Inspiration
There still doesn't exist an affordable, permission-less, private direct path from fiat to Web3. Existing p2p marketplaces like Paxful, Binance p2p and Localbitcoins provide service major cryptocurrencies only, despite DeFi trading volumes balooning in the last two years. DeFi also continues to settle into it's multi-chain fragmented nature and we foresee SukumaMarkets allowing direct on-ramping onto multiple chains from one portal.
What it does
SukumaMarkets allows participants to summon any Web3 token into their wallet by directly paying the holder of the token at the quoted price.
How we built it
Sukuma is built on NEAR using RUST and JS. We started by creating a smart contract escrow service on NEAR and enabling token deposits into it. Next depositors we enabled creation of offers on the deposited tokens, and build the flow for buyers and sellers to trade against the offers via a listed payment method of their choice. We worked on the front end next, enabling messaging and chat between the participants. Post hackathon, we are next working on figuring out community moderation of disputes via DAO eg AstroDAO and Streamlining the fees mechanism.
Challenges we ran into
We had to hack around existing documentation that was not easily available or straight forward to figure out the exact model to use. Community moderation of open markets is another challenging module we're working to figure out, and incentives around it as well as disincentivizing bad actors.
Accomplishments that we're proud of
Launch of the marketplace and testing of the complete trade flow. We are also proud of solving other pain points many p2p traders face like high fees in token conversions on legacy p2p marketplaces. Sukuma also enables near zero fees access to Web3 tokens. Closing of path from entry to final desired token. eg Local currecy to REF token path changes to DeFi participants now not needing to purchase ETH on Paxful, to send to Binance to convert to NEAR, then send out to their NEAR Wallet and convert to the smaller NEAR token eg REF. DAOs can now also issue tokens directly to their communities at their desired price.
What we learned
To try things out even when the infrastructure is not completely documented. To also get feedback from our target users as we build.
What's next for Sukuma Markets
Finishing on our fee model and moderation module(probably incentives with a revenue split model). We're also building a feature to solve for vendor exposure to market volatility on their listed assets--this feature(unavailable in existing p2p marketplaces) will save vendors from incurring losses on assets as they await buyers. Also roll out closed beta for select community members as well as continue engaging p2p traders and Community Orgs/DAOs. Finally, embark on implementing across more chains.
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