Financial access for businesses that traditional systems cannot see.
Sovela is a decentralized financial inclusion platform built for Nigeria's micro, small, and medium enterprises -- the businesses that drive the economy but are systematically excluded from formal capital because they cannot meet collateral requirements designed for a different era. The platform was originally built as Catalyst during the Cardano Africa Tech Summit hackathon, where an MVP was shipped with functional multi-currency investment capabilities, automated profit distribution, KYC verification, and on-chain escrow via Aiken smart contracts. The name has changed. The mission has not. Sovela introduces a two-path trust system. Performance Trust extracts verifiable business history from marketplace transactions, payment processors, and e-commerce activity, creating a dynamic reputation score more comprehensive and tamper-resistant than any credit bureau report. Human Trust enables community members with established reputations to sponsor aspiring entrepreneurs, providing human collateral where transaction history does not yet exist. Both pathways feed into a unified investment marketplace where capital providers deploy funds across Nigerian Naira, Cardano ADA, and USDM stablecoin with full on-chain transparency. A four-way profit split distributes value across investors, the SME, the platform, and a risk mitigation fund, designed to build wealth rather than extract it. Sovela operates on Cardano's preprod testnet. Mainnet deployment follows formal verification and security audits of the Aiken smart contract layer. The platform is the genesis application of the Zivana Protocol.