Marhaba DEFI are setting themselves out to solve a very daunting and difficult task. To introduce crypto to the customers of Islamic banking and allow people from all walks of life to have a safe and easy to use platform that can expose them to the world of crypto. There is a large and dedicated team who are undertaking this task. is this mission important, and can we stand to benefit from this platform?
- Introduction
- Team behind it
- What is shar'iah
- Shar'iah and crypto
- Why is it important
- MHRB products
Shalal wallet and Shouq NFT
Liquidity harvester and DEX aggregator
Loans, DePhi and Launchpad
Governance
- Conclusion
Team behind it
The team has been put together to include a list of people with extensive knowledge and experience within blockchain and technology. They are split amongst three groups: SGB board. The core team itself has had previous projects launched or been having important roles in important companies, some noteworthy names are: Bounty0xGenaro Network
The biggest difference MaHRaBa DEFi has is that they have an appointed Shar'iah Governance Board (SGB) that has an active role in verifying and keeping track over MHRB itself and its listed crypto. They are experts in their field with extensive experience in providing the same service for other banks and companies around the world. They are tasked with researching and looking into crypto and making sure they are following the guidelines that ensure projects being compliant with shar'iah and have the returns they produce be halal.
This being an ethical and shar'iah compliant platform, the company and protocol itself will also follow these guidelines. The team is focused on making this platform as inclusive and easy to approach as possible. profits form the system and products will either be reinvested into the protocol or given to charity.
What is Shar'iah
Shar'iah roughly translates to "path to water", essentially being rules or guidelines one should live by to lead a good life. These are the divine principles found within Islam and having various degrees of importance depending on where you live and your level of devotion. The biggest aspect that and we are going to focus on is on the topic of in accordance with shar'iah law.
If one is well off, they ought to share with those who are less fortunate. One should also not exploit others. Banks in the western world usually have branches or parts that are devoted to be compliant. You're allowed to charge interest when borrowing money to someone, this makes it slightly harder for banks to make money. Islamic banking tend to turn a profit through the use of equity participation, where if a borrower makes profit from the loan they are inclined to share a part of this with the bank. This also means that any loss a loan taker suffers is indirectly shared with the bank, Islamic bank tend to screen their customers more thoroughly thanks to this.
A person who also has gathered wealth needs to of their savings to charity each year, or if they turn a profit from a loan to repay tohose who helped them. You're also not allowed to speculate and earn money through such means. There is several parts to these laws and plenty of rules you have to go through to be shar'iah compliant which is why MHRB has a SGB board to do so.
Shar'iah and crypto
Crypto is a fair bit newer than the shar'iah laws, which means there is no case for how they should be treated. You have to look at how they function and draw comparisons to be as compliant as possible. The MHRB SGB (Shar'iah Governance Board) needs to take a look into each and every crypto to see how the technology and smart contracts are built and if they can be compliant with the rules set up.
Stablecoins, as an example, are pegged or backed by some means that keep their value equal to one USD. This essentially means they should be treated as , similar to assets backed by gold or silver such as Paxos gold. But will all the thousands of unstable crypto on the market, seeing if these are compliant is a very difficult task. If the sole purpose is payment, such as with Litecoin, they are also to be considered money. For all other crypto it boils down to if the project is shar'iah compliant and the technology/smart contract running them are.
Why is this important?
Crypto is meant to be free. Anyone should be able to access it without being restricted by government or banks, a fully free source of money and income. Your access to it shouldn't be restricted by either your views or religion. A large majority of the crypto world is fully inaccessible by anyone who practices Islam and follows shar'iah laws. There are also over 1,7 billion people that don't have access to banks or similar services to improve their situation. These are things MHRB will fix.
Today there are around roughly Islamic banks, their total revenue is expected to be 3,4 trillion dollars worldwide in 2024. If MaRHaBa DEFI manages to reach of the Islamic banks' consumer base, that is 30 billion dollars of yearly revenue brought to crypto. There is a distinct lack of similar product on this stance alone, if one were to disregard the positive stance the company has, the project for normal investors is very promising.
