[Music]
hello
Defcon hello thanks so much for joining
us uh on this very exciting panel
discussion um we're going to be talking
about exactly how web Tre is been used
in Africa today and what are the types
of Innovations people are building uh
early this week we covered uh two really
interesting threads of the impact of
crypto on one side it is plugging
African countries and economies into the
global economy that has been a hyper
globalizing impact and effect that
traditional systems have kind of failed
us and we'll hear from Founders who have
basically at the Leading Edge of that
movement in plugging payments banking
infrastructure
but also other services that we need to
live our lives uh into the broader
global economy and on the other side
there's a lot of amazing opportunities
to go even more local than where we are
going today and we're going to hear
about the hyper localization impact that
perhaps were not possible to do in this
way before blockchain Technologies
became a thing so I'm very excited to
have an amazing group of people to cover
these threads with us we're going to do
a very brief round of introductions and
we're going to jump straight into the
deep end uh jamb do you want to
introduce yourself yes my name is jambin
jog I work for Grassroots economics
Foundation been working for the
organization uh for the last six years
now I am an advocate for Community
inclusion currencies for poverty
eradication and sustainable development
super happy to be here and where are you
from I'm from Nairobi but I live in kifi
and that is also where I work nice if
you guys have never been to East Africa
kifi is an incredible place to
visit one two awesome hey everyone my
name is David Nanda I'm CEO and CTO of a
business called honey coin and Pier we
are B2B to see Financial super app and
Treasury and payments platform I'm based
out of Nairobi Kenya and like super
excited to be here and thank you for all
being in the room thank you hey everyone
uh my name is y bosi um I'm the
co-creator of onboard we're building a
borderless digital money app for people
in the global majority markets with a
universal um on and offramp Gateway that
allows anyone come on chain with Le to
last 50 cents whilst paying zero fees um
I live in um Lagos and London um but I
call myself an African onchain if you're
wondering why I'm wearing a pirate um
costume today I'm currently pirate uru
which means freedom in Swahili and
essentially um I'm spreading the freedom
of money so thanks for having me thank
you so uh David I I want to start off
with you and we just love to understand
what is the problem
that you guys are really focused on when
it comes to payments and what is the gap
that a project like yours is feeling and
and what's the scale of opportunity that
exists there yeah I know that's a really
good question I think it really like
sets the context for you know this
conversation in general like I would say
for us the main problem we're solving is
when you look at a continent any
continent you take any particular
continent Africa has over like 45 plus
countries we pretty much add addressing
the fragmentation problem and the fact
that the largest players on a financial
stack like banks are not incentivized to
solve that fragmentation problem if
anything they benefit from it right um
they benefit from the fact that someone
in Kenya cannot do business with someone
in Nigeria unless they're doing it
through them and they're going to make
sure that they they'll milk as much
value from them when that money is
moving almost as if you're traveling
physically you know to that particular
market and by solving and addressing
that fragment comption problem we
strongly believe that as we build that
plumbing which is like this pipeline
it's almost like a hyper tunnel between
different markets between different
corridors we then now actually
incentivize people to connect do
business with each other actually have
conversations on collaboration and
partnership so I see our work as
important as you know in the US during
the Industrial Revolution when they were
putting in the railroads to connect
different cities uh across States and so
on and so forth and um I think if we
succeed if we win and and why this
problem is so crucial to solve is as I
mentioned in the beginning there's very
few players who are incentivized to
solve it because their incentives lie in
the issue we see the incentives as being
much larger than the issue because when
you actually create the initial Plumbing
what you do is you open up a world of
different use cases um and and and in
different ways that people will now
start to like actually think of you know
how do I benefit and profit from this
outside of just like like I'll profit of
you having a very painful problem I like
the analogy of plumbing and railroads
those are like the Bas layer
infrastructure that everything relies on
can you like give us even more concrete
examples of why is that broken right now
like with the lack of those
infrastructures how is value moving
around and and what are the pain points
in like in real
terms yeah yeah yeah no that's a good
question as well a good followup I mean
like I think to give you guys some
context right now most banks don't even
own own the software that they're
running their banking infrastructure on
and I I'll I'll frequently use the bank
use case because even if you were trying
to build a web to fintech and your
partner was like a core Bank in X market
and they had access to all of these
different regions you're basically just
connecting to a pipe that's already
leaking and trying to see how you can
layer on an additional solution like so
uh that context the the context of why
we're in treasury why we're in payments
why we're building a super app is we
have to we're basically coming in
to in a way like not build around but
web3 and blockchain Technology gives us
the ability to give the banks to give
the licensed payment service providers
to give the licensed financial
institutions this infrastructure which
is highly scalable we can allow money to
