Islamic Finance Principles Assessment
Riba — Does Keep Network involve interest?
Keep Network's core protocol does not contain an interest-bearing lending or borrowing product. Its income comes from signing fees paid in ETH and tBTC for network services, which is a fee-for-service model rather than riba. For Muslim investors, the base architecture appears free of interest, though the post-merger token conversion introduces separate considerations discussed elsewhere.
Assessment: Minor Riba
Score: 70.6/100
Our methodology examines 10 criteria to evaluate how well Keep Network avoids interest-based mechanisms.
Keep Network's revenue derives from Random Beacon signing fees (paid in ETH to KEEP stakers) and tBTC bridge signing fees (paid to ETH bonders), described in the project's documentation as a "fee-based, non-inflationary rewards model." This is compensation for computational and custodial services rendered, not interest on a loan. No sources indicate the protocol holds an interest-bearing treasury or invests idle funds into yield-bearing instruments; the model is service-fee-driven. Absent evidence of interest-based lending, deposit-taking, or treasury placement into conventional bonds or savings instruments, the revenue structure itself does not exhibit riba characteristics.
Staking on Keep Network requires KEEP delegation plus ETH bonding, with three distinct reward types: ETH "earnings" for bonded collateral, KEEP "staking rewards" scaled to bonded ETH, and KEEP "liquidity rewards" for supplying liquidity to designated pools. None of these are fixed-rate payouts; they fluctuate with actual network usage, signing volume, and a time-limited stakedrop allocation. This variability, tied to genuine service provision rather than a predetermined interest rate on capital, aligns more closely with a profit-and-risk-sharing model than with riba. However, slashing conditions and lock-up terms are not fully documented, leaving some residual uncertainty about downside risk allocation.
Gharar — How much uncertainty does Keep Network involve?
Keep Network carries moderate uncertainty, concentrated less in team transparency and more in incomplete audit coverage and post-merger structural change. Strong points reduce ambiguity considerably, but gaps remain. On balance, informed investors face manageable but real gharar that warrants caution rather than outright avoidance based on team or code opacity alone.
Assessment: Moderate Gharar (Material Uncertainty)
Score: 63.9/100
Our methodology examines 15 criteria including team transparency, audit quality, and governance.
Keep Network was founded by publicly named individuals, Matt Luongo and Corbin Pon, with a documented history including their prior venture Fold. Engineers, advisors, and operators are listed on the project's site and business primer, corroborated by LinkedIn and F6S profiles. The codebase is open source on GitHub with public documentation, and the project raised roughly $20 million from identifiable venture firms including Andreessen Horowitz, Polychain Capital, and Paradigm. This level of named accountability and public disclosure substantially reduces gharar relative to anonymous or unverifiable projects, giving investors clear parties to research and hold accountable.
Keep Network has been audited multiple times: CertiK (September 2021, covering roughly 11.6% of code with unresolved major and medium findings at delivery), ChainSecurity and a second CertiK review of the Vending Machine contract (November 2021), and Least Authority audits of the tBTC Bridge v2 (September 2022) and its Solana contracts (August 2023). This is a genuine audit trail, not an absence of review, though the limited scope and unresolved findings in the earliest audit are a real gharar concern investors should weigh. Staking slashing conditions and third-party custodial arrangements remain undocumented in available sources, adding further uncertainty.
Maysir — Does Keep Network involve gambling or speculation?
Keep Network is not designed as a gambling mechanism; it provides infrastructure for private, decentralized Bitcoin custody and off-chain computation on Ethereum. Its rewards are tied to actual service delivery rather than chance-based payout. The main maysir-adjacent concern lies outside the protocol itself, in how KEEP or its successor token T is traded speculatively on exchanges.
Assessment: Moderate Maysir (High Risk)
Score: 64.7/100
Our methodology examines 11 criteria to determine whether Keep Network is a gambling instrument or a genuine economic tool.
Keep Network's tBTC product solves a concrete problem: enabling Bitcoin to be used within Ethereum's DeFi ecosystem without relying on a single trusted custodian, by distributing private keys across bonded operators. The Random Beacon similarly provides verifiable randomness as a service to other applications needing sybil resistance. These are productive, utility-driven functions with real fee-paying demand, not wagers on uncertain outcomes. Rewards to stakers and bonders correspond to work performed securing the network, distinguishing this economic activity clearly from gambling or zero-sum speculation embedded in the protocol's own design.
Keep Network's genuine utility in cross-chain custody and its multi-year track record, including its evolution into Threshold Network, demonstrate substantive adoption beyond pure hype. That said, like most tradable tokens, KEEP has been subject to speculative buying and selling on secondary markets, and its conversion into T via a fixed-ratio Vending Machine contract adds a layer of exposure to a successor project's market dynamics. This secondary-market speculation is a feature of trading behavior by third parties, not of Keep Network's own design, and should not by itself be read as rendering the protocol's core function impermissible.
