BlockCOOP

Financial mismanagement and trust issues have hindered the growth and impact of cooperative societies. Records kept by the societies have been found to be missing, lacking in details or destroyed to cover inappropriate activities. This solution seeks to restore trust, accountability and ethical operations of activities to cooperative societies. The solution has  customizable sections that allow it to be scaled globally without compromise. 

Cooperative societies have been mismanaged or disbanded due to financial impropriety, lack of trust and operational inconsistencies. The few successful cooperative societies have succeeded based on the integrity of the leadership. Software applications have been developed to automate activities of cooperatives, but not many can afford the cost of implementation. We are looking at how to build trust in cooperative societies so that the purpose of joining resources together can be achieved.

The primary target for the solution is cooperative societies, professional associations and social clubs that use distributed records to manage their operations. I belong to several cooperative societies where the experiences and challenges have been highlighted. The cooperative societies will be used to pilot test the solution. The solution allows all members with a smartphone to participate and have access to all activities of the association.

The proposed solution is a software to build trust of cooperative members using blockchain technology. The solution, BlockCOOP, provides a shared ledger of all transactions of a cooperative organization to all members. Members are registered using a certification authority (CA) and uniquely identified within the cooperative. Services such as deposits, loan application, newsletters, announcements are created for members to request. Requests are processed using already agreed rules of engagement such as constitution and bye-laws by relevant organizations. The reply is communicated to all parties involved and the record kept.  

Awotan/Apete (Ibadan)