Why Akoin Chose Stellar
A Shared Vision for Africa
March 05, 2019 — 3 minute read
Blockchain has the opportunity to create a lasting impact on emerging markets. Developing countries often lack the financial infrastructure needed to provide cheap and simple financial services. Despite having a greater need for cost-effective services in comparison to more developed countries, financial services in emerging markets tend to be more expensive. With the brunt of the cost often falling on the end-user. Bringing the benefits of blockchain to Africa is our core mission at Akoin. We aim to improve Africa’s financial infrastructure and lower costs by removing intermediaries and increasing transparency. By lowering barriers for Africans to join the digital economy, we believe we can not only increase the efficiency of financial services but also expand the potential economic impact of doing business in Africa as a whole. Creating financial inclusion in Africa benefits not only individuals living there but also companies and organizations that hope to provide products or services to the continent.
To achieve this, it’s important that we partnered with a blockchain with the features, capabilities, and a shared vision for Africa and other rising economies.
That partner is the Stellar Organization and their Stellar Consensus Protocol.
It All Starts in Africa
We’re excited and proud of the work that the Stellar Organization and its nonprofit, the Stellar Development Foundation, have already begun in Africa. Like Akoin, Stellar sees the potential in Africa and has dedicated resources to improving remittance services on the continent. The Stellar Development Foundation has also established a wide network of charities that accept Stellar Lumens as a form of donation — and philanthropy is at the core of the Akoin ethos and the Akoin Foundation. These factors, coupled with its work with Saldo on providing solutions for migrant workers to send funds back to their families, and impressive developments they’ve made with IBM Worldwire, make Stellar an obvious choice for Akoin.
Speed & Scalability
Smart contracts play an essential role in the Akoin ecosystem. Stellar is both smart contract enabled, and more scalable than its competitors. The transaction cost, transaction speed, and transactions per second that Stellar facilitates are ideal for the use cases and applications planned for the Akoin Ecosystem. Akoin users need to be able to initiate quick transactions of varying values, using a blockchain with higher fees might limit our users in the same way that their current remittance and money transfer options limit them.
3–5 seconds per transaction
10,000 transactions per second
Liquidity & the Anchor Network
Launching on Stellar means that Akoin can be traded on the Stellar DEX (Stellar Decentralized Exchange). The Stellar DEX creates cryptocurrency pairs for all assets available on Stellar, creating liquidity for Akoin and inherently it’s DApp partners. The Stellar DEX and the pairs currently existing within it also provide Akoin users with increased access to the cryptocurrency world. By immediately giving users access to several pairs beyond Akoin and XLM, we give them the ability to dive into the cryptocurrency world and explore in ways that the current financial infrastructure limits.
While the Stellar DEX creates liquidity and access to cryptocurrencies, the Stellar Anchor Network creates access to fiat currencies and stable coins.
“Anchors are entities that people trust to hold their deposits and issue credits into the Stellar network for those deposits. All money transactions in the Stellar network (except lumens) occur in the form of credit issued by anchors, so anchors act as a bridge between existing currencies and the Stellar network. Most anchors are organizations like banks, savings institutions, farmers’ co-ops, central banks, and remittance companies.” — Stellar
Access to the Stellar Anchor Network will provide the Akoin token even more liquidity and available trading pairs. As more organizations join the Anchor Network, Akoin users will gain access to more and more options for their currency conversions.
Beyond the technological benefits that Stellar brings to the table, the Stellar Compliance Protocol allows us the flexibility needed to conduct business with several different countries and banks — that often have their own Anti-Money Laundering and Know Your Customer procedures to follow. The Stellar Compliance Protocol will ensure that we’re able to meet the compliance needs of any potential partner we encounter as Akoin continues to expand across Africa, and beyond.
