Welcome to Growr!

The challenge to provide cost-efficient access to financial services to the unbanked population globally is well-researched. As of 2021, there are still 1.4 billion people worldwide that do not have an account. Most of these unbanked are self-employed, micro-entrepreneurs, and smallholder farmers with financing needs and without much collateral who easily fall prey to moneylenders. Traditionally, microfinance institutions have been serving the poor and unbanked population, especially in developing countries, through unsecured productive microcredit and micro-savings products. However, their over-commercialization has led to opaque practices and questionable success in addressing these challenges. With the invention of Bitcoin, the world has witnessed the emergence of an open monetary network that has enabled an increasing number of financial use cases in a fully digital manner. Bitcoin and its second-layer Lightning network have emerged as a financial inclusion solution for unbanked communities. However, the Bitcoin ecosystem today does not offer unsecured microcredit due to the anonymous nature of its users who cannot assert their creditworthiness and do not possess digital assets to use as collateral. We propose a protocol that addresses these challenges: it helps micro-entrepreneurs from local communities build their self-sovereign credit record and connects them over Bitcoin and its layers to a global financial infrastructure, where they can access productive capital at a fair price, bringing real-world yield to the capital providers.

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If you are excited to know more about Growr, please, select a chapter from the left to continue your journey in Growr protocol documentation.