Hello Cardano community,
As part of the hackathon in preparation for the Cardano Africa Tech Summit 2026, scheduled to take place in Nairobi in February 2026, my team (six contributors in total) is currently developing a digital marketplace application called Wenze.
Wenze is a Lingala word meaning “Market.” It is a community-driven digital marketplace initiative developed in Goma, Democratic Republic of Congo, designed to address long-standing trust and transparency challenges in local commerce. Inspired by everyday trading practices, Wenze aims to structure and secure informal and semi-formal commercial exchanges that increasingly take place through social media and messaging platforms.
By integrating a Cardano-based escrow smart contract, Wenze ensures that payments remain protected until agreed conditions are met, significantly reducing fraud and transactional disputes. The project intentionally blends local practices—such as price negotiation—with modern technologies, offering a mobile-first, inclusive, and scalable solution that strengthens economic resilience while promoting responsible blockchain adoption within the local community.
Why Wenze matters for Cardano
In Goma, many people are aware of Cardano by name, yet few have experienced its real-world value. Wenze is designed to make Cardano tangible and practical, embedding it directly into daily economic activities. Our conviction is that true adoption begins when blockchain technology solves real problems for real people.
Key features of Wenze
To ensure strong local relevance, Wenze integrates the following features:
- Escrow via Cardano smart contracts, creating trust between buyers and sellers
- An AI assistant that responds to questions related to Cardano, helping users progressively understand the ecosystem
- Clear guidance toward a partner application that already enables the exchange of ADA into Congolese Francs (CDF)
- Access to local ADA exchangers, making it easier for users to acquire ADA for purchases or convert it back for daily use
- A price-negotiation flow, supported by an integrated chat, before escrow release
- Mobile money support for users who prefer not to transact in ADA
- A “Wenze Points” system for ADA users, enabling reputation building and, during early usage, potential ADA-based rewards
These features ensure that Wenze operates effectively in a local-first context, while remaining fully aligned with Cardano’s decentralized principles.
Test the application
Community members are invited to test the application using wallets with test ADA on the preprod network:
https://wenze-beta.vercel.app/
Current status & community contribution
Wenze is still under active development, and we sincerely welcome suggestions and recommendations from the Cardano community. Your insights will help ensure that a solid and reliable product enters production in Goma—contributing to:
- Accelerated Cardano adoption
- Increased on-chain activity
- Meaningful local economic impact through everyday transactions
At present, we are still facing a technical challenge related to the release of escrowed funds to the seller. Although some valuable ideas have already been shared, the issue is not yet fully resolved. We remain confident that, with continued community collaboration, this challenge will be overcome.
Open-source vision
Wenze is an open-source project. In coming days, we’ll share the GitHub repository to allow other Cardano community members to adapt the solution to their own local realities. Our broader vision is to support Cardano’s gradual expansion into local markets worldwide, driven by practical use cases and community ownership.
Thank you for your time, guidance, and continued support.
We look forward to building together.