I've watched people lose money in savings circles. The system itself is actually good. What breaks it is enforcement, or the lack of it. The organizer collects the money, distributes it, and keeps the records. When they disappear, everything disappears with them. There is no recourse. People lose hundreds or even thousands of dollars with nothing to show for it. I wanted to fix that specific problem. The enforcement layer. The obvious question is why not just use a bank? The honest answer is that banks do not serve the people who need this most. A lot of the communities running savings circles are doing so because the formal financial system has not shown up for them. The alternative to an informal savings circle is often not a bank account. So I built @HeyCircles on Solana. Fees are near zero. Transactions settle fast enough that payouts feel immediate. USDC is also already widely used across Africa and South Asia, so there is no need to spend time explaining stablecoins before someone can join a circle. → The Identity Problem One thing I did not expect to bother so much about was identity. In a real savings circle, you know everyone. You know who is reliable, who needs a reminder, and who always pays a little late. That social information is part of how trust works. But once you move everything onchain, every participant becomes a long wallet address. That does not inspire much confidence, and trust.. More emphasis on trust... So I thought to integrate Solana Name Service. We registered heycircles.sol as the protocol domain and built @sns resolution throughout the app. Members show up by their .sol names everywhere. Pool creators can add people by simply typing name.sol into the form, and it resolves to the correct wallet address before the transaction happens. Every member can also claim a name.heycircles.sol subdomain. It becomes a permanent Solana identity that works across SNS compatible wallets and apps. Watching identity appear naturally in the product this way has been genuinely satisfying. → Thoughts on Privacy One question that came up also was privacy. Not everyone wants their savings activity to be public. Solana is transparent by default. For a lot of people, savings are personal. So we integrated @magicblock 's TEE system to give users a choice. When private contributions are turned on, contribution amounts and participant data are encrypted before reaching the chain. The contract still works normally and payouts still happen, but the sensitive details stay hidden. Some circles may want full transparency, while others may prefer privacy. The choice belongs to the group, not the protocol. __________________ There is still a lot to build. Some features are still missing, and others need improvement. I will keep sharing updates as we grow. → What's Next The next big step is phone number login. Right now, you need a wallet extension to use Circles, and that excludes many of the people this product is actually meant for. Then there's also the fiat ramping that would really help normies, it is also in the works. With Privy's embedded wallet, someone can sign up with an SMS code, keep their key secured behind a passkey, and join a circle directly from an Android phone without needing a browser extension. It will make onboarding much easier, and over time, drive adoption. After that comes daily cycles. Most people I have spoken to are not running monthly circles. They run daily ones with small amounts and tight communities. It could be a row of market traders, a work crew, or a simple group chat. The contract already supports shorter cycles, so this is a natural next step. Long term, I want the reputation built inside Circles to become composable. Your track record across circles should be readable by other protocols, lending apps, and marketplaces. If a wallet has consistently shown trust and reliability inside Circles, that reputation should have value beyond the app itself.