A little bit about me

My name is Ebube, and this is the story of how I found myself at the intersection of technology and hope, how I began weaving code into something that might, one day, change lives. It began in 2022, in a quiet corner of my life, when I stumbled into the world of frontend development at Borderless. At the time, I didn’t yet know what it meant to write software that matters. I only knew that I loved building things - the magic of turning ideas into interfaces, of seeing designs come alive on the screen.

Hungry for more, I enrolled in an intensive 12-month-long full-stack engineering program with ALX. The days were long, the nights longer, filled with code, late-night debugging, and the occasional existential crisis about undefined variables. But there was joy, too. I interned, I built, I broke things, and fixed them again. I even found myself returning to Borderless, not as a student this time, but as a tutor, giving back to the place that first gave me direction.

And yet, for all that progress, there was still a quiet restlessness within me.

Because even then, I could feel the limits of Web2. I wanted to build more than websites. I wanted to build systems - decentralized, transparent, borderless systems. I had heard the whispers about Web3: the promise of autonomy, ownership, better pay, and most importantly, real-world impact. It all sounded impossibly idealistic. And yet, irresistibly exciting.

In 2023, I got my first taste of blockchain development while preparing to teach a workshop on the NEAR Protocol. I dived into Solidity and Rust, obsessing over smart contracts and the intricate dance between decentralized logic and frontend interfaces. I was ready. But the workshop never happened. And so, life moved on, and those skills - shiny, promising, half-formed - sat quietly, gathering dust. Until 2025.

The Metis Cipher Session

One of my goals for 2025 was simple in words, but heavy in meaning: build real, usable blockchain applications. Something that wasn’t just another project on GitHub, but a decentralized application that could live, breathe, and serve. So when the Metis Cipher bootcamp was announced - a 12-week intensive journey into smart contracts and decentralized app development on the Metis Blockchain- I didn’t hesitate. I applied. I was accepted. And I gave it everything.

The sessions were rigorous. We explored Solidity in depth. We dissected how Layer 2 solutions like Metis addressed the scalability trilemma. We talked about decentralization not as theory, but as a tool especially for regions like ours, where traditional systems often fail the people who need them most. In the final weeks, we were paired into teams and challenged to build something real. And that was the beginning of Velt.

Introducing Velt - A Crypto Lending Platform for Us

Velt is, at its heart, a simple idea: Give people access to funds without forcing them to sell their crypto.
Give them options that are faster, fairer, and designed with their reality in mind. It’s a decentralized lending platform, powered by smart contracts, with no middlemen, no bureaucracy, and no need to beg a bank manager who may never understand your hustle.

We built Velt with a few hard truths in mind:

In Nigeria and across many emerging markets, people hold crypto sometimes as savings, sometimes as survival. But when emergencies strike, their only option is to sell.
Traditional loans are slow, wrapped in paperwork, and often out of reach especially for young people, freelancers, or the unbanked.
Most DeFi apps today feel like they were built in rooms without windows. They are expensive and jargon-heavy.

So we asked: What if we built something different? Something simple. Something useful. Something local.

Why It Matters

We’re starting in Nigeria, but our vision is for Africa. We are designing Velt to be:

Multilingual, with support for Igbo, Hausa, and Yoruba
Local-token friendly, enabling stablecoins and regional assets
Integrated with AI assistance to guide users gently into the ecosystem
And in the long run, governed by the people who use it through a DAO model

We are not here to replicate what already exists. We are here to reimagine it, from the ground up.

What Comes Next

The journey is just beginning, but here’s what we’re working on:

User testing and feedback loops
Deployment on the Metis mainnet
Expansion to support local tokens
A full smart contract audit to ensure trust and safety
Scaling Velt to reach the underserved, not just the early adopters

Final Thoughts

The Metis Cipher bootcamp didn’t just sharpen my skills, it reignited my belief in what’s possible. I’ve gone from theory to practice, from curiosity to conviction. Velt is the first step in what I hope will be a long journey not just of building dApps, but of building tools that matter.

You can explore our testnet version here:
Velt on Metis Sepolia Testnet

To my tutor, to my mentor @_karlagod, to @MetisDev and the entire Cipher team - thank you.

To my teammate @6ramstone it’s been an honour building with you. We’re only just getting started..

My Web3 Journey: From Web2 to Building on the Metis Blockchain