In late April, Port Harcourt-based builder Karla Obakpolor, popularly called KarlaGod, traveled to Lagos to attend the Base Batches workshop, which was taking place across major cities in Nigeria. She planned to apply for the Base buildathon, and the event provided an opportunity to gain insights into building on Base while meeting fellow builders.
KarlaGod quickly became one of the more outspoken attendees, introducing herself and her project, BitSave Protocol, with a confident energy. Her willingness to share her work openly with others perfectly embodied Base's core philosophy of building in public.
In July, she showcased at Base Demo Day to a global audience that included Base creator Jesse Pollak and serial investor Balaji Srinivasan — and was later announced as one of the program’s winners, sharing in the million-dollar prize pool.
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That was always the plan with Base Batches, a buildathon program dedicated to helping builders across the globe refine their ideas or products, receive mentorship, funding, and support to move from ideas to projects to successful companies.
Karla's journey mirrors that of Daniel Ifechukwu of Sandworm and Temidayo Folajin of Zerocard, the two other products alongside BitSave from Nigeria to win at Base Batches.
“Base Batches felt personal,” Folajin recalls in our conversation. “I read through the Base Batches website, and I just knew this thing was something that I needed to work on because one of the things I've always wanted as a product builder [is] massive support.”
Base has maintained its commitment to builders; the ecosystem's mission is building a global onchain economy for everyone, and at its core is platforming builders and creators. Base Batches is just one of the channels for achieving that goal. “The way we think we get there is by onboarding more builders and giving them better tools so they can build better apps,” Pollak explained during the opening ceremony.
The program has three components: a buildathon, the one-month IncuBase incubator, and a demo day where finalists present their products and win a share of $1 million. It represents an evolution from traditional hackathons, where winners simply receive a grant and go their separate ways. Base changed the format, especially with IncuBase, which provided mentorship from successful global entrepreneurs and guidance on go-to-market plans. Many attendees speak about how valuable the sessions were on branding, messaging, pitching to investors, and onboarding their first users.
“I've had incubator and accelerator programs that didn't add any value to me and my product,” Karla points out. "The IncuBase program didn't just tell us what to do. There were key areas of doing things. We were told to give ourselves targets for the week. What are you going to do this week?"
All three products — BitSave, Sandworm, and Zerocard — share a common trait of making it easy for everyday people to get onboarded onchain and access or use blockchain tools and products. BitSave, best described as an onchain Piggyvest, makes saving your stablecoins fun and easy with targets and lock-in features that enhance the savings experience.
Zerocard allows you to spend your stablecoins with merchants that accept naira. The concept is that you don't have to off-ramp or go off-chain; you simply use a card loaded with stablecoin anywhere in Nigeria.
Folajin emphasizes that Zerocard is not just another Web3 product, but a financial inclusion product.
Sandworm aims to make blockchain data accessible to everyone. When Pollak asked how Sandworm stands out from other onchain data platforms like Dune, Ifechukwu responded that they are zeroing in on accessibility.
“There is no focus on accessibility, like let's try [to] make this data more accessible to people that need this data, and that's why we're working on Sandworm,” he explained in front of a global audience.
“We are trying to make it easy for you as a non-senior developer or a non-data analyst to get the data, use the data, explain the data, and know what's going on onchain,” he explained further.
Folajin, Ifechukwu, and Karla all presented their products on day two of Demo Day with standout videos. Karla explained how BitSave is pioneering SaveFi by providing a safe way for onchain workers to save their earnings while highlighting the folly of saving in local currencies amid rising inflation. The Sandworm video got the room laughing with a funny closer, adapting a Homelander clip.
Zerocard smartly pointed out the risks of P2P trading, including fraud and delayed payments — and why a card that allows you to spend your crypto in local stores and POS terminals without dealing with middlemen or off-ramping is crucial. This was a statement Balaji Srinivasan agreed with.
“It's cool that you've got something like this working because we do need something like this,” he mentioned before asking how Zerocard works. It's a question Folajin is always happy to explain to those who might not understand how stablecoin cards work.
“So, we have a settlement engine and an escrow contract,” he explained. “When a user makes a transaction, what we do is we settle the merchant instantly and lock the equivalent amount of crypto in our escrow contract. So the moment we get an authorised transaction from the merchant, we then release the crypto to our liquidity provider.”
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As third-place winners, all three products received a $20,000 grant each, which, according to them, they are reinvesting in product development. Karla says her team is directing the funds toward Bitsave app development, an ambassador program “around 30 percent will be saved on our protocol.”
For Zerocard, Folajin said the money is going toward liquidity provision, distributing more cards, and improving their infrastructure and speed “because it is whoever is the fastest that wins the market."
