Community saving, reimagined.
Traditional community savings circles (historically known as paluwagan in the Philippines or tandas globally) are vital tools for informal financial security and collaborative savings. However, they rely entirely on manual record-keeping and absolute trust. This makes them highly vulnerable to default, lack of transparency, administrative errors, and theft, with no security or automated recourse for participants. This matters because a large portion of the Philippine population remains unbanked or underbanked, relying heavily on these informal systems for financial liquidity.
- Create an Orbit: A user starts a saving circle (an "Orbit"), sets the recurring deposit amount, cycle frequency, and invites their saving group ("Crew").
- Deposit & Pool: Every cycle, each crew member deposits a fixed contribution into the smart contract pool.
- Automated Rotation: At the end of each cycle, the pooled funds are automatically disbursed to one member of the crew based on a pre-determined or randomized rotation sequence, secured by the contract.
- Soroban Smart Contracts: Custom Soroban smart contracts manage the pool deposits, schedule automated payout distributions, and enforce contribution transparency.
- Low Fees & Speed: Stellar's sub-cent transaction costs make micro-deposits viable for everyday Filipinos, and fast finality ensures immediate payout execution.
- Classic Assets / Stablecoins: Seamless integration with local stablecoins (such as PHP-backed tokens) to eliminate volatility and preserve buying power.
Track 2 — Financial Inclusion & Everyday Payments
- Framework: Next.js / React
- Stellar SDK: @stellar/stellar-sdk v16.0.1
- Network: testnet
- TailwindCSS, Framer Motion, Supabase
Check it out on: orbit-cq.vercel.app
- Network: testnet
- RPC URL: https://soroban-testnet.stellar.org
- Contract IDs: TBD
- Asset issuers: GDXB4K5NEQYEV2BAKKWUJRJYT7VENPJTKUJVF22LK5B4NGXZE42NCR5L
- Christopher A. Quinto — @ChrisQuint0
MIT