Kora Network: Infrastructure for Inclusive Financial Systems

Despite the technological progress and expansion of the Internet, which gave access to tons of information, we face the problems of financial systems. These weak institutions and lack of transparency have led to the global financial crisis. Issues of financial systems disorganize financial mediation, decrease the efficiency of monetary policy, they provoke economic downturns, cause capital flight. Moreover, these problems cause the lack of trust in financial service providers, which have led to the current situation where almost two billion adults around the world don't have even a basic account. Due to these factors, people lost an opportunity to achieve and collect wealth and to prosper. The Kora Network came up with an idea that can empower people with a low-cost, financial services platform that can be used by everyone and everywhere on our planet.

What is Kora?

It's a platform that provides financial services. The core idea of the project lies in the foundation of the structure that will join individuals, societies, capital into the sole system. It can offer its users' financial services via such means as SMS, USSD interface, smartphones and in-person access. Kora aims to decrease the price so that the platform can be used by communities with low income, in this way these societies can enter the global economy.

The organization desires to contribute special tools that are essential to organizing an ecosystem owned by communities where individuals can perform all sorts of transactions within the particular community. Kora wants to establish a leading infrastructure which will support communities or individuals with the financial mechanism that will aid in collecting, increasing and circulating capital that will provide with an ID account and with the possibility of storing or lending money or committing other financial operations using that account. The entity also plans to introduce value-added actions and services, for example, access to different marketplaces, lending offers, digital education etc. The most impressive fact is that all these features and services do not depend on the access to the Internet.

What existing problems Kora seeks to solve?

The entity believes, that there are five main issues that hinder the accessibility of financial services, these are:

High Cost to Serve — it is very difficult to build branches of various banks in rustic or isolated places as the process of building the branch and its maintenance is considered to be unprofitable and requires high payments, such as fees paid for the property, staff headcount, and IT infrastructure. In order to balance the cost of payments, banks charge unreasonable fees for ATM withdrawals and money transfers.

The misconception that the Underserved have Little Value — banks believe that those underserved individuals are of little value for the financial system since they transfer small amounts of money. But if we check the statistics, it shows that approximately $350 billion is in the hands of such underserved individuals.

Lack of Identification Documents — it is a known fact that in developing countries it's impossible to create a bank account due to the absence of ID. In such countries, it is sometimes difficult to collect all the documents and obtain a valid ID.

Lack of Trust and Technological Understanding — in some countries people have lack of trust in financial technology, individuals believe that digital mechanisms are unsafe and susceptible to hacker attacks and various scams and frauds. They believe that online banking can lead to the loss of money.

Lack of Financial Literacy — unfortunately, limited financial literacy is a widespread problem. Having little knowledge in finance, people can face such problems as accomplishing bad financial decisions, for example, taking such loans that they scarcely will be able to pay.

How it works?

Kora will operate on Ethermint — a blockchain that is fully compatible with Ethereum. The team uses it since the mechanism is backing great volumes of transactions and is providing resilience for wide-ranging user privacy.

Kora found the best solutions to the above-mentioned problems and implemented them into the platform:

Universal Access — since phones and SMS are still used in developing countries, Kora provides users with the possibility to apply them using even the cheapest and simplest devices.

Identity — as it was already mentioned, people in some countries have problems in creating an official ID card which leads to failure of opening a bank account. If a user has problems to identify himself using an ID card, Kora gives him an opportunity to form a user reputation. It means that if user's actions and the actions of an individual with which they transact are valid, the user will gain good reputation points. With the growth of reputation points, user’s transaction limits will increase — as they proved themselves to be trustworthy participants.

Low Cost — the idea is to simplify transactions so that new providers can administer services to platform users, not including the fee for founding and maintaining front and back financial institution.

About Kora Network ICO:

Pre-Sale: $3 Million Sold Out
Main Sale: $20 Million starts at 20% Discount
Start Date: 02.04.2018
Planned End Date: 30.04.2018
Main Sale Token Available: approx 339.750 millions KNT
Main Sale Token Price: 0.1 USD per KNT
Contributable cryptocurrencies: ETH and BTC

Tokens Distribution (755,007,338 KNT summary):

55% - Token Sale: Sold to raise funds and increase liquidity of KNT.
20% - Reserved for Growth: Locked up for a minimum of one year and released as necessary. Used for establishing partnerships, onboarding users, and expansion into new markets.
20% - Reserved for R&D: Locked up for minimum of two years and released as necessary. Used to develop protocol and shared infrastructure.
15% - Team: Team Token Grants that will be locked up in a two year vesting period with a 6 month cliff.

Team:

Advisory Board:

Strategic Partners:

Roadmap:

Summary

Today there are billions of underserved individuals that lost the opportunity to achieve and collect wealth. This leads to poverty of these people. The analysis of the current situation shows that these individuals hold approximately $350 billion that can strengthen the financial institutions, but due to the misconception that these people have little worth for the financial system, the enhancement of the system is impossible. Kora Network created a solution which will empower people with a low-cost platform that can help them to benefit from the opportunities that are provided by financial services.