Islamic Finance Principles Assessment
Riba — Does League of Ancients involve interest?
League of Ancients does not operate as a lending or interest-bearing protocol in the conventional riba sense, but its staking rewards were structured as fixed, emission-funded APRs rather than profit-sharing tied to real economic activity. This resembles riba-like fixed-return promises more than a Mudarabah-style variable payout. Muslim investors should treat the historical staking terms as a caution flag even though no formal interest-bearing debt instrument is present.
Assessment: Riba Dominant
Score: 31/100
Our methodology examines 10 criteria to evaluate how well League of Ancients avoids interest-based mechanisms.
No source describes LOA's treasury holding interest-bearing instruments, bonds, or conventional bank deposits, and the protocol is not structured as a lender or borrower of capital. Monetization is implied to come from NFT sales and marketplace activity rather than a disclosed fee or interest model. This absence of disclosed treasury composition is itself a transparency gap rather than a confirmed riba exposure. Based on available sources, LOA's core revenue model does not appear to involve direct interest income, though the lack of a published treasury statement leaves this unverifiable rather than affirmatively clean.
LOA's "Ancient Realms" staking and LP-farming pools advertised extremely high, fixed-looking APRs (reported as 650,000% for LOA-BUSD and 150,000% for LOA single staking) funded by scheduled token emissions rather than by protocol profit or trading revenue. Fixed, emission-driven returns disconnected from underlying economic performance carry a riba-like character, since they promise predetermined yield regardless of actual value creation. No vesting locks, penalty terms, or performance-linked variability are disclosed. This structure is more concerning than a genuine profit-and-loss-sharing model and should be treated cautiously by Muslim participants.
Gharar — How much uncertainty does League of Ancients involve?
League of Ancients carries substantial uncertainty, driven less by malicious intent than by a stalled project with thin, aging disclosures. A named, traceable team and a published smart contract reduce some ambiguity, but a single 2021 audit, near-zero on-chain activity, and undisclosed treasury mechanics leave much unresolved. Overall, the uncertainty here is significant enough to warrant real caution.
Assessment: Excessive Gharar (High Uncertainty)
Score: 36.4/100
Our methodology examines 15 criteria including team transparency, audit quality, and governance.
LOA's team is named and traceable — Dwayne Ong, Vivienne Chin, Kenneth Choong, and Abdul C — tied to Malaysian studio Mithotech Ltd, developer Realmstack Sdn Bhd, and Jakarta's Anantarupa Studios, with a roughly 30-person team confirmed via AMA. This is a meaningful positive for accountability. However, a 2022 independent review found the game "not a playable game" with tokens unearnable through gameplay, and a BNB Chain dashboard shows essentially zero transaction and user activity. Combined with a smart contract published only on GitLab rather than more standard repositories, transparency is only partial.
Callisto Network audited the LOA smart contract in November 2021, reporting zero high, medium, or low severity findings but flagging five owner-privilege items — meaning admin-level control risks were identified even in a clean audit. No later or additional audit firm has reviewed the contract since, despite years of operation and a collapsed market cap. Documentation on staking terms, lock-ups, and risk disclosures is limited to promotional Medium posts rather than formal terms of service. This single, dated audit and absence of updated risk documentation should be named plainly as a gharar concern.
Maysir — Does League of Ancients involve gambling or speculation?
League of Ancients is not designed as a gambling instrument, but its trading and reward history show speculative characteristics that raise maysir concerns. A play-to-earn game with genuine utility is conceptually distinguishable from pure speculation, yet the near-total absence of actual gameplay activity undercuts that distinction in practice. The overall picture leans toward caution.
Assessment: Maysir / Qimar (Gambling)
Score: 34.5/100
Our methodology examines 11 criteria to determine whether League of Ancients is a gambling instrument or a genuine economic tool.
Although marketed as a utility and governance token rather than a meme asset, LOA's practical trading behavior increasingly resembles speculative activity disconnected from productive use. With fully diluted valuation near $0.9–1.08 million and 24-hour trading volume as low as $86, the market is thin and largely inactive, meaning price movements are driven by sparse speculative trades rather than in-game economic activity. Combined with a 2022 finding that the underlying game was not genuinely playable, token value appears detached from any real productive function, a dynamic that mirrors the volatility-without-substance pattern associated with maysir.
LOA does present genuine utility on paper: NFT marketplace integration, LP staking farms, and a governance-token-minting mechanism tied to holding LOA. These features distinguish it from a token with no stated purpose. However, weak adoption evidence — zero recorded transaction activity on BNB Chain dashboards, an unplayable game as of 2022, and a collapsed market cap — suggests secondary-market speculation has come to dominate whatever utility was originally intended. Until gameplay activity and trading volume demonstrate genuine usage, the speculative dimension outweighs the productive one in practice.