move at the speed of the internet which
is ex extremely crucial but then also we
can in it's almost like in parallel
we're not competing with you but down
the road the the end goal is for you to
stop being our competitor it's for you
to be our customer right and um most of
the people that we work with are I
mentioned the banks the licensed fi the
licensed payment service providers
they're those people because like we
believe that initial Beach head will
create opportunities for us to like
permeate this technology permeate the
stable coin payment use cases the um
blockchain payment use cases around on
and off ramping to like the broader
majority of people in on the continent
and it starts though with the folks who
have already you know deeply embedded
themselves with what's broken within the
financial system especially on the
continent it's fragmentation one it's
you know white labeling software another
it's you know just bad you know code and
like um Legacy web to technology on the
third tier and and all of those things
is kind of like how I think we now get
to scale but we have to first start
there and that's kind of like I would
say the impact to which we're working
with these different license FIS Banks
and PSPs and Y you've been in the space
for a long period of time trying to
solve fintech before crypto and then
with crypto trying to solve payments and
like I would love to hear what are the
patterns that you've seen on the
continent so
far so I think um y have talked about
this idea of context and so I want to
help everyone level set imagine if the
US dollar lost 90% of the value or
whatever currency or Fiat that you had
so you could you had I don't know $1,000
in whatever currency and then today the
value after two years is now $100 due to
no fault of your own
or for most people they don't even have
money yet right so they can't even come
into the financial system because they
don't have any money right so if you
look at the world today over 2.5 billion
people are living on less than 50 cents
a day 2.5 billion people and these are
people that leave in global majority
markets so we're looking at like Africa
laam
um southeast Asia India and
unfortunately the world is still
broken and you know when I when I first
got into crypto I got into crypto
because I was fortunate enough to have
been part of an early exit in
2015 or
2016 um and began to support
entrepreneurs in the web2 space and what
I realized was two things it wasn't
because of talent that somebody these
ideas we in working it was primarily two
things number one was the foundational
infrastructure that we were trying to
build this Financial Solutions on were
broken it was a combination of
institutional problems it was a
combination of um sort of weak
currencies and then also policies as
well right um and when I first looked at
the blockchain I thought like wow okay
this is something that we can use to
really build Financial infrastructure
from the ground up and equalize access
to Opportunities regardless of where
you're from and so um it's been really
interesting seeing the rise of stable
coins and you know everyone now is
talking about stable coins and it's like
okay finally everyone gets it right
because you know people complicate
stable coins but I think of stable coins
as essentially putting the US Dollar on
the internet and the same way how when
you don't understand or have you're
trying to learn something you can Google
it and then you have access to that
information immediately when you do the
same thing to finance a lot of positive
things will happen and so um but yeah
that's sort of you know just a little
bit of context and you know why I've
been um building and really excited to
to contribute to this space so a few
weeks ago actually chain analysis came
out with a report of crypto use across
the world and one of the stats they put
out there that is that for uh
traditional payments to move money from
one country to another and we keep
talking about that because Africa is a
continent of 54 countries and so
whenever you're Crossing value across
any of those borders and you run into a
lot of Swift Swift and Global Financial
system challenges so if you're Crossing
value across borders I mean information
across borders very very easily right
but when value crosses
borders you're taking a 15%
haircut five that's what CH analysis put
out there um other reports that I've
seen show you know in real life it's
around 8 to 9% depending on how much
value you're going and like David just
even knowing what hinein is doing I love
to understand a bit of the the types of
customers that are coming and using your
infrastructure to plug in the global
economy because these are not like
crypto Fanatics these are not people who
are coming to defcons or crypto
conferences these are people running the
traditional economy right so can you
just share a bit about like why are they
coming to you what are they getting from
you that they're not able to get
elsewhere yeah yeah I think um and and
you know it's it's it's it's it's
literally what fuels me to keep going um
I think a larger percentage of our
customers are non-crypto non web3
companies than they are like just
traditional web3 companies um and at the
moment we're serving some of the larger
Enterprises like I'm talking um you know
traditional fmcg or like retail the
likes of bitco unior um on the banking
side of things we're working very
closely with you know the United Bank of
Africa the equity Banks um the brex say
Columns of this world um if you're in
the US as well and there the reason I
use the two partners that I mentioned
but then more so like these core
customer use cases there's businesses in
logistics who are literally moving
physical goods from Kenya to Tanzania
from Tanzania to South Africa and and
back um and and these these folks chose
us
because uh and I I like to always use
this analogy they chose us
because uh Financial infrastructure and
financial platforms were left in the
'90s in Africa and we're trying to you
