BaseBridge
Fast, secure, and affordable cross-border transfers
About
Why are you participating for Based Africa? We are participating Based Africa hackathon because we recognize the gap and need for decentralized FinTech solutions that can solve the remittance problem and access to local currencies for millions of Africans. Earlier approaches of sending/receiving remittances are usually costly, time-consuming and can only be done via financial institutions or intermediaries which poses lots of challenges for those in countries that have stringently banned the use of cryptocurrency or individuals in the less formally banked societies. To most people sending money back home is a challenge that is expensive, time consuming and performs within the confines of the existing hard and software facilities. They are as follows: We present BaseBridge as our solution to these problems. Therefore with the help of Block chain technology and Base ETH we are providing ourselves the ability to create an efficient decentralized system for easy, faster and cheaper transfer of money all over the Africa. Our platform makes it easy to instantly exchange crypto for local fiat money so that the recipients are able to withdraw to local bank accounts, we also support embryonic areas with scarce and unstable banking systems. We believe that Africa will go through the financial revolution and cross-border transfers should be as fast, cheap, and accessible with BaseBridge. From this solution, more than 30 African countries can potentially benefit, and we seek to achieve this goal while addressing some of the problems, which include currency devaluation, high charges for remitting money, lack of access to financial services, among others while respecting the local regulations. It is not just about creating a product which can be showcased at the end of this hackathon but it is about correcting an injustice of financial exclusion that has trailed the African continent. BaseBridge can be the solution for families, businesses, and individuals who depend on remittances for their survival.
How it's made
What challenges are you focusing on? What we're working on in BaseBridge is high cost, slow speed and limited access to remittance services in Africa. No African communities can afford exorbitant fees and terrible delays in payments made and received cross borders. Also, crypto regulation is also pretty strict and banking infrastructure is still not fully developed in some regions which makes it difficult to become included in the financial ecosystem. Based on Base ETH, BaseBridge is directly targeting these challenges with instant, low cost remittances and crypto-to fiat conversion at a lean cost enabling the people in the under banked regions to access the funds easily as and when they need. Removal of such barriers to cross border transactions encourages financial empowerment and economic growth. How does your submission address this challenge? BaseBridge is our submission on how to solve the remittance and financial access challenges in Africa. Fees are high, transactions are slow, and many communities can’t access financial services. The problem BaseBridge solves is allowing users to fund to/from onchain and offchain controlled accounts instantly via Base ETH with BaseBridge serving as a long term integral part of the XDAI network to help users send and receive funds across borders. During the hackathon, we created a functional prototype of the platform that shows off its core capability. Moreover, we also created a simple web app to get the idea validated. This early version illustrates how BaseBridge can offer underbanked regions with low cost, fast remittances. Using blockchain technology, we remove dependence on regular banking systems and mediators, thereby making the transactions quick, cheap and safe. BaseBridge allows users in over 30 African countries to deposit and withdraw fiat to and from the users’ home bank accounts and bypass regulatory rigidities based on trust through peer-to-peer approach. This is a much needed alternative when you depend on remittances, but can’t stand the inefficiency of the existing systems. Overall, BaseBridge may well contribute greatly to increasing financial inclusion in Africa by delivering money transfer in a secure, decentralized and cost effective manner. It is just the beginning of our validation during the hackathon and we are looking to scale the solution to solve the challenges for millions across the continent. Challenges we ran into Finding developers to dedicate time to a hackathon one of the main challenges we faced working on this project. However, paid jobs, longer-term projects, and many experienced developers often took their focus away from this fast paced competition. Secondly, we had to overcome another hurdle which is we were integrating the crypto-to-fiat conversion process without discord to the local regulations that are in place in different African countries. And for that, extra research was necessary to make sure our solution would work its charm over different regions. However, we overcame these difficulties by building an MVP and bridging the skill gap with the talent prepared to work on a matter of surviving in the most essential features of the platform itself.