Islamic Defi for Islamic finance

By Chris Chen | Writing contest | 21 Nov 2021

Banking for the Islamic world is separated from the rest of the world due to Quran's prohibition of interest. This has lead to creative workarounds such as banks buying houses (since traditional mortgages are not allowed) and homeowners paying back the bank a higher price (but not interest!). The following video has a few examples of this and explains the process further

How does this work for Defi?

Currently, one of the biggest use case for Defi is deposit tokens for lending and collect interest on that. Obviously, this would run afoul on the prohibitions for interest. That's where marhaba defi comes in (above video @ 4min goes over marhaba, where this new platform got their name). This new platform will have several components catering specifically to the needs of Islamic finance.

Wallet - A non-custodial mobile wallet called 'Sahal' (a word meaning offering prayers, one of the pillars of islam) that only allows compliant tokens to be transacted
NFTs - Marketplace for NFTs are very popular right now, this platform will have a NFT marketplace called 'Souq' that will promote Islamic Arts and contemporary Calligraphy
Cross chain DEX- If you're going to create a new ecosystem, you're going to need the bridges to plug into the current existing crypto ecosystem and they have that planned

Over $2T assets are managed by Islamic banking worldwide and I'm glad that finally a group has come out to make Defi Shari'ah-compliant.

Marhaba defi will be using a protocol secured by ZK-Snarks (a Layer 2 rollup mechanism) with a DAO controlled by the MRHB token. They're currently in round 2 of their presale (see whitepaper) and if you want to participate or learn more, have a look here