Melbourne, Australia, May 15, 2023 — MRHB.Network, the world's first halal and ethical decentralized finance (DeFi) ecosystem, released its one-year performance report detailing its many achievements during 2022.
"From Day One, our platform put ethics together with a trusted ‘community first’ mission – a concept whose importance was highlighted by the numerous failures and frauds of 2022,” said MRHB Founder and CEO Naquib Mohammed. “We are continuing to build a safe and diverse crypto community that wants to participate in this extraordinary new sector that we hope will drive more creativity, entrepreneurship, investment and commerce opportunities for all involved.”
MRHB DeFi launched their $MRHB token in December 2021 in an oversubscribed IDO, raising nearly US$5 million from 1,000 investors, 800 of whom came through MRHB's own DeFi platform. Following are the startup's subsequent highlights and milestones over the past year:
Products and Architecture – The Foundation of the Vision
The past year saw MRHB launch three world-first products in halal DeFi:
Launched in February 2022, Sahal Wallet is the first self-custodial and chain-agnostic mobile crypto wallet that screens out non-halal tokens. Known as the 'Easy Wallet' because of its user-friendly interface, it also acts as a gateway to MRHB's entire ecosystem of halal DeFi products. Available on Android and iOS, Sahal Wallet has over 210,000 wallet activations across six chains, with tens of millions of dollars in weekly transaction volumes. It has several useful features, including fiat onramp, swaps, cross-chain bridges, biometrics, WalletConnect, and NFT storage. It is integrated with the following popular blockchains: Ethereum, BNB Chain, Polygon, Cronos, Fantom, and Avalanche, with eight more partner blockchains scheduled to be integrated by Q3 2023.
TijarX, beta-launched in October 2022, is the first halal DEX (decentralized exchange) built specifically for tokenized commodities. Initially focussed on very low-risk wealth preservation, it currently offers gold and silver -backed tokens by physically allocated bullion stored in the fully regulated vaults of Australia's leading bullion dealer, Ainslie. Providing tamper-proof and reliable price feeds from market-leading oracle solution, Chainlink, TijarX has reached over USD 400,000 in volume.
SouqNFT is the first halal NFT marketplace and B2B NFT solution. Launched in December 2021, SouqNFT hosts image NFTs and the world's first NFT-based halal compliance certificates, supporting the minting of Soulbound tokens. SouqNFT is currently integrated with the BNB and Polygon blockchains. Following the upcoming launch of Souq V2, including an entire UI/UX revamp, it will also be integrated with ETH, Fantom, Avalanche, and CRO. Souq V2 will also see new features added, including (but not limited to) secondary market support across all chains, an OpenAI and DreamFusion-integrated AI NFT art generator, and an NFT Project Launchpad.
In addition to the above three halal DeFi solutions, the startup has been hard at work building their next two ethical and halal wealth generation products: EmplifAi, for easy investing in on-chain sources of income, and M.I.R.O. — short for 'MRHB Incentivization & Reward Offering' — which, for the first time will, allow the MRHB token holders to earn rewards in return for community participation. Both products are anticipated to create a demand driver for the utility token.
The MRHB Governance Board decided to delay token releases for the MRHB DeFi team until after M.I.R.O. is launched to align the community and team members better.
Shariah Governance Board – The Soul of the MRHB Ecosystem
MRHB DeFi works very closely with their Shariah Governance Board (SGB) which reviews every single token and product on the platform for halal compliance, including intricate analyses of every development step for the products that MRHB creates. This ensures that everything on the platform is suitable for MRHB's faith and ethics-conscious audience, also crucial for making partnerships with other halal projects.
Over the past year, the SGB has overseen halal compliance for the MRHB utility token and all three product launches and provided halal and ethical screening for over 150 external protocols, tokens, and products, making MRHB DeFi the largest halal ecosystem in the blockchain industry.
The SGB is further involved in creating educational and official documentation and training resources for MRHB, including writing the first publicly published paper concerning Shariah governance in DeFi and drafting the first DeFi-related Shariah governance framework and Standard Operational Procedures (SOPs).
Partnerships and Investments – New Opportunities, New Capabilities
Currently, the MRHB ecosystem is open to integrations with all third-party projects, blockchains, and tokenized assets deemed ethical and halal, with plans to launch toolkits and project incubators to actively support new founders and entrepreneurs.
After one year on the market, MRHB has secured over 30 strategic partnerships, including many centralized and decentralized exchanges (CEXes and DEXes), technology, and institutional partners.
