to add referrals to future "pots" run in parallel as the code base became more tested and secured and refined based on new member feedback to better serve community needs here. Generated staking revenue from funds held in escrow or within delegated investments not allocated to community good initiatives would be locked until such a time as the project is deemed mature and on-chain governance proposal and voting can be done to reward the project founders and participants as seen fit at this time.