know help them catch up right and to
give you context of what catching up
actually looks like before a provider
like us and there's a number of
different providers and you guys are
welcome to do your research I would have
to go to my bank fill in a physical
remittance form that's what we call it
uh just to pay for like an invoice in a
country that is probably uh 100 a couple
of 100 kilometers between each other
right that
should not exist in 2024 but it does and
and that's why a customer like them
would choose us the second reason they
would choose us is we offer kind of like
a more refreshing experience to what
they're used to in that the person
you're serving uh no the person that is
serving you um if they were an fx broker
if they were a bank if they were uh web
to fintech as well who I have nothing
against to be honest um the person
that's serving you would kind of like be
offering you a solution and it's as if
they're doing you a favor right like you
ask you know the exchange rate on Google
is this why are you selling to me
dollars at this price I'll tell you this
is the price of the day right there's
nothing you can do um and I think one of
the non-negotiable rights is optionality
as a human in general like you should
get to choose you shouldn't be told this
is what you know exists this is how life
is and so you should just go ahead and
take it um and we're giving optionality
not just from like a platform
perspective like you can use us and but
we're giving optionality on a more
deeper level in terms of like look we
are not trying to sell you the same
thing that has been sold in this market
with the tier One banks with the largest
fi largest PSPs I think back to like one
of the more you know even funnier
scenarios that it just happened to us
this week like we onboarded a payment
service provide a customer on Monday and
Tuesday they want to call it my head of
products and they were literally
pitching you know our platform to their
customers right that's the kind of like
I would say catalyst that excites me the
most because it's like this person is so
excited about what's happening with
folks like us um with the onboards with
the grassroot economics that they're
literally like I will put in front of my
customers and tell them look it's better
now or it works you know it's efficient
it's faster um and those are all very
colorful adjectives but I think the
tangibility of them is in those kind of
like very traditional customers who
would never touch crypto but if you
bring it to them in a way that actually
addresses the solution then you're
solving a major problem it's interesting
what I've heard you say is that you're
you're not saying hey like let's destroy
Banks let's recreate that you're
actually saying saying let us bring a
new value proposition that they're not
able to
do integrate with them because they have
different types of distributions but
create superpowers from money and build
on top of them and like build the
plumbing of like the Global Financial
system and I guess one quick thing I
wanted to kind of plug in there is that
when many of us keep talking about
financial service applications a lot of
folks ask what is beyond Finance what
are innovations that we should do Beyond
finance and what comes to mind for me
when you know we talk that is of course
we need to look at Beyond Finance but if
today for
example for people in
California paying something on the same
website the same project in based in
Texas if that took four
weeks and if you're paying 15% extra and
that was the case for all 50 plus states
in the US of actually moving value
between all those States was so hard and
basically if you are flying halfway on
the plane you had to change your
monetary system right like I think we'll
probably all drop everything and work on
solving that problem right that's the
problem that we're trying to solve from
financial application perspective across
Africa and the reason why we keep
focusing on it a lot is because it is
like where is it's like the the the the
the train tracks as you put it that
connects the foundation of a lot of our
economies and once we have a better
infrastructure there we can build a
whole lot of things on top of that but
we keep coming back to the base layer
which is transfer of value is because
there's fundamental problems
there and and over to you y on that like
the onboard vision is building a fully
onchain life and I'll just love to
understand a bit of how did you get to
that place and what is a what does the
world look like when once we fully
realize that
Vision yeah um I really loved the
example you gave of like the US and
Texas and all that I think it really
does help understand you know what's
happening on the ground in in Africa um
like I said earlier Talent is eily
distributed but opportunity is
not and I think that when we talk about
this idea of a global onchain e
economy what is powerful about that idea
is that it makes it doesn't make your
geography determine the quality of your
life right we want to make your location
Irrelevant in terms of the opportunities
that you have access to in terms of the
quality of financial services that I
have access to um and really building an
economy that is open that is transparent
and is meritocratic
um we actually live in the world of
abundance right it's just that you know
that abundance is not um freely spread
and that's why you have so many people
in in in in in poverty and we know the
reason why we all
feel upset and unhappy about the state
of the world today is because we know
that the current system just doesn't
work a lot of people don't have um sort
of their fair share or don't feel like
they have agency about how to change and
improve their lives and this is kind of
like what is creating a lot of the
divisions and uncertainty and
unhappiness regardless of where people
are from and so to me the the the idea
of an unin economy I know you know some
like lamos says he wants to take
Humanity to Mars and that's like an
ambitious vision and it's like okay
we're going to have rocket ships that