Products:
MHRB approaches crypto with several products that are aimed to be inclusive, easy to use and effective.
Shalal wallet and Shouq NFT
The SGB board will review crypto and project applicants that want to have access to the MHRB customer base. If the projects/coins are shar'iah compliant they can be listed in the Shalal wallet, same with Shouq NFTs. The wallet requires no KYC and boasts high security while keeping their customers un-tracked, which is unlike what some wallets do to allow for promotion or advertisements. There will also be a function in place where users can use crypto to directly donate to charity. Initially supported tokens/coins will be ERC-721ERC-1155
The Shouq NFT marketplace will allow for storage in the Shalal wallet as well as traditional wallets. The marketplace itself will be cross-chain and have all the files on the tokens stored using the Sukhavati Network. It's worth noting that this storage solution is fairly new as it launched this year. Upon listing the protocol has functions in place that will match NFTs cross-chain to check for duplicates to fraud, they will match on different aspects apart from the images/videos themselves such as traits or rarity. There will be artist support and a 2% fee in $MRHB
Liquidity harvester and DEX aggregator
As you're not allowed to generate returns through interest, the liquidity harvester exists to generate passive income for you. The returns are halal as you get trading fees for providing liquidity. This harvester works cross chain and automatically finds the highest APY trading pair and moves your liquidity there. There is a 10% fee upon withdrawal, on profits only, the fee is 7% if you hold over 5000 $MHRB.
Along with the Harvester, there is a Cross-chain DEX aggregator that allows for cross-chain trades. Same as with the harvester, this is a cross chain DEX that works to have liquidity across chains. It acts to have minimal slippage and has the ability to split orders across chains to achieve this. There are , unless a user gains a small profit on a positive slippage.
Loans, DePhi and Launchpad
As it is not halal to charge interest, Marhaba offers interest free loans on their platform. As that comes with risk, they are collateralized like most crypto loans so that there is fallback in case someone doesn't pay back their loan. The collateral can be anything from that provide value, Chain link will be used to verify their value.
On the other hand if you want to give away money, DePhi protocol is the place to go. It's based, along with the launchpad, on the quadric funding model which was proposed by . Different charities can receive voluntary or compulsory charity (shar'iah) through this platform. It is fully secured and allows for fully anonymous and un-tracked donations.
Aside from funding charities MHRB will also have their own launchpad for new projects. Companies and projects can to be listed and receive funding from the protocol and its users. Any listed project needs to hold $MHRB to be white listed along with being reviewed and approved if compliant and halal. Same as with DePhi the launchpad uses quadric funding formula, which is bot and whale
Governance
The changes and features that will happen to the platform are decided by the community of $MHRB. Anyone who holds 9999 or more $MHRB can proposals on any listed. If there is a majority of at least the proposals move on to be screened by the SGB to verify compliance and then gets implemented. The chain itself will be centralized starting out, until $MHRB can be sufficiently spread out and decentralization can be achieved.
You can pay any fees that any of the previously mentioned products incur in $MHRB. These include fees for buying and selling NFTs and paying the fee to have your product reviewed to be shar'iah compliant. Any fees that are collected get together in a DAO treasury, how these funds will be used is up to the community through governance proposals. This will act as the central token and investment token to anyone who wishes to use or invest into the platform.
Conclusion
A really interesting idea I find that very few have even considered within crypto. But ideas don't get you very far, everyone can have them, you need solid products or a team to realize them. Marhaba has both, surprisingly so. The project itself is very solid and has plenty of great features that would be very useful. I always look for a "catch" or downsides to any project as most tend to have them, but this is a project that could pool together into something very big.
Shar'iah is a law that most practitioners of Islam follow. You're not allowed to benefit from the misfortune of others through gambling or interest and you should be good to others. Most crypto today isn't a valid investment option and MHRB aims to fix this. They offer several products that are easy to use and can generate passive income which is halal (shar'iah compliant).
All listed resources were accessed on 17/11/2021
