Manta-Polaris/Polaris

Polaris is a trade escrow platform built on Stellar that enables secure cross border payments, digital trade reputation, and credit access for Africa's informal traders through blockchain powered escrow and smart contracts. # Polaris Polaris is a trade escrow platform built on Stellar that helps Africa's informal traders move money across borders safely, build a portable trade reputation, and unlock credit — all backed by blockchain-powered escrow and smart contracts. Cross-border trade in informal markets runs on trust that doesn't travel. A trader with years of reliable deals in one corridor has no way to prove it to a new buyer, a new lender, or a new market. Polaris fixes that by turning every completed trade into verifiable, on-chain reputation, and by using programmable escrow so payment only releases when both sides hold up their end. ## Why Polaris - **Payment risk** — buyers and sellers in informal cross-border trade often have no recourse if the other side doesn't deliver or doesn't pay. - **Invisible reputation** — a trader's track record lives in memory and word of mouth, not anywhere a new counterparty or lender can check it. - **Locked-out credit** — without formal records, reliable traders can't access financing, even when their trade history would justify it. Polaris addresses each of these with a single connected system: escrow for the transaction, reputation for the track record, and credit for the payoff. ## Core features **Escrow payment rail** — Funds are locked in a Soroban smart contract at the start of a trade and released automatically when delivery conditions are met, with a dispute process for when they aren't. **Guild group-buying pools** — Traders pool orders together to hit supplier minimums and negotiate better terms, with shared visibility into pool status and participation. **ZK trade-reputation credit marketplace** — Completed trades build a reputation score that traders can prove using zero-knowledge proofs — showing lenders they're creditworthy without exposing the underlying trade details. **Supplier Portal** — A searchable, filterable view of trades for suppliers managing multiple buyers and orders at once. **Soroban Ledger feed** — A li …