would take everybody to Mars and I think
like that's that's amazing but what if
you just build an actual onchain economy
that is better than what we have today
right and you know for instance I'll
give you an
example um I haven't said this publicly
but I feel a bit comfortable saying this
now like my
personal um accounts were were were
blocked um over the last couple of
months right and if there wasn't any
crypto I would have been really been in
a very bad place
right so the fact that I had stable
coins and I had my keys gave me that
agency and gave me that freedom of money
that it doesn't matter where I'm from
and even if I you know I've been in
Thailand for the last couple of weeks
I've been spending my stable coins with
a with a with a card to pay for grab and
jumping on motorcycle taxes that I've
never entered before when I go to the US
it's the same thing on Uber when I
traveled when I went to e um Brussels
was the same same thing so when when an
individual has control over their money
and is on
chain you know it doesn't matter sort of
where they are they can move spend
freely build their onch reputation you
know a lot of people in imer markets
don't have a credit score right imagine
if in the US or in Europe for you to buy
a phone you had to pay for it upfront at
once if you wanted to get a house you
have to pay for it offering at once when
to go to university before it offering
at once so actually in a lot of global
majority markets it's not that people
are poor it's the fact that they cannot
actually leverage their reputation to
get access to Capital to build future
for themselves right and so to me the
ENT economy is giving everybody access
to the same Global World Class Financial
Services giving everybody control and
freedom of their money giving everybody
control of their own unchaining
reputation think about it as a credit
score that then truly unlocks a whole
host of
opportunities and they are fully
empowered to create a better future not
just for themselves for the world around
them thank you yeah and and and I guess
the importance of that just even bring
it down to specifics in Nigeria uh
GitHub came up with the report earlier
like later last year there's about
900,000 plus uh uh open source
contributors on GitHub alone right so
the GitHub page is their resume it's not
their LinkedIn because no one will hire
like just to be very blunt people don't
like to hire Nigerians all around the
world unless they know them personally
right but stuff like that is actually
making it more meritocratic and those
guys are receiving income and salary in
what way like it is really hard to send
money from elsewhere to Nigeria like
PayPal doesn't like to work in Nigeria
stripe doesn't work in Nigeria right so
the plumbing is broken right and so this
is not just like a nce to have it's a
plan a for a whole lot of folks right so
yeah I mean and and and the other bit of
what I think what you guys are building
which is very interesting there are
quite a few like other builders doing
this is you're moving Fiat to stablecoin
and then in a self- custo or custo
wallet and then you have a digit sell
debit card they can actually use that to
spend internationally because your local
banks have a limit of how much money you
can spend how much is it in Nigeria
right now uh it's probably there was a
time when it was really bad and it was
like $20 a month $20 a month so even if
even if you had like thousands of
dollars you could only spend $20 a month
and you couldn't even go to the bank and
be like oh I have you know $1,000 or
$2,000 I want to redraw it it's like you
can't redraw that money right so
um or your your or your dollar card
won't even work on some websites you
know um just because the the the
underlying Plumbing wasn't working and
that's why people and businesses have
turned to stable coins because it it dis
intermediates it's like you as a person
you have the dollars but the financial
infrastructure is so broken that is
preventing you from connecting with the
global economy and with stable coins and
and blockchains it's like
okay Mr Bank get the F we don't need you
we're just going to connect directly to
the global economy and transact freely
um and that's kind of yeah that's the F
that's it's not even the future it's
like the future is here it's just not
evenly distributed you know so if you
guys and a whole lot of other builders
are radically successful what we're
basically doing is we are building the
plumbing for our economies to easily
integrate with the rest of the world our
location is not a
liability but it's part of who we are
it's our culture but that is not
stopping us from fully participating
contributing benefiting from the global
World let us change the gear a little
bit and come local we've got Jambi here
who's building one of the most exciting
uh initiatives uh in Kenya uh can you
tell us a little bit about how you see
the world and what what you guys are
building with Grassroots economics yes
uh thank you so much um we have been
working on a nice economic uh protocol
called commitment pulling so it's h
being it's inspired by um indigenous
wisdom so when I talk about indigenous
wisdom I mean um Traditions around mucho
Aid and mostly rotation of Labor
associations um so what we have noticed
is that it's not a New Concept it's been
there for ages and ac across um Nations
you know so like in my community we call
it muia um you know we work with Kenya
Red Cross at the refugee centers and the
somalis call it go you know the guys
from Burundi call
it and every other community in Kenya
like have a name for it so it's not new
so what you're doing as an organiz a is
really um adding you know formalizing
commitments cuz rotation of Labor really
meant making promises to help one
another and these promises are really
commitments and I'm going to give you a
good example like in a village X there's
family a family B family C so family a
will make family all the families will
make commitments to help one another and
then they're going to pull their
