Work — Ficham
Ficham is a decentralized consumer-protection ledger for informal markets. It explores how economic friction, transparent reputation, and restitution can help participants assess risk where conventional identity, credit history, and enforcement are limited.
When a student loses a housing deposit or a vendor accepts a false proof of payment, there may be no reliable record, dispute channel, or portable reputation to consult. Informal commerce moves quickly, but the trust infrastructure around it often does not exist.
Ficham uses a modest 100 FCFA submission toll to add economic friction to reporting. It does not prove that a report is true; it raises the cost of indiscriminate noise and creates a traceable commitment to the claim.
When a dispute arises, the system provides a double-blind, peer-to-peer restitution path. Repayment can be recorded against the profile, giving participants a structured way to resolve harm without requiring the platform to act as judge.
Ficham is evidence of a broader systems capability: translating trust, incentives, and dispute resolution into explicit backend rules. That pattern applies to African marketplaces, logistics networks, peer-to-peer services, and other multi-sided platforms where participants cannot rely on a central institutional record.