[IMPACT] Please describe your proposed solution.
PURPOSE
Money transfer is a recurring need and transnational transfers involve conversion fees in addition to the transfer fees. These fees can amount to 10% of the transfer value and given that money sent through remittances are often for social purposes, this burden is borne by the most vulnerable populations. Blockchain is often offered as a solution, but this has not yet been fulfilled and the main reason is that most money transfer services leveraging blockchain remain centralized and rely on traditional services such as banks.
Ekival is designed to be a p-2-p decentralized money transfer service which offers an API service for other applications to publish available liquidity by location.
Liquidity providers come in two main categories: those who seek a service and those who seek a rent.
Liquidity providers who seek service are those who use cryptocurrencies in their business. For instance, a business located in Nigeria may accept Bitcoin in exchange for cash in Nigeria in order to pay for goods in Asia where payment in cryptocurrencies is faster and more secure. From our surveys, another popular case is linked to the risk of holding large amounts of cash at certain locations. Transfering the cash to a financial institution can be risky and lengthy due to inefficient financial services.
Liquidity providers who seek rent are those who expect to gain from the exchange of the fiat currency at their disposal into cryto currencies. Mobile money operators constitute the main type of such stakeholders within Ekival. On average, these providers of liquidity seek a rent of around 3% and this is within the operating margin of Ekival.
Ekival seeks to publish available liquidity in the form of either cash or mobile money transfer. Through our smart contract, liquidity providers and consumers respectively send a deposit and the total value while the validation process relies on their (or their agents') interaction or mobile money API confirmations.
Ekival is a value transfer application, but our first implementation is money.
To send money using Ekival, users "lock" liquidity and provide a beneficiary (themselves or a loved one) whose mobile money account will be tracked to receive the expected amount and transaction code. In-person exchange is validated by scanning a QR code.
In the case of remittances powered by the Cardano Blockchain, transfer fees will be relatively low compared to traditional transfer services. Ekival aims to provide a competitive alternative while maintaining a vision to be profitable. Currently, the Testnet implementation accounts for a 2 Ada fee per transaction.
The Cardano ecosystem benefits from a solution such as Ekival as sending Ada to an African beneficiary is still relatively not attractive due to the lack of exchanges. As supporters of Cardano, we facilitate Africa-based projects funded through Catalyst that do not have means to exchange Ada for fiat and we have helped provide liquidity of over $50,000 so far.
Also, transaction fees also affect Africa-based projects and Ekival seeks to automate the process as there are relatively large amount of fiat currencies which can be locally exchanged if the information is available for both providers and consumers.
[IMPACT] Please describe how your proposed solution will address the Challenge that you have submitted it in.
Remittance fees are of particular concern for the African continent where an average fee of 8.2% of the transfer amount is charged for transfer to Sub-Saharan Africa. Intra-region transfers in Africa are even more expensive with fees amounting to more than 15% of the transfer value (Global Remittance Flows in 2021, KNOMAD & World Bank, 2021).
Globally, remittance fees constitute a burden on the most vulnerable and limit investments in developing nations. And these estimates do not take into account associated costs linked with retrieving remittances (transport, identification documents, missed labor, etc.).
[IMPACT] What are the main risks that could prevent you from delivering the project successfully and please explain how you will mitigate each risk?
Risk 1: Low crypto adoption in DRC
Solution 1: Mobile money integration will reduce the need for users to sign blockchain transactions. By validating the completion of the transfer via mobile money transfer confirmations, Ekival allows beneficiaries (consumers of liquidity) to use familiar financial services while crypto adoption grows.
Risk 2: Legal considerations of peer-to-peer (P-2-P) transactions in certain countries
Solution 2: By offering a decentralized application, we allow users to opt-in according to the relevant laws.
Stablecoin availability (Coinmarketcap)
[FEASIBILITY] Please provide a detailed plan, including timeline and key milestones for delivering your proposal.
Through participating in both the Entreprenerdy Incubator and Ariob Incubator for Cardano-based applications offering solutions in Africa, Ekival has a leg up in terms of measuring our progress.
Through mentors, we have already been able to:
- Establish a social media presence on Twitter, Facebook, Instagram
- Launch our Discord Channel
- Streamline our branding
- Target providers of liquidity in Congo through mobile money agents and other businesses
The Catalyst funding proposal as highlighted in the following roadmap aims to provide the following deliverables: audited smart contracts, multi-language support and mobile application.
RoadMap
From the above roadmap, we aim to offer a fully decentralized, API-enabled service for liquidity provision by December 2022.
Token Allocation
Ekival aims to offer a token, EKI, which will serve as both a fidelity token for users to lower their transaction and deposit thresholds, a rewarding token for referrals and a governance token for members to guide future development of Ekival (more currencies supported, more locations, lower/higher fees, etc.). An airdrop is planned for the community through Discord membership should this proposal be funded.