The Full 27-Point Screening
1. Legitimacy (4 criteria)
| Criterion | Score | Analysis |
|---|
| Team Transparency | 62/100 | Team members are named with roles and a traceable Malaysian studio/developer, though credentials are largely self-reported rather than independently verified. |
| Fraud & Scam Risk | 38/100 | No explicit fraud finding exists against LOA itself, but a review found the game unplayable and on-chain activity trackers show near-zero usage, raising unresolved concern. |
| Use Case Legitimacy | 25/100 | An independent 2022 review explicitly states the game was not playable and tokens could not be earned through gameplay as advertised. |
| Ethical Practices | 65/100 | The base design is a gaming/esports NFT title, not itself built for a prohibited industry, though the P2E model leans heavily on speculative trading. |
Summary: The team behind League of Ancients is named and traceable to a Malaysian game studio, but independent evidence indicates the game was not actually functional as promised and on-chain activity appears minimal.
2. Project Operations (9 criteria)
| Criterion | Score | Analysis |
|---|
| Core Protocol Business | 78/100 | The protocol's stated business is MOBA gaming/esports, a sector with no inherent Shariah prohibition. |
| Transaction Fees | 0/100 (low evidence) | The sources give no information on whether transaction fees are burned, retained, or distributed. |
| Treasury Assets | 0/100 (low evidence) | No treasury composition or holdings are disclosed anywhere in the sources. |
| Revenue Model | 55/100 | Revenue appears tied to NFT/marketplace sales rather than interest, but no explicit revenue model is confirmed. |
| Transparency | 50/100 | A whitepaper and a published smart contract exist, but overall project transparency is undermined by lack of financial and treasury disclosure and reported inactivity. |
| Governance | 38/100 | Governance is indirect, requiring LOA to mint a separate governance token, and no decentralization structure is described. |
| Launch Fairness | 42/100 | Allocations show sizeable private sale, advisor and team buckets at genesis rather than a fully fair, permissionless launch. |
| Token Distribution | 42/100 | Documented allocation shows roughly a third of the 1 billion genesis supply going to team, private sale and advisors combined. |
| Speculation/Utility Ratio | 18/100 | Evidence shows the game largely non-functional while token farming carried extreme speculative APRs, indicating speculation dominates over realized utility. |
Summary: The protocol is a BNB Chain MOBA NFT game with a governance token, but treasury composition, fee handling, and true decentralization are largely undocumented, and genesis distribution shows meaningful insider allocations.
3. Financial Health (4 criteria)
| Criterion | Score | Analysis |
|---|
| Protocol Revenue | 52/100 | No lending/interest-based revenue stream is described, but the overall revenue model itself is not clearly documented. |
| Financial Status | 15/100 | Market data show fully diluted value near $1M and daily trading volume as low as tens of dollars, indicating severe financial instability. |
| Interest Assessment | 58/100 | The base protocol's staking is LP-token yield farming rather than a documented lending/borrowing interest system, though details are thin. |
| Audit Quality | 48/100 | A Callisto Network audit from November 2021 reported zero critical findings, but this is a single, dated audit from a less prominent firm with no follow-up reviews found. |
Summary: LOA's market value has collapsed to near-negligible levels with very thin trading activity, and while one older audit found no critical issues, no native lending/borrowing exists at the protocol level.
4. Token Economics (5 criteria)
| Criterion | Score | Analysis |
|---|
| Token Purpose | 32/100 | The token is marketed with utility functions (governance, staking, marketplace) but real-world delivery of gameplay utility is contradicted by an independent review. |
| Governance Rights | 38/100 | Holders can access governance only indirectly by minting a separate governance token, making direct token-holder rights unclear. |
| Rewards Distribution | 15/100 | Reported yield-farming APRs were fixed, extremely high figures driven by scheduled emissions rather than variable performance-based returns. |
| Speculation Controls | 10/100 | No anti-speculation mechanisms are described, and observed reward structures actively encouraged speculative farming behavior. |
| Asset Backing | 25/100 | No reserve or real-asset backing is described; value rests on speculative trading and unproven in-game utility. |
Summary: The token is framed as utility/governance-oriented but its main visible reward mechanism was extremely high, fixed, emission-driven APRs rather than usage-linked variable returns, and it lacks disclosed backing.
5. Staking Mechanism (5 criteria)
| Criterion | Score | Analysis |
|---|
| Mechanism Type | 48/100 | Staking operates through LP-token farming pools that appear non-custodial, but lock-up terms and operational details are not documented. |
| Islamic Contract Classification | 15/100 | Rewards were fixed, scheduled token emissions unconnected to shared profit, resembling a guaranteed-increment structure rather than a clean profit-sharing contract. |
| Rewards Structure | 12/100 | Cited APRs were extremely high and fixed rather than variable and tied to genuine trading or protocol revenue. |
| Documentation | 25/100 | Available staking documentation is limited to a promotional tutorial blog post, with no formal terms or risk disclosures found. |
| Shariah Alignment | 15/100 | The fixed, emission-driven, revenue-disconnected reward design leaves a core Shariah question about guaranteed-return character unresolved. |
Summary: A native LP-token staking/yield-farming mechanism exists, but its fixed, extremely high emission-based rewards and thin documentation raise an unresolved question about its Islamic finance characterization.
Overall Assessment: League of Ancients appears to be a genuinely attempted but underdelivering GameFi project whose speculative, emission-heavy reward design and unresolved documentation gaps currently outweigh its demonstrated utility.
Written by ThanvirFounder, Ex Director S&P Global Energy
Reviewed by Imam Omar SiddiqiShariah Scholar