Sarafu Network decentralises money through blockchain-based commitment pools

Sarafu Network enables marginalised Kenyan communities to trade, pool resources, and build resilience using digital commitment pools accessed on basic mobile phones. As a Bright Spot, Sarafu illustrates how finance can be restructured around trust, reciprocity, and local agency.

In Kenya’s informal settlements and rural regions, formal banking services are scarce, and cash is often extremely limited, especially during crises. Founded by Grassroots Economics in 2018, the Sarafu Network enables people to issue community asset vouchers (CAVs), blockchain-based tokens that circulate locally through community managed commitment pools when national currency fails.

Accessible via USSD (a form of text messaging), CAVs allow households to buy food, pay school fees, or access services even amid COVID-19 lockdowns. Rooted in traditional practices of mutual aid (e.g. Rotating Labor Associations – Commitment Pools), Sarafu Network revives these commons-oriented systems through a transparent digital commitment pooling protocol that supports interoperability and accountability.

“The village of Kiriba hosts over 10 activities a week of neighbours using the system to build houses and farm with each other. There is a glow of happyness. The Dadaab Refugee camp has also especially been impacted this way as well.”

— Will Ruddick, Founder, Grassroots Economics Foundation

How is Sarafu Network different from more mainstream financing solutions?

While conventional aid delivers one-time resources and microfinance often entrenches debt, Sarafu creates money as a commons. Utilising blockchain technology, it documents every token in immutable records, enabling transparency while enabling community self-governance. Transactions occur across daily needs — groceries, labour, services — built entirely on trust networks and local reciprocity, not external capital.

This approach mirrors traditional resource pooling systems but upgrades them into digital economies. Unlike speculative cryptocurrencies, Sarafu is built for survival and solidarity, and designed to resist extraction while flexibly adapting to local protocols and social norms.

Image: An overview of how the Sarafu Network operates

How is Sarafu Network changing the way financing for vulnerable communities is approached?

Globally, 1.7 billion adults remain unbanked. On the flipside, Sarafu Network reported 55,000 users and over 300 million transactions from January 2020 to June 2021, injecting liquidity and enabling local trade. Commitment Pool usage stabilises informal economies, bolsters food security, and empowers marginalised vendors, especially women. Network analysis confirms that trade is highly localised and sustained by diverse hubs like schools, churches and community elders.

Sarafu’s application of blockchain technology transforms it into an engine for resilience, restoring the longstanding tradition of mutual aid and self-governance via modern, traceable digital infrastructure. It is less about money and more about solidarity, demonstrating systemic justice in action.

“CAVs are generally a form of stable coin backed by goods and services and valued in national currency. We base everything on mutual aid systems that are legal and must always be free to use. We don’t advocate for currencies or forms of money. We advocate for the space between them — commitment pools help translate value.”

— Will Ruddick, Founder, Grassroots Economics Foundation

What could the future look like if Sarafu Network scales?

Imagine a world where communities, groups and individuals everywhere issue local CAVs, and commitment pools empowering them to withstand crises without central banks. Aid agencies have already started to seed local commitment pools instead of one-off grants, multiplying value through circulation. Ecosystems connect through commitment pools: national (stable coins) for macro trade, local for daily exchange, regional for cross-border solidarity. Governments could integrate commitment pools into development policy, recognising multiple asset types as scaffolding for their national money.

In this vision, networks of commitment pools become a civic infrastructure, and national currencies (money) become a commitment for state services — the medium of exchange becomes the space between connected pools as a living commons co-curated by communities themselves.

Image: Sarafu Network enables users to trade, pool resources, and build resilience using digital commitment pools accessed on basic mobile phones

Questions to consider

What would it look like if communities, groups and people everywhere could issue their own gift cards and create Commitment Pools to exchange them along with national currency?

How would bringing back these ancient mutual aid systems change power dynamics and inclusion?

Could money become a specific commitment of the state among many others in commitment pools as a tool for care instead of extraction?

Meet the Bright Spots

A Forum for the Future initiative, in partnership with The Earthshot Prize, Rockefeller Philanthropy Advisors and Trane Technologies, the Future of Sustainability: Reimagining the Way the World Works is showcasing the social and climate initiatives shaping a better future, today.

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