commitments together with uh to to bring
about exchanging and accountability with
agreed upon rules so if family a needs a
house built that means family b and c
will come and help family a so they will
fulfill their commitments you know then
family a has already accepted the
commitments so family B will do the same
they will accept commitments from family
B and see and they will get their farm
tilled so that means they have um a and
C has fulfilled their commitments to B
eventually they will balance out and
clear the debt and start over again so
um this whole uh protocol is not just
with the humans like it's across
disciplines and you know I would give
one example of the plants just to show
you how Grassroots economics is coming
in um like the maze the beans and the
Squash you know for the longest time our
ancestors have been growing them
together because of the nutrients that
they share um we see how the maze will
bring the phosphorus you know the the
beans will get the nutrient nitrogen
from the air convert it and um they
squash the potassium so the sharing is
is is made possible like how much of the
phosphorus does the squash need need so
that is made possible by the micop fangi
so now the pulling aspect is now the
micro of fangi uh what economics is
doing so these commitments Grassroots is
uh formalizing them adding technology
you know making them have a value number
one number two they have a special
signature you can't copy them number
three um there's a demor do the
deduction to make sure that um know say
circulation and also to make sure that
the holder of you know these commitments
can um Can can convert them from the
issuer of the debt you know so that's
the whole idea like grass economics you
know formalizing this and helping make a
pool where community members can put in
their commitments and pull out um what
they need you know also bringing out the
aspect of of resilience because if for
instance I do not need what you have
what you have and maybe you need mine I
can use your commitments to get
something else from the pooling yes
amazing um and can you share a bit about
the the types of commitments people are
saying hey I will do ABCD and also just
give us a bit of an indication what is
the scale of operation that is happening
in this way right now so um I'm going to
give you a good example of where I come
from um I come from kifi and uh from my
community I'm in three groups so group
one um is a group of women um the
already have you know formed a group
they have their own Vision um you know
they have their own rules a constitution
so the idea when you go to a community
is for them to understand the different
assets that are in the community for
them to understand they have a lot to
share like the you know the social
assets the financial assets the
governance assets at what level is each
one of them and how can they help one
another so you in these groups you know
we will see see that there's a person
who will have hairdressing skills uh
there's a farmer there's a person who
can teach tell stories you know they can
teach traditional songs we you know at
the end of the day there's just so much
like in kiriba kiriba is one of the
groups um there's uh cooking skills
there's you know people who can wash
clothes there are people who can teal
land there are people who can build
houses there are people who have um food
to
offer yes so that's a good example and
and so like my understanding is a you a
community is made up of around 20 people
yes and how many of these communities do
you have right now we have 120 groups in
Kenya and also Beyond Uganda
Colombia yes yeah and just give us a bit
of an indication how have people using
this over the last years like the
transactions you've had and we can talk
a little bit about the offchain and
onchain element as well yeah so in they
use the ussd wallet which is also um
connected to the web interface um so
each of these users um of the vouchers
have a wallet um and so when they're
doing the trades they normally just send
the vouchers so for instance when
they're doing the rotation of Labor the
the hosts will accept um these people to
come and work for him build a house at
the end of the day the host will pay
them with the vouchers the next time
they'll go to someone else and the
vouchers will will be paid so so there
are going to be several pools and the
pools are going to be interconnected
together uh by um having a market day
that is unique for that is common for
all the groups so that is where the
pools meet and more and more services
are exchanged yeah that's amazing so
some of us came and visited uh the
operations in kifi and we actually used
the uh ussd app is basically for future
phone so you're basically using the
telone network
to send commitment vouchers to each
other and each transaction would trigger
an onchain transaction from a wallet
that is actually connected to the phone
number of that person yeah right and did
I hear correctly there's a million
transactions have happened 1.2 million
transactions wow wow and how many people
used it so far we have
65,000 um holders and issuers of these
vouchers commitments yeah so this is
like rethinking what what is money
ultimately right money is kind of a
representation of a commitment it's a
bank note You' use money to go back and
get some value from a bank right you
guys have basically used actually defi
Primitives to
recreate like a localized money system
built with commitments and these pools
of a community connect to many other
community pools so there's basically
like we're sharing liquidity but
liquidity is not
like a dollar stable coin it is
basically actual commitments people are
making what has been the impact that
you've seen so far in how this is
changing people's lives you talked about
houses being built
like what have people been able to do
with this yeah so I'm going to give you
a good example of what I actually do and
how I get to know all the kinds of
impacts on the ground so we are also
borrowing another traditional practice
from the past you know um the idea of a
