Earlier this year, we backed Tariq and Ammar, two exceptional founders who are building InshAllah. InshAllah aims to create an Islamic finance-compatible decentralised finance (DeFi) suite of programmable products for everyday consumers and institutions. Today, they launch their first product, Goldsand: Ethereum staking that removes interest and maximizes yield.

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The Problem

Islamic finance is a US$4 trillion industry offering products such as zero-interest loans and banking services, primarily in regions like MENA, Southeast Asia, and South Asia. Currently, options to invest in major blockchains like Bitcoin, Ethereum, and Solana in an Islamic finance-compatible manner are minimal, if not completely unavailable. DeFi primitives like staking, real-world assets (RWAs), loans, and leverage are not designed to accommodate the $10 billion+ in crypto already held by customers who adhere to Islamic finance principles.

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The Solution

InshAllah is being developed to: (1) provide foundational crypto tools to nearly 2 billion Muslims, (2) make them accessible in their languages and aligned with their principles, and (3) offer an escape from the inflation/interest trap. Cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin, Ethereum, and Solana already support several use cases towards these goals, such as frictionless cross-border payments, decentralised applications, DeFi, and decentralised infrastructure (DePIN). The first step in this journey for the InshAllah team is Goldsand.

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What is Goldsand?

Ethereum’s current staking setup is not fully compatible with Islamic finance due to the types of transactions included in staked blocks. Existing staking protocols, such as Lido, do not differentiate between transaction types, leading to the validation of impermissible transactions. Approximately 80-90% of blocks produced by Ethereum validators include at least one interest-based transaction from lending platforms like Aave and Compound, where users pay interest on loans. Since interest is not permissible in Islamic finance, staking that validates such transactions results in contaminated yields, as they include fees from non-compliant sources. In short, ETH staking currently generates earnings derived from validating interest-based transactions.

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Goldsand is an Islamic finance-compatible alternative to Lido, offering an Ethereum staking product that avoids interest while maximizing yield. This network earns competitive, stable ETH yields without compromising Islamic finance principles, laying the foundation for a comprehensive suite of on-chain Islamic finance-compatible products.

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The Visionaries

InshAllah’s co-founders, Tariq and Ammar, perfectly embody founder-market fit. Both are highly skilled technically and have spent years studying Islamic sciences while exploring crypto in their free time. They have also built a strong team around them to transform how the Muslim population accesses DeFi.

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Why We’re Excited

As a Muslim, and as I became more involved in the crypto space, I took the time to understand the basics of Islamic finance. This knowledge helped me identify what is permissible and what isn’t. So, when I heard that Tariq and Ammar were building a solution to a problem I deeply understood, I was incredibly excited to see what they would create.

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With Goldsand being the first of many products to come, we’ve already seen a lot of excitement and a strong community forming around it. I’m looking forward to InshAllah Network bringing significant amounts of Islamic finance-driven capital on chain!

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We are actively looking to support more web3 projects. If you’re building something in the space, please do get in touch. Our DMs are open. :)

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