Ajo, without
trusting a person.
Ajo, Esusu, Chama, Tanda, Susu — every culture has a version of the rotating savings circle. Ajo keeps the tradition and removes the one risk it always carried: the organizer disappearing with the pot.
Cycle
2 of 5
The problem
The tradition works. The trust model doesn't.
One person always holds the pot
In an informal circle, the organizer (or whoever's turn it is to collect) physically holds everyone's contribution until payout. If they vanish, get sick, or simply spend it, there's no recourse.
Trust doesn't scale past people you know
Ajo circles work great among family, coworkers, a church group. They don't scale to strangers, even when strangers could benefit from pooling money together — there's no way to verify a stranger will actually pay their round.
No record if something goes wrong
Contributions are tracked in a notebook, a WhatsApp group, or someone's memory. When a dispute happens, there's no independent record of who paid what, and when.
How it works
Three steps, every cycle
The same rhythm as an informal Ajo circle — just held by code instead of a person.
Start or join a circle
Set a contribution amount, a cycle length (weekly, say), and how many members. Or join one someone else started. Join order becomes payout order — transparent, no separate lottery to trust.
Contribute every cycle
Once the circle fills, everyone pays their fixed contribution into the contract each cycle. Your wallet signs the payment directly — Ajo never takes custody of your keys.
One member is paid, on schedule
As soon as everyone's paid (or the cycle deadline passes), the contract releases the full pot to that cycle's member automatically. No organizer has to collect or distribute anything by hand.
Why Stellar
Built for small, frequent payments
Settlement in seconds, fees in fractions of a cent
A weekly contribution shouldn't cost more in gas than the amount being saved. Stellar's fees make micro-contributions actually viable, not just technically possible.
The contract holds the pot, not Ajo
Every contribution and payout is a direct transfer between a member's wallet and the Soroban contract. Ajo the app never touches the money — it can't, by construction.
No trustline juggling for the common case
Circles run on Stellar's native asset by default, so joining a circle doesn't require setting up a new token trustline first — the same wallet you already fund with XLM just works.
A public, permissionless payout history
Every contribution and every payout is a Stellar event log entry — anyone can independently verify a circle actually paid out on schedule, with no dashboard to trust.
Questions
Common questions
What happens if a member misses a contribution?+
Payout for that cycle still happens once the deadline passes, using whatever was actually collected — so one non-payer can't freeze everyone else's money. The missed contribution is recorded on-chain against that member as a strike, visible to the whole circle.
Who decides the payout order?+
Join order. The first member to join a circle is paid first, the second is paid second, and so on. It's fixed the moment the circle fills, and anyone can verify it on-chain — there's no separate randomization step or admin decision to trust.
Can the circle's creator take the pot early?+
No. The creator has no special withdrawal permission — they're just the first member. The contract releases each cycle's pot only to that cycle's designated recipient, and only once the cycle's contribution condition is met.
What currency do contributions use?+
Circles default to Stellar's native asset (XLM), so joining doesn't require setting up a separate token trustline first. A circle can be created against any Stellar Asset Contract token, including stablecoins.
Is this the same as a DeFi lending pool?+
No — no interest, no collateral, no liquidation risk. It's the same mechanic as an informal Ajo/Esusu/Chama circle: a fixed group, a fixed contribution, one payout per cycle, until everyone's had a turn.
Is this live on mainnet?+
Not yet — Ajo runs on Stellar's public testnet today, with real contract logic and tests, while the model gets validated. Mainnet is the next step.
Get started
Free while Ajo is on testnet
Connect a Stellar wallet, fund it with testnet XLM, and start or join a circle — no signup, no account, no email.