“It’s a very challenging business environment but the need for innovative financial channels for greater financial inclusion, freedom and system safety has never been greater. Global market stresses have crushed several very high profile centralized banks and crypto institutions, highlighting a real need for DeFi. The bear market has allowed the dedicated team to focus on building useful products and – despite token pressures – we are seeing greater recognition of the MRHB project’s ethics, quality, transparency and credibility,” said Khalid Howladar, Chairman, who leads MRHB’s institutional outreach. ”These in turn are driving many institutional partnerships and possible expansions into real estate, commodities and the metaverse for 2023. We believe these will deliver extraordinary long term value and utility for both our community, partners and investors.”
A few notable partnerships from the past year include the following:
MRHB partnered with the Organisation of Islamic Cooperation (OIC) youth wing to establish a Blockchain Centre of Excellence in Istanbul. They help educate and support young entrepreneurs from the 57 member states of the OIC interested in the blockchain industry. This partnership is enabled through MRHB's participation in the Islamic Cooperation Youth Forum (ICYF) incubation program, an initiative supported by the Presidency of the Republic of Türkiye Investment Office and the Bilişim Vadisi Technology Development Zone of the Republic of Türkiye.
Australia's leading bullion group, Ainslie Bullion, partnered with MRHB in Sep 2022 to onboard their physical bullion-backed Gold & Silver Standard tokens to TijarX. These tokenized precious metals are independently audited, insured by Lloyd's of London, and stored in Australia's Reserve Vault.
MRHB partnered with Polygon Technology in late 2021 to optimize MRHB for the Polygon network. Polygon transactions are available on Sahal Wallet and will be incorporated in an upcoming decentralized philanthropy (DePhi) solution covering Zakat and Waqf initiatives.
In addition to the above, other partners and investors include Sheesha Finance, Australian Gulf Capital, NewTribe Capital, Blockchain Australia, Mozaic, Contango Digital Assets, ZKSync, Acreditus Partners, EMGS Group, Sinofy Group, Sukhavati Protocol and MKD Capital, amongst others.
In terms of investment, MRHB has held private sales for Seed, Strategic, and non-dashboard Pre-Sales funding rounds, attracting over 1000 investors worldwide. Due to market interest, the company is exploring options around equity fundraising.
Marketing and PR – Sharing MRHB's Ethical DeFi Story with the World
MRHB employs a large and active marketing team, maintaining six social media platforms and seven Telegram community channels in six languages. The company, which has team members working in 17 different countries 24 hours a day across time zones, attended over a dozen international conferences in 2022 and held two large promotional events attracting a supportive and very loyal community of over 95,000 people, most of whom are first-time investors.
MRHB garnered widespread media interest and has been organically covered by notable media such as Forbes, Cointelegraph, Nasdaq.com, InvestorPlace, BeInCrypto, Cryptoslate, and many others.
MRHB DeFi has won several accolades, including two World Business Outlook awards in 2022 for 'Most Ethical DeFi Network Australia 2022' and 'Best New Islamic Crypto Platform Australia 2022'. At the Global Brand Awards, they also won 'Best New Islamic Crypto - 2022' in the Crypto/FOREX category. They were featured as one of the '10 Most Innovative Global Muslim Blockchain & Metaverse Projects to watch in 2022' by the California-based NPO Centre for Global Muslim Life. The $MRHB token scored a perfect 10/10 in a comprehensive audit by leading cybersecurity firm Hacken.
While the complete One-Year Performance report is only available for MRHB investors, the One-Year Highlights are available here:
https://docsend.com/view/46myt8g49xcse2u9
About MRHB DeFi Network
MRHB DeFi Network is a halal, decentralized finance platform built to embody the true spirit of "Ethical and Inclusive DeFi" by following faith-based financial and business principles where all excluded communities can benefit from the full empowerment potential of DeFi.
The diverse team comprises researchers, technocrats, influencers, Islamic fintech experts, business entrepreneurs, and industry professionals, who have all come together to ensure that MRHB DeFi prevails in a manner that will impact society as a whole, essentially bridging the gap between faith-conscious communities and the blockchain world.
MRHB DeFi Network Official Channels
Website: https://mrhb.network
Twitter: https://twitter.com/marhabadefi
Telegram: https://t.me/mdf_official
Telegram Announcements: https://t.me/marhabadefi_ANN
YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/c/MarhabaDeFi
Medium: https://medium.com/@mrhbdefi
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/marhabadefi
Discord: https://discord.com/invite/DubSjKmkBX
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/MRHBDeFi
Telegram (Arabic): https://t.me/mdf_arabic
Telegram (Russian): https://t.me/marhabadefi_russia
Telegram (Turkish): https://t.me/MarhabaDefiTR
Telegram (Persian): https://t.me/mrhbdefi_persian
Telegram (Urdu/Hindi): https://t.me/MRHBDeFi_Urdu_Hindi
SouqNFT Marketplace: https://souq.mrhb.network