councel meeting so every time the
rotation of labor would happen and a
cycle would end the elders would meet
and discuss matters Community like what
are the issues we have like what do we
need to work towards is it a planting
season do we need a water pan you know
so that would um motivate and and also
you know decide like what kind of
activities they'll be meeting to do so
what we do we we now are doing is
identifying like a community
representative also from the community
and this is the person who is also going
to be attending some of the rotation of
Labor associations and recording the
kind of activities made like a house was
built 15 members took one hour or took
two hours you know and then so what we
do the pools also accept uh stable coins
like Coda and this is really to support
with uh communication so what you're
doing is like buying some of the
monitoring and evaluation from the from
these stewards from the community so
when we put them into the pool we put in
Prior it's production financing and then
we take the vouchers which are the
commitments or which um the offerings
the monitoring and evaluation Services
once the report is sent end of the month
um we send the vouchers back to the to
the owner you know the monitoring
evaluation Services vouchers and then
they are able now to go into the pool
and take of the cell dollar and
eventually offramp those to Fat so so to
understand the the kind of impact
created we are able to see the
transactions on the dashboard which also
relates to all the reports sent like uh
these transactions today equals to 10
houses five Farms five roads fixed and
this is from the community members so
also speaking to sustainability of this
uh project
you know so um we kind of all got
together before this panel
and when I heard and I understood what
this was it was
incredibly mindblowing and I wanted to
just add some thoughts as to why this is
really special when I got into crypto
you know one of the first things I read
was um andreas' book and it was talking
about the history of money and we talk
about the batter system now one of the
challenges with the batter system is
this notion of double coincidence of
once so even if I have I don't know
shoes and you have a shirt if I if you
don't want my shoes we can't transact so
this solution first of all solves that
problem because you you don't need to
want something in real time it's sort of
like this this commitment
the second thing that I thought was
incredibly valuable about this as well
is I talked about this idea of the lack
of credit right and how do you build
sort of unchain reputation and how do
you unlock
capital I think what is incredibly
interesting about like grass economics
and the work that you do as well is that
people who don't have money can actually
get something offered to them
on credit without them having money and
putting anything at risk so we all talk
about def Defi and things like that but
for you to get a loan on chain today you
need to have Capital so when we talk
about 2.5 billion people that are not
yet on chain and need access to
Opportunities how do you
unlock sort of those opportunities so
this is super interesting in that regard
now if you take this this idea two steps
forward and this is why I'm so excited
about what you're doing and I'll R up
quickly but number one is that because
every commitment is on
chain each of the 65,000 people now
actually have unchain reputation that
can be used as a credit score to then
actually give them real Capital into
that
Community right and in the final piece
when I think about it is a lot of
majority of
Africa almost everybody is doing sort of
like
agriculture now people small scale
farmers are farming you know um goods
and things like that that gets
transported to the
cities when the farmers sell you know
let's say maze they sell it for $1 when
it gets to the stores in the cities it's
$10 so if you're trying to create wealth
you want to sort of bridge that gap
between the sale at production and the
cost at consumption and how do you bring
that back into the
villages so for me like what you guys
are doing is is is incredible and I
can't wait to build and co-create
together I think it's it's amazing yeah
it's amazing like there's just so many
ways there's so many ways to use the
commitments um even for big businesses
like you know they create their own
vouches to act as loyalty points
uh and this is also a call for everyone
like it's it's an open you know um it's
for everyone like there's so many ways
to use the vouchers like even Market you
know like I mentioned loyalty points
yeah to make your to keep your business
going and to keep your clients coming
yeah and um so you know a lot of what
you're building is not just technology
you're
leveraging existing social
infrastructures and trust
infrastructures and can you give us a
bit of more context of where does that
come from like what are other patterns
like Chamas that you've seen where
basically social trust is the foundation
for um how we relate and interact with
each other even
economically so um first of all before
prust was really um built when
commitments were made commitments were
accepted and commitments were fulfilled
so nothing recreated same same so
they're just doing exactly what they
were doing then and really making sure
that now at least now the the the
commitments have value you know the the
can be able to know like how much of my
commitments are worth yours yeah and do
we need the blockchain for that the
blockchain for that I mean that's that's
one question someone might ask like like
why are we building with crypto on this
in your opinion uh for visibility number
one it also builds trust because you're
able to see like how many of these are
here and also you know the confidence
that I know I can get this even without
money even the people who don't have
money at that moment they are sure that
they will get what they they have you
know because it's on blockchain yeah and
actually no I was just going to actually
add to that and I think if you even look
