Introducing the Colendi Protocol: Our Technical Paper
Today we are publishing the Colendi Technical Paper, a high-level description of the architecture behind our decentralized credit-scoring protocol and microcredit platform.
When we began building Colendi, we started with a simple question: how can a person prove financial reliability when the traditional system has never created a useful credit file for them? A bank can only evaluate the history it can see. Billions of people remain invisible to that view, even though their daily transactions, mobile activity, retail relationships, and repayment behavior can demonstrate consistency and trust.
Our answer begins with identity. Colendi ID is designed as a self-sovereign financial passport controlled by its owner. We use ERC-725 and its complementary claims model, ERC-735, so identity can become reusable across services without depending on a single institution. This direction also connects with the emerging work on decentralized identifiers in the W3C Credentials Community Group.
Identity alone is not enough. Credit scoring requires data, and financial data demands privacy. The Colendi Protocol therefore separates the system into three layers: identity, secure object storage, and a secure computation environment. Personal information is encrypted or anonymized and stored away from the public chain. Computation is performed without exposing the underlying personal records to a lender. The lender receives the information needed for a decision, not unrestricted access to a person’s digital life.
Ethereum provides the shared execution and verification layer. It records approvals, references, and protocol events while the larger and more sensitive data remains off-chain. This design reflects an important reality explained in the Ethereum Foundation’s discussion of privacy on the blockchain: transparency is valuable, but private data cannot simply be placed on a public ledger.
The technical paper is not the final word. It is the architecture we are testing, challenging, and improving. But it makes our direction clear: a credit system should give people control of their identity, use broader evidence responsibly, and make financial opportunity available beyond the boundaries of a conventional credit bureau.
That is the protocol we are building.