Frequently asked questions
Everything we get asked most about how Agal works.
- Does Agal work without an internet connection?
- For farmers, yes. The Farmer experience is fully offline-first: harvests and handoffs are logged straight to the phone and sync automatically once a connection is available. Nothing is ever lost or overwritten. Supplier/Aggregator and Buyer/Exporter accounts assume a normal connection.
- How is a batch's history kept tamper-evident?
- Every recorded step -- harvested, dried, transferred, sold, exported -- is hashed and anchored on a public blockchain ledger. No farm or business data is stored on-chain, only a cryptographic fingerprint, so anyone can independently verify the recorded history hasn't been altered. See How it works for the full pipeline.
- What actually gets stored on the blockchain?
- Just a hash per event, plus the id of the batch it belongs to -- never plaintext data like names, weights, prices, or locations. The plaintext lives only in Agal's own database; the chain only ever sees an opaque fingerprint of it.
- Who is Agal built for?
- Three roles in one app: Farmers, Suppliers/Aggregators, and Buyers/Exporters. Each role gets the screens and workflow suited to it, chosen automatically after sign-in. See the user manual for what each role can do.
- What happens if two people edit the same batch at once?
- Nothing is ever edited in place -- every action (harvested, dried, transferred, and so on) is appended as its own new record rather than overwriting an old one. That means there's no conflict to resolve: two people acting on the same batch just produce two more entries in its history, in the order they happened.
- Which platforms will Agal be available on?
- Android and Windows are launching first, via the Google Play Store and Microsoft Store. iOS support is planned for a later release.
- Is this connected to real cryptocurrency or a real marketplace?
- No. The blockchain ledger is used purely as a tamper-evident record-keeping tool -- there's no token, no trading, and no cryptocurrency payment involved anywhere in Agal.
- Can Farmers or Suppliers interact with the blockchain directly?
- No, and they don't need to. Only Agal's own backend service ever submits data to the ledger, using its own wallet. Farmers, Suppliers, and Buyers just use the app normally.
- Can I message another Agal user directly?
- Yes -- every role can chat directly with any other Farmer, Supplier/Aggregator, or Buyer/Exporter from within the app. A Farmer composing a message offline has it queued and sent automatically once they're back online, just like a harvest record. Any chat also has a one-tap option to send that message as a regular SMS text instead, for when you'd rather reach someone over the phone network than the app.