Uncle

Uncle is a community-first lending protocol that gives excluded borrowers a path back into the financial system.

Globally, hundreds of millions of people are denied access to credit due to lack of formal credit history, blacklisting, or exclusion by traditional scoring systems. In Brazil alone, over 65 million people are permanently blacklisted by credit bureaus. In countries like India, Indonesia, Mexico, and South Africa, large portions of the population face similar barriers, often with no second chances.

Uncle changes that by replacing traditional collateral and opaque credit scores with something more human: trust.

With Uncle, borrowers request small loans, and people in their community vouch for them by staking small amounts. Once the loan is fully vouched, the borrower receives the funds without needing approval from a bank or financial institution.

Every payment the borrower makes directly grows their score, based on the exact amount they repay. There are no algorithms, no penalties, and no permanent exclusion. If someone cannot pay, their vouchers collaborate on what happens next, such as giving more time, splitting the repayment into smaller parts, or offering additional support. Uncle shifts the default response from punishment to recovery.

Uncle feels like a simple fintech app, but under the hood, it is a fully onchain system built for resilience, transparency, and fairness. This protocol is designed not just to lend, but to help people grow. One payment. One score. One second chance at a time.

Uncle is a decentralized lending protocol built on Flow EVM, focused on trust, reputation, and accessibility.

We used Solidity for our smart contracts and deployed on Flow to leverage account abstraction, low-friction onboarding, and fast transaction finality. Our contracts manage borrower registration, loan lifecycle, repayment tracking, and an intrinsic scoring system based on total amount repaid. All contracts were developed and tested using Foundry.

The frontend is a mobile-first Next.js app built on Scaffold-ETH 2, using RainbowKit for wallet connections and ethers.js for chain interactions. It’s designed to feel like a familiar fintech product, with BRL formatting and localized payment references like Pix.

For identity and Sybil resistance, we integrated World ID via the MiniKit SDK, allowing secure, privacy-preserving user verification. The protocol also supports social vouching with staked amounts and slashing on default, plus collective decision-making for extensions.

We also implemented a “Not ready to pay” flow where the community can simulate recovery scenarios, including payment splitting and grace periods.

We structured the system around three pillars: Lending, Reputation, and Identity, and designed it to grow with users over time. Our use of Flow, World ID, and planned LayerZero integration lays the foundation for a cross-chain, reputation-based financial system that is transparent, fair, and built to scale.