at like how big savings groups so
they're called SOS in Kenya are right
now they're holding tens of millions of
dollars to the the point where the
government had to regulate them and I
think those kind of communities is what
just tells you like people have been
enabling and like coming together to
organize themselves to build their own
kind of like local bank and in most
cases crypto is not really required but
what crypto does is right now if you go
to asako and ask them how much can I
borrow on what is my collateral Sak
mostly work also on a reputational basis
so you have to have a garant all of
those things are incredibly manual which
which makes SOS a painful process even
while they have aom that would rival uh
most micr Finance Banks and tier 3 tier
2 banks in a country right uh bringing
it on chain is literally the you know
the secret to now helping them to
onboard so many more people much faster
and you know you're not trying to
replace their processes and like their
um the way they do things and there are
hundreds and thousands of these circles
in Kenya alone in Kenya so this are
basically small like Cooperative Society
Banks of made of 10 to 20 30 people
right it's crazy and and I think you
know coming back to why blockchain
perspective it would be really hard to
have a 100 different commitment pools
connected and actually
sharing um like commitment pools with
each other and I think that would not
happen on paper and like doing this on
chain and ALS go ahead sorry it becomes
very easy yeah yeah and and and doing
this on chain and having also a
commitment pull with a pair of Fiat pull
like with stable coin or something like
that for people to exit if they want to
I I think this I guess like the the the
I think the most interesting part of
this conversation for me is that we can
do both it's not about like hey Africa
is crude so then maybe let's doize the
whole continent and stable coins for
everyone that's that's helping in
integrating us with the world but that's
not the only solution I think what
you're doing is actually making a level
of localization that would be really
hard to do on paper or with web 2 like
making that scalable but in still
maintaining the small element of it I
think it's super
powerful I think we should jump into
questions from you
all mark
um while we wait for the questions to
come up any uh last Reflections from you
guys yes so I think
um the part that we've not spoken about
is this idea of like open finance and
that as a builder I can contribute to
her ecosystem without without even
having to talk to her because these
commitments and these individuals are on
chain and that is actually the truest
form of
innovation um
so yeah it's just it's just amazing to
kind of see this future where we have
like open financial services that just
connect people businesses from across
the
world we have a number of questions here
uh I want to ask ask uh briefly is PDP
trading a big thing in
Africa the answer is
yes uh so I was uh one of the earliest
uh the first African hire for binance in
Africa and sort of worked on a number of
things including
P2P um and also built probably the
largest um synthetic African stable coin
um that was doing about 700 million a
week uh peerto peer so the answer is yes
nice um what western Builders trying to
provide crypto services in Africa do not
understand yeah yeah maybe I can take
that I think the the thing I've seen the
most uh which I I always help my friends
especially if they're coming from like
you know some geography or you know like
let's say the US Europe UK Asia New
Zealand Australia wherever the thing
they don't understand
is fragmentation problem is not on a
financial level only it's also on a
cultural level uh within a country like
even Kenya um there's the Muslim
Community that needs Sharia compliant
banking so like a lot of crypto
investing is like completely you know
removed from them like they wouldn't be
able to invest in most tokens wouldn't
be able to invest in crypto unless it
was Sharia compliant um there's other
nuances to say that like um as El said
you know more than you know 2.5 billion
people living under 50 cents a day um I
think the banking the unbanked pitch
never you know goes well with me because
these folks don't need to be unbanked
they've already been unbanked they're
using mobile money they're their bank
account is just an accessory for them uh
understanding that is very crucial
because then you actually know how to
distill a solution to them and in some
cases a solution to them could be
serving who who they're served by so
going to the supermarket going to the
grocery store going to the oil company
going to the um retail chain uh and
helping them make their processes more
efficient because those costs go down
and trickle down back to the actual uh
people within like a particular Market
those nuances are always ignored um and
you know never go well because when you
think oh 1.4 billion people in Africa
you know uh majority population
under 25 all of those stats are very
exciting you're like I'm going to go
ahead and launch it and everyone will be
amazed and like they'll use what I'm I'm
I'm I'm building and like you know
giving to them uh but I said this on a
video and I'll say it again it's like uh
Africa needs water not vitamins we're in
the we're in the point where we need
necessity tools uh and most people need
necessity tools they don't need nice to
Hales um when you come with that
perspective you will quickly distill uh
SAS tool that helps you with time
management or you know some kind of like
productivity
tracker um that that's really not what
the uh folks are looking for at this
time but if we do the lowlevel uh the
the lowlevel plumbing stuff then you
open up uh the floor for those kind of
use cases that's kind of like what I
think Weston Builders you know might not
quite understand we have we have like a
lot of questions so I want to be very
short with my answer in terms of what
you could can do as a builder thinking
about the the African continent the best