The Full 27-Point Screening
1. Legitimacy (4 criteria)
| Criterion | Score | Analysis |
|---|
| Team Transparency | 90/100 | Founders and team members are named with verifiable profiles and a documented prior venture track record. |
| Fraud & Scam Risk | 65/100 | No hack, fraud, or regulatory action is reported against the project, but this is an absence of negative findings rather than a positive confirmation of a clean audit trail. |
| Use Case Legitimacy | 80/100 | The protocol has a concrete described use case in privacy computation and the tBTC Bitcoin bridge. |
| Ethical Practices | 75/100 | The design is privacy/security infrastructure with no described link to a prohibited industry, though the sources never explicitly certify this. |
Summary: Keep Network was founded by a publicly identified, credentialed team with a prior venture track record and no reported fraud or regulatory action in these sources.
2. Project Operations (9 criteria)
| Criterion | Score | Analysis |
|---|
| Core Protocol Business | 82/100 | The base protocol is a privacy/computation layer, not a gambling or interest-based finance business. |
| Transaction Fees | 72/100 | Fees compensate signers and bonders for real service work rather than being extracted as interest. |
| Treasury Assets | 50/100 (low evidence) | The sources give no detail on treasury asset composition or whether any holdings are interest-bearing. |
| Revenue Model | 78/100 | The revenue model is explicitly fee-based and non-inflationary rather than interest-based. |
| Transparency | 85/100 | Code and whitepaper are openly published and documented on GitHub. |
| Governance | 55/100 | Governance moved to the Threshold DAO after merger, but original KEEP-specific governance mechanics are not detailed. |
| Launch Fairness | 50/100 | Private sales to VCs preceded broad public distribution, though vesting was applied to reduce insider dumping risk. |
| Token Distribution | 65/100 | A documented breakdown shows a meaningful public/stakedrop share alongside vested team and investor allocations. |
| Speculation/Utility Ratio | 68/100 | Descriptions point to genuine utility applications, though no explicit usage-versus-speculation metric is given. |
Summary: The protocol is an open-source Ethereum privacy layer powering the tBTC Bitcoin bridge, with a fixed token supply distributed across public, stakedrop, and vested insider allocations.
3. Financial Health (4 criteria)
| Criterion | Score | Analysis |
|---|
| Protocol Revenue | 78/100 | Documented revenue sources are signing fees, not lending interest. |
| Financial Status | 42/100 | The token's status is now entangled with the Threshold merger/conversion, and current financial stability is not clearly established. |
| Interest Assessment | 85/100 | The base protocol functions as a privacy/custody layer with no lending or borrowing feature described. |
| Audit Quality | 55/100 | Multiple named audits exist (CertiK, ChainSecurity, Least Authority) but one shows limited code coverage and unresolved major findings. |
Summary: Revenue comes from service-based signing fees rather than interest, the base protocol has no lending/borrowing feature, and several named security audits exist though with mixed coverage and outstanding findings.
4. Token Economics (5 criteria)
| Criterion | Score | Analysis |
|---|
| Token Purpose | 80/100 | Sources explicitly call KEEP a fixed-supply utility/work token, not a meme asset. |
| Governance Rights | 48/100 | Governance rights tied specifically to KEEP are unclear, with DAO rights emerging mainly after the Threshold merger. |
| Rewards Distribution | 75/100 | Documented reward types are variable and tied to signing fees and bonded collateral rather than fixed payouts. |
| Speculation Controls | 40/100 | Only insider vesting is documented; no broader anti-speculation mechanism for general market participants is described. |
| Asset Backing | 62/100 | Value appears tied to genuine network utility rather than a hard-asset reserve, though this is inferred rather than explicitly stated. |
Summary: KEEP functions as a fixed-supply utility token with variable, activity-based rewards and limited anti-speculation controls beyond insider vesting.
5. Staking Mechanism (5 criteria)
| Criterion | Score | Analysis |
|---|
| Mechanism Type | 58/100 | Staking can occur directly or via third-party providers, but custody and lock-up specifics of those providers are not detailed. |
| Islamic Contract Classification | 52/100 | Rewards derive from fee-for-service signing/bonding activity, suggestive of a service-fee structure, but sources give no explicit Islamic contract classification. |
| Rewards Structure | 72/100 | Reward types are explicitly tied to real signing-fee revenue and bonded ETH activity rather than guaranteed fixed interest. |
| Documentation | 75/100 | A dedicated staking documentation site explains the process and reward types clearly. |
| Shariah Alignment | 55/100 | Moderate gharar exists around bonding/slashing risk that the sources do not fully resolve, though rewards are activity-based rather than interest-like. |
Summary: Keep Network has a native staking mechanism combining KEEP delegation and ETH bonding with documented but not fully detailed reward and risk mechanics.
Overall Assessment: Keep Network presents as a genuine, technically substantiated privacy/infrastructure protocol with a transparent team and fee-based economics, though gaps remain in treasury, governance, and staking risk documentation that limit full certainty in some areas.
Written by ThanvirFounder, Ex Director S&P Global Energy
Reviewed by Imam Omar SiddiqiShariah Scholar