Nigeria's traditional rotating savings group, digitized on Stellar using Soroban smart contracts.
# 🤝 AjoChain — On-Chain Cooperative Savings Protocol
**AjoChain** is a decentralized protocol digitizing the traditional African rotating savings and credit association (ROSCA) model—commonly known as *Esusu* or *Ajo*—using Stellar and Soroban smart contracts.
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## 🌍 The Problem
Across Africa, informal cooperative savings groups empower communities to pool capital and access lump sums of cash. However, these systems rely entirely on a central human coordinator. This creates a single point of failure: coordinators can mismanage funds, abscond, or make human errors, breaking the foundational chain of trust.
## 💡 The Solution
AjoChain removes the need for a central coordinator by replacing them with a trustless Soroban smart contract.
- **🔍 Transparent:** Every cycle and contribution is fully verifiable on-chain.
- **⚡ Automated:** The smart contract auto-distributes the pot to the designated member per round.
- **🌐 Inclusive:** Built on Stellar to ensure near-zero micro-transaction fees, making it genuinely accessible to everyday users.
- **🛡️ Secure:** Collateral vault prevents rational defaults; governance timelock prevents admin abuse.
- **⭐ Merit-Based:** On-chain reputation system rewards consistent participation with access to premium pools.
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## 🏛️ Architecture
AjoChain is a modular protocol composed of **5 Soroban smart contracts**:
```
┌──────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┐
│ Frontend (Next.js 15) │
│ Dashboard │ Pool Explorer │ Create Pool │ Profile │
└──────────────────────┬───────────────────────────────────┘
│
┌──────────────────────┴───────────────────────────────────┐
│ Stellar / Soroban │
│ │
│ ┌──────────┐ ┌──────────┐ ┌──────────────┐ │
│ │ Factory │──│ Pool │──│ Collateral │ │
│ │ Registry │ │ Lifecycle│ │ Vault │ │
│ …