Why are you participating for Based Africa?

I am participating in the Based Africa buildathon to drive innovation in decentralized finance, specifically in creating accessible credit systems for developers and startups across Africa. With Scorelend, I aim to leverage Base’s infrastructure to bring undercollateralized lending to life, utilizing attestation protocols like Anima, Talent Protocol, and others to empower the African tech ecosystem. This event is a great opportunity to showcase how blockchain technology can help support the rapid growth of startups and devs on the continent.

What challenges are you focusing on?

The primary challenge I am focusing on is providing undercollateralized credit to developers and fast-growing startups in Africa. Access to funding is often a barrier for these innovators, as traditional lending systems require significant collateral, which many early-stage projects can't provide. With Scorelend, I am building a solution that leverages attestation protocols and Builder Scores to allow credit based on trust and reputation, reducing the need for high collateral and giving more opportunities to talented individuals and teams.

In the African tech community, many developers and startups struggle to access funding, which hinders their ability to scale quickly and innovate. With Base’s secure and low-cost blockchain infrastructure, I am building Scorelend to create a decentralized credit system that provides these developers and entrepreneurs with the financial tools they need. By reducing barriers to credit and enabling trust-based lending, Base is helping to unlock new possibilities for growth and development within the African tech ecosystem.

How does your submission address this challenge?

My submission, Scorelend, addresses the challenge of limited access to credit for developers and startups by offering a decentralized undercollateralized credit system. It leverages attestation protocols like Anima, Talent Protocol, DegenScore, and zkVerify to assess borrowers based on their on-chain reputation rather than traditional collateral. By using Base’s scalable and cost-efficient infrastructure, Scorelend enables faster, more affordable transactions and lowers the barriers for accessing funding, helping developers and startups secure the resources they need to grow.

Scorelend is a decentralized undercollateralized credit protocol built on Base that empowers developers and startups by offering credit based on their on-chain trust and reputation. By integrating with leading attestation protocols such as Anima, Talent Protocol, DegenScore, and zkVerify, Scorelend assesses borrower credibility using a Builder Score system, making it easier for those with strong reputations to access funds without requiring high collateral. This system can significantly boost innovation by enabling talented individuals and fast-growing startups in Africa to secure the financial backing they need to thrive, promoting overall ecosystem growth

Challenges I ran into

One of the major challenges I encountered while building Scorelend was integrating multiple attestation protocols like Anima, Talent Protocol, DegenScore, and zkVerify into a unified scoring system that accurately reflects users' credibility. Each protocol has its own data structure and evaluation methods, making the aggregation process complex.

To overcome this, I developed an algorithm that normalizes these different trust scores into a single Builder Score, which is then used as the basis for creditworthiness. This required thorough testing and tweaking to ensure fairness and accuracy.

Another challenge was ensuring fast and affordable transactions for credit issuance and repayments. By building on Base’s low-cost, high-performance infrastructure, I was able to optimize the system to handle a higher volume of transactions efficiently, providing a smooth user experience.