Marcus AM, an Ethereum Foundation (EF) Fellow and researcher based in Guatemala, was profiled in an EF Blog post dated February 6, 2023 describing a proposal to use decentralized finance protocols to give low-income Guatemalan families access to housing loans. A full open-source report was slated for release at ETHDenver 2023 as a separate fellowship deliverable. The work centers on a concrete problem: a patented low-cost construction technology called Lamina POP can build homes 30 percent cheaper than comparable alternatives, but the families who need those homes cannot access affordable financing from legitimate lenders.

Guatemala presents one of the clearest cases for why access to cheaper goods does not automatically mean access to those goods. The country has a population of 19.6 million and holds the largest economy in Central America, yet 52.4 percent of its residents live in poverty. That poverty has deep historical roots: a 36-year civil war that ended in 1996 claimed more than 200,000 lives and left structural economic wounds that continue to shape inequality today. Around 75 percent of the workforce operates in the informal sector, meaning most low-income adults cannot produce pay stubs, tax records, or any other documentation that banks require to approve a loan. Only 35 percent of Guatemalan adults hold formal bank accounts, according to Global Findex 2022 data. The practical result is that families in need of housing have few options beyond loan sharks, who charge 20 percent monthly interest. Marcus described the outcome in direct terms: "Crippling debt leaves many in precarious situations forcing them to lose property deeds."

Lamina POP has already built more than 15 housing projects in Guatemala, including a Habitat for Humanity partnership that housed a family of eight in one of the country's poorest communities. The construction cost problem is therefore partially solved. What Marcus's research targets is the financing layer sitting between a willing builder and a family that cannot prove creditworthiness by conventional measures. His proposed approach involves peer-to-peer lending protocols built on Ethereum, which could allow community members to lend to one another using transparent on-chain records in place of formal credit histories. DeFi, in this context, refers to financial services that run on blockchain networks without requiring a traditional bank as an intermediary. Marcus stated plainly: "DeFi is ready to provide viable new pathways to financial inclusion at scale."

The macro data from Latin America suggests the underlying infrastructure is maturing faster than many expected. The region received $415 billion in cryptocurrency value between July 2023 and June 2024, representing 9.1 percent of global on-chain activity and growing at 42.5 percent year over year, the second-fastest rate of any region tracked by blockchain analytics firm Chainalysis. Stablecoins (cryptocurrencies pegged to the US dollar) showed especially strong growth within that trend, expanding 207.7 percent year over year on regional exchange platforms. That pattern matters for Marcus's thesis. Populations across Latin America are not primarily using crypto to speculate. They are using it to hold dollar-denominated savings in economies with volatile local currencies. The savings-and-payments use case is already established. The credit use case is not yet.

One in three Guatemalan households depends on remittances as a primary income source, which means that cross-border payment infrastructure is already a survival mechanism for a large share of the population. The EF Fellowship program, which launched in May 2021 with Aya Miyaguchi serving as EF Executive Director, was designed explicitly for builders working in contexts like this one. Miyaguchi has noted that Ethereum's capacity to "enable trust, transparency, efficiency, and coordination" carries especially high potential in markets that legacy financial systems have not served. A parallel EF Fellow, Chuy Cepeda of OS.City, has separately deployed the Soberana Wallet, an Ethereum-based digital identity product, for municipal governments in Argentina and Mexico, allowing residents to store and share official documents on-chain. Identity infrastructure of that kind would be a prerequisite for any on-chain credit system to function at scale.

The structural barriers Marcus identifies in Guatemala have direct parallels across the Global South. Informality rates of 70 to 85 percent of the labor force are common across Nigeria, Bangladesh, and Pakistan. India still has roughly 190 million unbanked adults despite significant UPI-driven digital payments progress. In each of these markets, the credit-exclusion logic follows the same pattern: workers without verifiable income histories remain locked out of legitimate credit. The builders Marcus is writing for are not just building for Guatemala. His report's recommendations around on-chain credit identity, peer-to-peer lending adapted to existing community savings structures (including Guatemala's tandas and cundinas, India's chit funds, and Kenya's chamas), and user interfaces designed for low-digital-literacy populations apply wherever informal economies intersect with housing need.

Marcus's fellowship deliverables include an open-source report targeted for release at ETHDenver 2023, alongside an audio-visual series and resources aimed at crypto builders and impact-focused organizations. Whether peer-to-peer lending protocols can cross the user experience and institutional trust barriers he identifies remains an open question. The stablecoin adoption data confirms that Latin American communities will use blockchain infrastructure when it solves a real problem. The question his research leaves open is whether the credit layer can follow the savings layer, and at what pace.