Research agenda

Research that can change the design

The central question is whether accessible technology and accountable community arrangements can make useful finance more accessible, affordable and fair without shifting new risks onto the people we want to help.

The work below is an agenda, not a list of completed studies. Evidence may support the design, narrow it or show that a simpler alternative works better. The community evidence review and Midnight technical review explain the findings assembled so far.

Access and financial need

Phone access

Evidence: national individual-level smartphone ownership supports exploring mobile-first access.[7] Open: usable devices, private versus shared access, battery, storage, recovery and non-phone participation in the intended community. Decision test: demonstrate that people with limited access can participate safely, without surrendering control to a helper.

Connectivity

Evidence: household survey findings identify access and affordability barriers; the Konektadong Pinoy Act supplies a policy framework.[20][11] Open: actual local uptime, latency, data cost and interrupted transactions. Decision test: usable low-bandwidth flows and safe recovery from a lost connection, tested locally.

Suitable financial support

Evidence: financial access is not the same as financial health.[7] Open: urgent needs, income timing, debt stress, preference and eligibility. Decision test: identify when financing helps and when savings, assistance or another non-debt option is more suitable.

Existing alternatives

Open: what banks, cooperatives, e-wallets, savings groups and other lawful services already offer the intended participants. Decision test: compare full cost, convenience, protections and suitability before claiming Kapitala fills an unmet need.

Community benefit and participation

Impact evidence

Evidence: microcredit and savings-group research shows context-dependent results, not automatic poverty reduction.[1][2] Open: what would count as a meaningful improvement for this pilot. Decision test: define outcomes, harms and a credible comparison before observing results; do not equate loan volume with success.

Sustainable community benefit

Open: operating costs, reserves, defaults, liquidity, who receives benefits and who bears losses. Decision test: a lawful, viable model that remains understandable under adverse outcomes. No public economic parameters or returns are announced here.

Usability and financial learning

Open: language, literacy, accessibility, understanding of cost and loss, and quality of assisted participation. Decision test: participants can explain their choices and responsibilities in their own words, and obtain help without coercion.

Technology and safeguards

Trust and the case for blockchain

Evidence: cryptographic systems can verify specific statements under stated assumptions.[14][16] Open: whether multiple independent organizations actually need shared verification. Decision test: compare with a conventional database, access controls and signed records; adopt a blockchain only where the added complexity earns its place.

Midnight and selective disclosure

Evidence: Midnight documents private/public state, zero-knowledge proofs and explicit disclosure in Compact.[14][15][16] Open: a synthetic integration, low-end-phone proving, remote-prover risks, metadata, disclosure permissions and key recovery. Decision test: a measured prototype and reviewed threat model before any claim of deployed privacy protection.

Credentials and reputation

Evidence: cryptographic research supports limited credential presentations under explicit security assumptions.[18][19] Open: issuer trust, revocation, corrections, unfair exclusion, coerced disclosure and predictive validity. Decision test: a consent-based, contestable design that does not treat a proof or score as creditworthiness.

Lawful roles and data protection

Open: what the actual operating entity is permitted to do, how funds are held, lawful data processing, complaints and participant protections. Decision test: qualified review of the concrete program before operations; cooperative registration and software access are not blanket permissions.

Pilot measurement

Open: a minimal service with defined readiness, stop conditions and accountable owners. Decision test: record understanding, usability, participant burden, arrears, complaints, harms, operational effort and community benefit. Report limitations and failures as well as successes.

What is not claimed

We have not established universal household smartphone access, completed a local Siargao access survey, demonstrated cheaper financing, validated a reputation score or measured a Kapitala effect on poverty. Midnight is not integrated into Kapitala. The first pilot is deliberately smaller than the long-term ambition.

Continue with mission and vision, the pilot, and current implementation status.

Sources

[1] https://www.povertyactionlab.org/policy-insight/microcredit-impacts-and-promising-innovations [2] https://www.povertyactionlab.org/sites/default/files/research-paper/Impact-of-savings-group-on-the-lives-of-the-poor_Dean-et-al_February2017.pdf [7] https://www.bsp.gov.ph/Inclusive%20Finance/Financial%20Inclusion%20Reports%20and%20Publications/2025/2025CFISreport.pdf — BSP 2025 Consumer Finance and Inclusion Survey [11] https://www.lawphil.net/statutes/repacts/ra2025/ra_12234_2025.html — Konektadong Pinoy Act: statutory text [14] https://docs.midnight.network/concepts/kachina — Kachina | Midnight Docs [15] https://docs.midnight.network/compact/reference/explicit-disclosure — Explicit disclosure | Midnight Docs [16] https://docs.midnight.network/concepts/zero-knowledge-proofs — Zero-knowledge proofs | Midnight Docs [18] https://www.cs.ru.nl/~jhh/pub/secsem/camenish2001idemix-clean.pdf — An Efficient System for Non-transferable Anonymous Credentials with Optional Anonymity Revocation — Jan Camenisch, Anna Lysyanskaya [19] https://eprint.iacr.org/2010/496.pdf — Efficient Attributes for Anonymous Credentials (Extended Version) — Jan Camenisch, Thomas Groß [20] https://psa.gov.ph/content/percentage-households-internet-connection-increased-488-percent-2024-two-every-three — PSA 2024 NICTHS: home internet, individual use and barriers; 21 July 2025