Adaverse, a Cardano ecosystem accelerator supporting the expansion of crypto-native Web3 businesses in Africa, recently announced an investment in Scalex, a pan-African peer-to-peer network that aims to bring secure, frictionless cryptocurrency trading across Africa. This strategic investment is part of a pre-seed funding round involving EMURGO Africa, Adaverse, and Hacked Capital.
Founded in September 2021, Adaverse is a joint venture between EMURGO Africa and Everest Ventures to improve Web3 startup growth in Africa. The Adaverse accelerator is part of Cardano’s founding entity EMURGO’s $100 million Cardano investment vehicle. Adaverse onboards Web3 blockchain startups building socially impactful solutions leveraging Cardano’s blockchain to its accelerator program to gain access to funding, technical support, and business mentorship needed to scale their Web3 solutions.
Cardano is one of the largest blockchain networks by market capitalization and one of the first environmentally-friendly blockchains in the industry. It is an open-source and decentralized blockchain built to offer economic services to all by providing a platform for decentralized applications for value transfer, content creation, digital identity, data management, and more.
What is Scalex?
Scalex is building solutions that ensure African users can easily bridge into the crypto ecosystem seamlessly and with ease. Building features on Web3, Scalex prides itself as the first automated revenue-share peer-to-peer (P2P) platform. Scalex uses industry-leading features to provide safety, assurance, and an automated crypto platform by merging the best of TradFi and DeFi infrastructures.
Simply put, Scalex is building possibilities with cryptocurrency in Africa — providing an avenue for crypto traders to complete transactions quickly, powered by a decentralized liquidity aggregating infrastructure. Scalex was created by Nnaemeka Nwosu, James Ademuyiwa, Adeniyi Adedamola, Ngati Jalani, and Joel Ajide — a group of Lagos-based entrepreneurs working to solve the issues of unsecured trading platforms in Africa’s P2P and trading market.
Why Scalex?
Africa’s cryptocurrency payments grew 1,200% between 2021 and 2022, making it one of the fastest-growing marketplaces among developing economies. The growth was notably driven by inflation, the devaluation of fiat currencies, and growing interest in the cryptocurrency market, especially for cross-border remittances. Due to the government restriction on cryptocurrency transactions, the P2P trading model has become commonplace. However, beyond the offering of licensed cryptocurrency exchanges, informal trading also happens frequently across social media, especially on chat applications such as Telegram and WhatsApp. This exposes parties to untold risks such as Ponzi schemes disguised as crypto projects, unprotected trade deals, and exposure to fraud.
Scalex pushes to also solve these risks encountered in P2P crypto-to-fiat transactions across Africa. On its move to become Africa’s leading P2P platform, Scalex is reimagining how digital crypto transactions are facilitated across the world.
Shogo Ishida, co-CEO for the Middle East & Africa at EMURGO Africa, lauded Scalex’s mission as a commitment worth emulating. “EMURGO Africa is excited to support Scalex’s vision to provide more secure and seamless next-generation financial access across Africa, which aligns with our goal to build socially impactful solutions in Africa,” said Ishida.
Scalex aggregates liquidity from various providers (merchants and crypto platforms) and enables users to instantly fund exchanges and wallets (custodial and non-custodial) anywhere across the globe in as little as 3 minutes. Users can then convert crypto to fiat currency at the best available rates in the market. The product pushes the conversations about decentralization in the African crypto space and is currently developing a feature that enables users to bridge from fiat to DeFi/Web3 (W3Ramp) protocols across multi-blockchains including Cardano.
L-R: James Ademuyiwa (Head of Blockchain & co-Founder), Jalani Ngati (CMO & co-Founder), Nnaemeka Nwosu (CEO & co-Founder)
“In our bid to build value-driven solutions that enable the continued onboarding of millions of users in Africa into the crypto space, it was important to partner with Adaverse to gain access to their knowledge base and connections to Cardano. We are excited about partnering with organisations that are passionate about the overall growth of the Web3 and blockchain space in Africa,” said James Ademuyiwa, Head of Blockchain and co-Founder at Scalex.
Vincent Li, Founding Partner at Adaverse said, “Fear of asset loss is a key barrier to crypto adoption across Africa, and Scalex intends to tackle this with a unique platform. Scalex’s multi-chain infrastructure safeguards peer-to-peer transactions and Adaverse is glad to support through strategic mentorship and integrate their growth with tools on the Cardano blockchain.”
About Adaverse
By incubating and investing in Cardano-based platforms and building web3 solutions in DeFi, NFT, Metaverse, and gaming, Adaverse is a Cardano accelerator that strives to support the growth of chosen projects and the success of entrepreneurs in Africa. Established to identify and provide valuable support to crypto-native businesses in Africa, Adaverse offers funding and a mentorship program involving 12 weeks of intense training and 24 hours of 1:1 coaching from a team of industry veterans and aficionados with an intensive knowledge of Cardano’s environmentally sustainable blockchain.
Adaverse is open to applications from founders all year round. Apply for funding here.
Redefine your crypto trading experience with Scalex here.
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