thing you can do is get on a plane and
go to one of the Cities you would learn
way more than anything I would say on
the yeah and I have two two quick takes
on that one is Empire Building doesn't
work uh if you're basically saying hey
we're just going to create the alipe
that's going to eat everything across
all of Africa and be the only thing good
luck trying to secure on that I would
love to meet you and wish you all the
success um but it's basically a lot of
pieces tackling different problems and
the second bit it's a bit of a spicy
take is that um there's actually profit
in Africa I'm sorry guys I know this is
a weird term and frame for a lot of us
building in crypto but we tend to build
with a lot of sort of assumed Visions
for the future but there's a positive
feedback loop by adding value to real
people is they're willing to pay for it
so a lot of tools that we see like this
across Africa actually are profitable
they're building actual businesses that
can last a long period of time and
that's not a bad thing and that's a
great thing um what evm chams are most
widely used in Africa and if there's a
dominant one why do you think that chain
gain more adoption and if non evm chain
then uh like chains that are getting
what are the non evm chains that are
gaining adoption um jamb you guys are on
Cell yes right can you tell us a little
bit of if you understand why you guys
chose to work with cell
specifically
uh
yeah I'll talk
about it's been a journey for grass
economics like we started with paper
vouchers and of course we went to
digital we've tried out with different
blockchains and cell obviously became um
better um because at least you know we
have a validator now that people can
stick into yeah yeah because you you
guys are running a operating a valid a
cell of validator right so that's a very
interesting model you're you're
contributing to its success but also
using the chain yeah and what about you
guys yeah I was going to say like um you
know ethereum is definitely like a
primary but like one of the chains
people don't actually think about is
like Tron Tron is very big in Africa uh
and it's big for a couple of reasons but
one of the core primary ones is
The Exchange that was doing the most on
the continent uh a couple of years ago
is still quite big now was binance uh at
at there was a time where like the two
primary chains they had was like etherum
and Tron uh we tend to think that people
are like oh there's this huge evm
ecosystem I'll jump to the next thing
but we're actually very simplistic
beings all of us humans like where're
the first thing that I used is something
that I'm comfortable with for whatever
reason and it's just maybe because it
was like the first thing that I
experienced so Tron is massive in Africa
and then non evm chains like um even
even outside of the their Eco system
Stellar is a huge chain that uh we use
at hyon and Pier um but we've
intentionally made ourselves evm
compatible cuz you're seeing all of
these different exciting like you know
new developments like uh like world for
example you know creating their own
blockchain which is evm compatible
that's very intentional because like for
them they want own their ecosystem own
their users and that's kind of like the
only way to do it um but I think for me
like ethereum Tron Stellar cell would be
the top chains that are most widely used
in
Africa um are these questions going to
be available afterwards because these
are like really really great questions
and I wish I wish I
could answer like all of them um but I
think we've kind of talked about the evm
evm stuff and we have just two minutes
um and I think maybe the last question
is a good way to end the panel which is
just like what crypto-based products do
we reach exed in Africa um I'm generally
interested in anything that actually
allows an unchain economy to thrive um
and the most popular digital economic
infrastructure in the world that is at
what I call population scale that is
used by a billion people is the India
stack but but the India stack is very
similar to impesa impesa was mobile
money owned by a particular corporation
the India's stack is also technology
that is owned by the government right
usdc or usdt or stable coins is digital
money that is on the blockchain and so
the India stack and ideas across
identity digital locker and like like
moving that and putting that on chain as
well I think is the next sort of big
like really big meta and people across
the global majority are building this
building blocks and they're going to be
composable so that that stream is
actually when when people talk about
real world ethereum that's kind of like
what I think you know the India stack on
chain quickly you guys what other
crypto-based projects you wish
existed uh for me like uh one of one of
one of the ones that's like been you
know going across my mind for a long
time
is so uh RPC layers that make crypto
feel less scary for people now I say
that to to mean uh imagine telling your
grandma that no you should have sent it
to this ethereum address now the crypto
is gone you send it to a random one
onchain right right she will basically
wonder what are you even talking about I
tried to send you money uh can't you
just call them and they'll reverse it
now I don't have italic number but I
don't think anyone the ethereum
foundation can help if you send crypto
to the wrong address right um but that
RPC layer is interesting to me oh
because uh like we need to build more
guard reils around it yeah yeah jamb
anas for like uh for like um the
addresses well no like even withouts I
think that RPC layer is like helpful so
like you can reverse you can like
authorize trans
well thank you all so much for the
session here and for listening to us I
hope you
found I hope you found it valuable and
if you want to take this relationship to
the next level you're very welcome to
visit the continent and spend time in
many of these communities thank
you thank
you big thank you to all the panelists
that was awesome and have a lovely
afternoon