Growth Paths
Ekival offers P-2-P interactions which can be expanded to Business-2-Business interactions upon completion of consumer-level services. P-2-P is a fundamental application of blockchain as it removes middlemen and it is meant to grow in the future. In the US alone, centralized P-2-P applications handle over $80B on an annual basis, which is meant to grow over time and Ekival will be well positionned to catch as share of this market.
[FEASIBILITY] Please provide a detailed budget breakdown.
- Auditing: 15,000
- Smart contract expansion : 10,000
- Front-end : 10,000
- Back-end : 8,000
- Mobile integrators : 5,000
- Translations : 2,000
- Hardware: $10,000
- Marketing : $5,000
Total: $65,000
[FEASIBILITY] Please provide details of the people who will work on the project.
Frédéric Samvura (Genty) - Founder @ Ekival, Instructor Contributor @ Gimbalabs
M.A in Economics, experienced in banking and public policy. Completed the Plutus Pioneer and Atala Prism Pioneer Programs. Haskell and Plutus trainer in Wada and Gimbalabs Education programs, Smart Contract Developer and entrepreneur.
<https://www.linkedin.com/in/fr%C3%A9d%C3%A9ric-samvura-907aa53b/>
Mohamad Ali Modiri, aka Max - Smart Contract Dev @ Ekival
Frédéric and Mohamad will handle the implementation of the smart contract in add dispute resolution and the API calls
Dan Baruka : CEO at Uptodatedeveloppers , Back-end Integration @ Ekival
Experienced in blockchain applications and supported several Cardano-based projects since 2021.
Uptodatedeveloppers has implemented the current state of Ekival in terms of front-end and back-end implementation
Didier Baganda : Financial Modelling @ Ekival
B.A in Economics, experienced in financial services.
<https://www.linkedin.com/in/didier-baganda-shrm-cp-95698550/>
Didier will implement the financial incentive models for providers of liquidity for both service and rent seekers.
Piotr Napierala - full-stack developer, bridge builder, Gimbalabs core contributor, active in Plutus project-based learning program.
Piotr will help implement the mobile framework of smart contract interactions based on the Bonfire schedulling DApp
Gimbalabs : Auditing based on bounty allocation
Devs within Gimbalabs will contribute in auditing the smart contract through bounty-based hacking challenges.
[FEASIBILITY] If you are funded, will you return to Catalyst in a later round for further funding? Please explain why / why not.
Ekival is aiming to add more value to the Cardano ecosystem and alleviate a burden which is relevant even within projects funded by Catalyst.
Ekival has been bootstrapped and this funding request is meant to speed-up its implementation, increase its reliability through auditing and offer the Cardano community funding the project a portion of ownership to establish the foundation of its DAO through the EKI token. Upon completing the Beta version of the mobile application on mainnet, Ekival will seek funding externally.
[AUDITABILITY] Please describe what you will measure to track your project's progress, and how will you measure these?
Key Performance Indicator 1 : Launch timeline
Following the above mentioned roadmap and achieving target product launch dates will serve a the basis of tracking our progress
Testnet MVP: Live and you can test it at ekival.com
September 2022: Mainnet Launch with stablecoins
December 2022: Mobile Application using the Ekival API
The API will be publicly available and free-of-charge for early-birds
Key Performance Indicator 2: Liquidity volumes
Within the first three months, we expect to onboard liquidity providers with a total volume of over $100,000
Key Performance Indicator 3 : Users Onboarding
Number of providers of liquidy (network)
Number of users sending money through Ekival
Number of members in our Discord Channel
Key Performance Indicator 4 : Money transfer users' referrals
Referral targets within diaspora networks with a targeted increase of both users and locations.
Key Performance Indicator 5: Revenue targets
Financial projections for Ekival will be posted from September 2022 based on the experience of the first paying customers.
Key Performance Indicator 6: Community engagement
Through Town-hall report and Discord membership for airdrops, the progress of Ekival will be tracked by users.
Key Performance Indicator 7: Social media community growth
Twitter, Facebook and Instagram membership will be publicly available and growth will be reported on a regular basis upon reaching relevant thresholds.
[AUDITABILITY] What does success for this project look like?
Lower remittance fees for Africa
African-based funded projects manage to exchange Ada for fiat locally
Network of liquidity providers in WADA-Hub cities
Supermarket chains and other cash-intensive businesses onboarded
API service for other blockchain applications related to liquidity provision
Expand P-2-P money transfer to P-2-P loans and B-2-B services
[AUDITABILITY] Please provide information on whether this proposal is a continuation of a previously funded project in Catalyst or an entirely new one.
New one
Sustainable Development Goals (SDG) Rating
Ekival will certain contribute to achieving Sustainable Development Goals (SDG) by alleviating the burden borne by vulnerable recipients of remittances.
By reducing transaction cost, we allow senders to send more funds and beneficiaries to receive more, thus alleviating poverty and, in many cases, hunger as money transfer is often sent in cases of emergency.
