Why are you participating for Based Africa?

Our team was sold on Base by the build africa community and for the past couple weeks we have been making a full migration from Ethereum to Base to take advantage of the base ecosystem of builders, build tools and cheap transaction fee (this is ciritical to what we are build). Participating in base africa will give us the opportunity to meet other builders and potentially expand our team.

What challenges are you focusing on?

At Pepper, we are focused on addressing key challenges faced by communities in emerging markets, particularly across Africa, with the support of Base. One of the primary issues we are tackling is the lack of access to stable, local currencies on-chain. While USD-based stablecoins dominate decentralized finance (DeFi), there is a significant gap in the availability of non-USD stablecoins. This gap limits individuals and businesses from fully utilizing DeFi for their local economic needs.

Another major challenge is the limited access to crypto-backed lending in local currencies. Most crypto lending platforms offer loans in USD or USDC, which poses a problem for borrowers in emerging markets like Africa. Borrowing in USD exposes users to the risk of local currency devaluation. For example, a business in Nigeria that borrows in USDC could face higher repayment costs if the Naira depreciates against the USD. This creates additional financial strain and makes it difficult to manage repayments. The absence of local fiat-backed stablecoins in lending markets further compounds this issue, making it harder for businesses to access affordable credit.

Additionally, many people in Africa are unfamiliar with cryptocurrencies or DeFi, and existing platforms do little to onboard new users. Most DeFi products focus on serving crypto-savvy individuals rather than attracting new participants, which limits the potential for growth.

At Pepper, we believe that bringing the next billion people on-chain requires building products that lower the barriers to entry for new users. This is where Blitz comes in. By allowing users to bet on the outcomes of real-world events, Blitz taps into a universal human trait—having opinions. It offers an engaging and low-risk way for individuals, especially those unfamiliar with crypto, to interact with blockchain technology. Through Blitz, we make it easier for newcomers to explore and benefit from the world of DeFi.

How does your submission address this challenge?

Pepper is addressing these challenges by building a superapp on Base, with a focus on empowering communities in emerging markets, especially across Africa.

One of the primary ways we tackle these issues is through our multi-fiat stablecoin ecosystem. By bringing local currencies like the Naira (pNGN) and Ghanaian Cedi (pGHS) on-chain, we enable users to mint and swap stablecoins directly in their local currencies. This provides individuals and businesses access to stable, non-USD pegged digital assets, making cross-border transactions faster, cheaper, and more efficient. Leveraging Base’s low transaction costs (under one cent), Pepper offers on-chain fiat swaps that allow users to send and receive money across borders without the hassle and cost of converting through USD stablecoins. This facilitates easier and cheaper trade for individuals and businesses looking to engage in international markets, promoting growth and creating economic opportunities.

In addition to this, Pepper’s crypto-backed lending feature will allow users to borrow stablecoins in their native currency. Unlike traditional DeFi lending platforms that issue loans in USD or USDC, we will enable borrowing in local stablecoins, protecting users from currency devaluation risks. For example, users in Nigeria can borrow pNGN instead of USDC, avoiding the increased repayment costs caused by local currency depreciation. This solves a major pain point in the current DeFi lending landscape, offering more inclusive and relevant credit options for underserved markets.

Additionally, Blitz, our prediction market, addresses the challenge of onboarding new users on-chain by offering a fun, engaging, and low-risk way to interact with blockchain technology. By allowing users to bet on the outcomes of real-world events, Blitz taps into a common human trait—everyone has opinions. This makes it easy for people unfamiliar with crypto to start interacting with DeFi in a way that feels familiar and exciting.

Challenges we ran into

Finding partners to work with for fiat onramp was very difficult. As the regulatory system in Nigeria is not very defined or not supportive of crypto related services we ran into the issue of not been able to deliver on our Fiat stable coin solution. We overcame this by building our network with the banking system that would enable us onramp and use P2P for offramping.

Out permanent solution to this problem is to use a service like https://www.onboard.xyz/ to help with both onramping and offramping to make our service offering more seemless.

We also faced the challenge of completing the UI for the Blitz protocol, Our goal was to finish the the limit order and prediction market UI implementation but we faced the time constraint and decided to implement a temporary UI and update it when we have the time to later.

Additional Features

During the Buildathon, we created Blitz, a prediction market designed to engage new users and bring them on-chain. It was created to make DeFi accessible to those with little to no experience with crypto, offering an exciting, familiar activity: sharing opinions.

Most prediction markets are not community-driven, with profits primarily benefiting the platform. We see a $300 billion opportunity by decentralizing predictions, allowing creators to generate events rather than relying on centralized operators.

At its core, Blitz enables users to bet on real-world event outcomes—whether predicting Elon Musk's tweets or if a celebrity will get engaged. By connecting predictions with relatable real-world events, Blitz lowers the barrier to entry for users unfamiliar with crypto.

Blitz also empowers users to create their own events. Creators deposit collateral to start prediction markets, ensuring transparency and fairness. If a creator acts dishonestly, they lose their collateral. By turning a basic human trait—having an opinion—into an interactive blockchain experience, Blitz introduces users to the DeFi ecosystem on Pepper.

We also built Pepper’s LimitOrder, a user-friendly feature that simplifies advanced crypto trading. The LimitOrder allows users to set specific prices for buying or selling cryptocurrencies, giving them more control over their trades while avoiding the volatility of market fluctuations. With Base’s low transaction fees, users can trade efficiently with minimal costs.

By building these new features—Blitz and LimitOrder—during the Buildathon, we’ve significantly expanded Pepper’s ability to make DeFi accessible and engaging for both crypto-savvy users and newcomers alike. Blitz lowers the entry barrier by tapping into a universal human activity—sharing opinions—while LimitOrder introduces advanced trading capabilities with the simplicity and security that Pepper is known for. These products allow us to onboard the next billion users on base.