Frequently asked questions.
Straight answers about what Adunai is, where it stands today, and what it is not. Adunai is in Phase 0: 35 contracts are live on Base Sepolia testnet, pre-audit. No real money moves through it yet.
For everyone
What problem does Adunai solve?
Africa's mobile money systems are closed. Sending value from one operator to another, or paying a supplier in another country, usually means slow bank wires, high fees, and days of waiting. Each network is a walled garden that does not easily talk to the others. Adunai is a common layer any wallet, business, or payment app can build on, so that identity, trust, and value can move across those boundaries instead of being trapped inside one company's system.
How does it work, without the jargon?
Adunai keeps a shared record on a blockchain: who is who, what claims are attached to an identity, and (once payment routing is armed) who has sent what to whom. No single company holds that record. Copies are replicated across many computers, so no one party, including the Foundation, can silently rewrite the rules. Think of it as a shared ledger with common rules, not a product owned by one operator. See the glossary for the precise terms.
Why is this built for African users specifically?
Because the design starts from African economic life, not a Western product adapted afterward. The priorities are cross-border payments that do not route through distant intermediaries, identity and reputation that belong to the user rather than one bank or operator, and savings patterns that already exist across the continent (rotating group savings such as chama, susu, njangi, stokvel, and esusu are first-class primitives). It works with regulated stablecoins that hold value when local currency does not, and it is meant to complement African monetary authorities, not replace them.
Is this just crypto?
It uses blockchain technology, the same underlying kind that powers Ethereum. It is not about speculation or trading. The point is to solve concrete problems: remittance costs, slow settlement, no portable credit history, no interoperability between mobile money networks. You do not need to understand how a blockchain works to benefit from it, the same way you do not need to understand radio waves to use a phone.
Will I need to know about wallets and addresses?
Probably not, if the app you use is built well. A good wallet shows phone numbers, names, and amounts in local currency, and confirms with a PIN or fingerprint. Contract addresses stay in the background. Adunai publishes an SDK and aID, a reference identity client, so builders can hide that machinery from everyday users.
For builders
What can I build on Adunai?
Adunai is open, permissionless infrastructure. If it serves African economic life, payments, savings, identity, or trust, there are likely primitives that help: consumer wallets, cross-border payment products, remittance apps, credit and lending built on attestation history, merchant tools, digital rotating-savings groups, and identity verification services. The Foundation picks no winners and holds no equity in any builder. See use cases and the contract registry.
Is the SDK available? Is it on npm?
The TypeScript SDK (@adunai/sdk, Apache-2.0) lives in the repository today. It is not yet published to npm; the npm release lands with the Phase 1 public launch. Until then, builders can inspect the contracts on Basescan and read the source. Full documentation and an ecosystem grants program are launching; no grant awards have been made yet.
Does Adunai name a winning wallet?
No. Neutrality is structural. The Foundation publishes aID, an open-source reference identity client, and holds a reference wallet design open for Phase 1 and beyond. A public wallet design preview exists as a design preview, not a shipped product. No commercial wallet, bank, or builder is endorsed or given an advantage. Many implementations are expected to compete on the same protocol.
For institutions
How is Adunai governed?
Changes move through a defined path: a public RFC with a 14-day comment period, review by a Technical Advisory Council, then approval by 5 of the 9 multi-sig signers (three directors, three technical advisors, three ecosystem representatives), then a 14-day timelock before anything takes effect. A bounded 7-of-9 emergency pause of up to 14 days exists for safety. On-chain token voting is a Year-3 direction, not a live mechanism. See the Foundation Charter.
Is my identity portable, or can a builder trap me?
Portability is enforced in the contracts, not just promised. If a builder becomes hostile or disappears, the abandonment primitive lets you reclaim your identity through a 60-to-90-day timelocked claim, vetoable by your current key or your registered guardians. The GuardianRegistry and AbandonmentRegistry are non-upgradeable, non-pausable, and role-free by design, so no privileged party, including the Foundation, can block your recovery or your merge across identities.
Does everything require the subject's consent?
Not everything, and it is important to be exact. Benign, identity-scoped attestations require the subject's EIP-712 consent before they attach. But regulatory and adverse records, AML flags, sanctions, PEP status, and authoritative negatives, are issued without consent by design, because compliance depends on it. It would be inaccurate to say nothing attaches without consent.
Status and safety
Is Adunai live?
On testnet, yes. 35 contracts are live on Base Sepolia (chain ID 84532) since 2026-07-01, and 34 of 35 are source-verified on Basescan. This is a public, world-readable testnet deployment. It is not mainnet, and it is pre-audit. See status and the contract registry.
Is it audited?
No. A single external audit of the complete v1 system is planned, and it gates mainnet. Until that audit is complete, every contract should be treated as pre-audit code. Mainnet addresses publish only after the audit closes, never before it. See security.
Can I use real money?
No. This is Phase 0 on testnet. No real value flows through the system, there are no real users or transaction volume, and payment routing is dormant. The ProtocolConfig token whitelist (USDC, USDT, EURC, cbBTC, WETH) is live, but PaymentsRouter routing arms only through a 14-day governance timelock, and the protocol fee of 0.05% applies to no live flows today.
What is the state of the Foundation and the roadmap?
The Foundation is pre-formation (Mauritius intended, subject to counsel), so current governance placeholders are testnet stand-ins. Grants are launching with no awards made. The path forward is the audit, then a controlled mainnet launch, then off-chain rails and real users in later phases. For the full sequence, see the build process and the home page.