Fundraising $200 million again, what exactly is Islamic Coin?

Original title: What is the “Islamic Coin” that recently raised $200 million? "

Author: Zhuorui Fu，BlockBeats

*BlockBeats Note: This article was written in January 2023. At that time, the project had raised more than 200 million dirhams (approximately RMB 400 million). The investors were mainly from the Russian background and signed a contract with Coinbase to plan to list the currency. *

Islam is the second largest religion in the world, with nearly 2 billion adherents, or a quarter of the world’s population. Muslims make up the majority of the population in 47 countries. Moreover, the ARPU of users in the Middle East is very high, which is a huge market for those who do business.

Shariah is an important religious law forming part of the Islamic tradition that guides and governs many aspects of life for Muslims around the world, including financial activities. One of the core principles of Islamic financial law is the prohibition of payment or collection of interest, so this makes the non-Islamic modern financial system basically unable to comply with Islamic regulations. After all, interest is one of the core businesses of non-Islamic financial institutions. Generally, Islamic-compliant banks do not feed back “interest” to customers, but share “profit” with customers through “profit sharing”.

According to the Global Islamic Economy Report, the size of the Islamic finance sector was US$2.88 trillion in 2020 and is expected to grow to US$3.69 trillion by 2024. Two of the four main factors influencing expansion are the rapid growth of the Muslim population, the spread of digital technology and the development of mobile communications.

“Halal compliance chain”

The Islamic financial system has been barely affected by the recent financial crisis due to its ban on speculative trading and uncertainty, as well as its focus on fairness and risk sharing. Islamic finance is a rare example in finance.

In this context, the UAE gave birth to the Islamic Coin project. According to the author’s understanding through non-public information (the information may be wrong), the project has raised more than 200 million dirhams (about 400 million yuan), and the investors are mainly from the Russian background. Currently, it has signed a contract with Coinbase to prepare for the currency listing.

Islamic Coin (ISLM) was founded by ICNetwork Ltd, a private equity technology company in the UAE. The website says the team are experts in blockchain and ethical finance. A notable early contributor and founder of IC Tech is Andrey Kuznetsov, an engineer from Belarus. ICNetwork Ltd is the developer of the Haqq blockchain.

The Haqq (Arabic for truth) blockchain is a PoS network, mainly compatible with Ethereum and Cosmos, currently supports Cosmos Evmos using the Cosmos SDK, and will support Ethereum in the future. Meet modern industry requirements with fast finality and high transaction throughput. Haqq is the first Sharia compliant decentralized ledger.

Tokenomics

Islamic Coin is Haqq’s ecological currency with a limited total supply, and 10% of each issue is automatically deposited into Evergreen DAO. Evergreen DAO is a non-profit virtual foundation for further investing in projects benefiting the Muslim community or donating to Islamic charities. In some cases, Evergreen DAO may also fund activities necessary for the operation and development of the Haqq network. Key decisions are made by a committee consisting of the top 5 validators of the Haqq blockchain.

Islamic Coin cannot be “printed” arbitrarily and thus devalued, and since there is no interest rate in the system, it cannot cause arbitrary deflation by raising the central bank’s interest rate. The price of Islamic Coin is determined by the market.

The Cosmos-based Islamic Coin is minted using Tendermint BFT. With minting enabled, until 100 billion coins are minted, each block will generate new ISLM coins and gas charged to users. New ISLM tokens and gas fees are distributed among validators, delegators and Evergreen DAO:

• 10% Evergreen DAO.
• 1% to 5% are allocated to block proposers and their delegators.
• The remainder is allocated proportionally to all bonded validators and their delegators.

The supply of ISLM is limited to 100 billion tokens. For each interval, ie 2 years, the emission rate of ISLM is reduced by 5%. Emissions will stop after 100 years from the first block of the first epoch. In the first interval, the project will mint 4.33% of the coins, followed by 4.12%, and the 9th epoch will mint 2.87%. More than 50% of the total supply will be minted at the end of Epoch 9 when it goes live from mainnet, including the initial supply. 100% (100 billion ISLM) will be minted at the end of the 50th Era, after which no more ISLM will be minted.

There is a total of 20 billion initial supply, distributed as follows:

• 2 billion - Evergreen Foundation - according to Century Coinomics.
• 5.5 Billion - Partners: Board of Directors, Initial Backers, Promoters and Market Makers.
• $4 billion - initial private placement. These tokens will be sold to qualified private investors.
• 5.5 billion - business reserve and ecosystem development fund. These tokens will be used for public offerings, operating costs, business development, grants, and other ecosystem-focused activities.
• 3 Billion - Founders Reward.
• Tokens dedicated to Evergreen DAO will be locked until it is fully developed, tested and deployed on mainnet.

At present, the consultant and operation team of the company/project are mainly composed of senior Islamic law bankers, experts, and members of the royal family of Abu Dhabi.

Currently the project has launched an ecosystem wallet