We are participating in Based Africa because it's a unique opportunity to tackle real challenges within our community using on-chain technology. Blockchain offers decentralized, transparent, and secure solutions that can create lasting, real-world impact. With Scrowed, a decentralized peer-to-peer (P2P) platform that simplifies and secures crypto-fiat trading, we aim to empower users by providing full control over their private keys and ensuring trustless, seamless transactions.

The vision of Based Africa aligns perfectly with what we're building at Scrowed—transforming financial services and enabling crypto users/traders to connect and transact securely leveraging smart-contracts as intermediaries. This hackathon is an opportunity for us to bring our platform to the forefront and show how blockchain can solve challenges such as access to the crypto economy, unlocking economic opportunities, and fostering collaboration.

We believe that by building an on-chain solution such as Scrowed, we can help shape the future of blockchain and crypto adoption in Nigeria and across Africa; and foster a crypto/blockchain economy where everyone can thrive, starting right here in Nigeria.

The primary challenge we are focusing on is trust and accessibility in peer-to-peer (P2P) cryptocurrency trading. In many communities, especially within Africa, access to the crypto economy is limited, and there is often a lack of trust in centralized financial services. This creates barriers to entry for many individuals looking to engage in cryptocurrency trading or access the on-chain economy.

With Scrowed, our goal is to address these challenges by providing a decentralized, non-custodial platform that simplifies and secures P2P crypto-fiat trading. By using advanced smart contracts, Scrowed eliminates the need for intermediaries, ensuring that users can trade directly with one another in a secure and transparent environment. Users maintain full control over their private keys, enhancing both privacy and security, which is critical in building trust in communities with limited access to secure financial services.

We're also focused on creating an inclusive financial ecosystem by supporting multiple blockchain networks, such as Base Network, Ethereum, Polygon, Binance Chain; and with plans to expand to over 20 blockchains. This broad support ensures that Scrowed is accessible to a wide range of users, regardless of their preferred network or currency.

Our platform addresses the lack of trust, high fees, and slow transaction times associated with traditional methods, providing a fast, reliable, and transparent trading environment for users. Ultimately, we are creating a tool that allows people to engage in the onchain economy with confidence, offering a pathway to financial empowerment and inclusion.

Our submission, Scrowed, directly addresses the challenges of trust, accessibility, and security in peer-to-peer cryptocurrency trading through a decentralized and non-custodial platform. Here’s how Scrowed tackles each aspect:

Trustless Transactions: Scrowed leverages smart contracts to automate the escrow process, ensuring that transactions are transparent and tamper-proof. This removes the need for intermediaries or centralized entities, allowing users to engage in direct, trustless transactions. By doing so, Scrowed eliminates the uncertainty often associated with traditional trading platforms, where users must rely on third-party services to safeguard their funds.

Security & Privacy: A major focus of Scrowed is security. Users maintain full control over their private keys, which is crucial in fostering trust and ensuring their assets are protected. Scrowed’s non-custodial approach ensures that users' funds are never held by a central entity, drastically reducing the risk of hacks or fraud. This is particularly important in communities where trust in financial institutions is low.

Accessibility: Scrowed supports multiple major blockchain networks, including Base, Ethereum, Polygon and Binance Chain, making the platform accessible to a broad range of users. With plans to expand to over 20 blockchains, Scrowed provides users with the flexibility to trade across various ecosystems, enhancing inclusivity for those who prefer different networks or currencies.

Financial Inclusion: By creating a platform that allows users to trade directly, without the high fees or barriers of traditional systems, Scrowed fosters financial inclusion. It provides a secure, user-friendly interface for both experienced traders and newcomers to the cryptocurrency space, helping bridge the gap for those who have been excluded or limited from the crypto economy.

In summary, Scrowed addresses the challenges of trust, security, accessibility, and efficiency.

One of the key challenges I ran into during the development of Scrowed was the limited access to development resources due to lack of funding. Building a decentralized peer-to-peer trading platform requires not only a deep understanding of blockchain technology but also access to infrastructure, tools, and human resources — all of which can be costly.

Without external funding, it was challenging to acquire the necessary resources at the pace I would have liked. This included everything from securing hosting services to gaining access to advanced development environments and ensuring the platform’s cross-chain capabilities. There were times when progress felt slow due to the need to manage these resource constraints.

However, I managed to overcome this obstacle by adopting a slow and steady approach to development. By carefully prioritizing tasks and focusing on the most critical aspects of the platform first, I was able to achieve significant milestones without compromising on the quality of the project. Over time, I built up the necessary components piece by piece and managed to develop a minimum viable product (MVP). This MVP now supports Base and Binance Chain Network. This is a testament to persistence and effective resource management despite the constraints.