Islamic Finance Principles Assessment
Riba — Does MAI involve interest?
MAI itself is minted at 0% stated loan interest, which sounds favorable, but the wider QiDao protocol that issues it generates part of its treasury income by depositing funds into interest-bearing venues like Compound and MakerDAO's DSR. This is a structural, protocol-designed interest exposure, not incidental third-party misuse. For Muslim investors, this places MAI's issuing protocol in a genuinely problematic riba position that goes beyond mere avoidance-worthy ambiguity.
Assessment: Riba Dominant
Score: 36.6/100
Our methodology examines 10 criteria to evaluate how well MAI avoids interest-based mechanisms.
QiDao's revenue mix includes a 0.5% repayment fee, 0.5% LP deposit fee, and a 1% Anchor peg-stability fee, split between QI stakers and the DAO treasury. Alongside these service fees sits the Direct Deposit Module, which explicitly deploys protocol-held stablecoins into Compound and MakerDAO's DSR to earn interest, then routes roughly half of that DDM revenue to stakers. This is not a side activity by an unrelated dApp — it is a core, documented treasury mechanism of the protocol issuing MAI, making interest income a designed component of the ecosystem's finances.
The core lending mechanic — depositing collateral to mint MAI at 0% loan interest — is itself interest-free and structurally resembles a permissible collateralized-debt arrangement. However, the collateral basket accepted includes interest-bearing receipt tokens from Aave, Yearn, and Beefy vaults, meaning the backing of MAI can itself derive from interest-generating positions upstream. Combined with the DDM's active interest-market deployment, the overall business model layers riba-based mechanics on top of an otherwise interest-free borrowing feature, complicating any clean assessment of the stablecoin's backing.
Gharar — How much uncertainty does MAI involve?
Uncertainty around MAI is elevated by an unverifiable team and an absent audit trail, though the protocol's multi-year operating history and public documentation provide some offsetting clarity. The peg-stability tools reduce price-uncertainty risk for the token itself, but institutional opacity remains a real concern. On balance, this is a project with meaningful disclosure gaps that Muslim investors should weigh carefully.
Assessment: Excessive Gharar (High Uncertainty)
Score: 49.4/100
Our methodology examines 15 criteria including team transparency, audit quality, and governance.
No source among available records names the founders, core developers, or accountable legal entity behind QiDao/Mai Finance; searches instead surface unrelated organizations that happen to share the "Mai" name (an exchange, an ad-tech startup, other unrelated DAOs). Documentation is publicly hosted at docs.mai.finance, and the protocol has a multi-year track record — vesting schedules extending through 2024 and active Aave markets — indicating real, ongoing operations. But without confirmed named developers or a verified open-source repository, the team-level transparency remains materially incomplete.
No audit report specifically covering QiDao/Mai Finance's smart contracts — vaults, the Peg Stability Module, or the Direct Deposit Module — appears in available records. A Halborn audit exists but belongs to an unrelated chain project, not to MAI. This is a significant gharar concern that should be stated plainly: an unaudited protocol handling collateralized debt and cross-market treasury deployment carries unverified smart-contract and counterparty risk that neither users nor analysts can fully price in.
Maysir — Does MAI involve gambling or speculation?
MAI is not designed as a speculative or gambling instrument; it functions as a debt-backed stablecoin intended to track one dollar in value. Peg-stability tools work to suppress volatility rather than encourage speculative price swings. The main maysir-adjacent risk lies not in MAI's design but in how leveraged collateral positions and secondary-market trading might be used by third parties, which does not itself determine the coin's ruling.
Assessment: Moderate Maysir (High Risk)
Score: 58.9/100
Our methodology examines 11 criteria to determine whether MAI is a gambling instrument or a genuine economic tool.
MAI serves a clear, productive function: it lets holders of crypto assets (including yield-bearing vault tokens) unlock liquidity without selling their underlying positions, by minting a stable unit of account against collateral. This collateralized-debt use case is a genuine financial utility distinct from wagering on price direction, and it mirrors conventional secured lending structures in intent, if not always in mechanism. The Anchor and PSM modules exist specifically to keep MAI's price stable near one dollar, reinforcing its role as a working medium of exchange rather than a speculative chip.
Because MAI is engineered for price stability rather than appreciation, it holds little inherent appeal for speculative trading compared to volatile tokens, and its documented use — CDP-based liquidity access across multiple chains — reflects genuine adoption rather than gambling-driven demand. Some users may still open leveraged collateral positions or trade MAI opportunistically on secondary markets during depegging events, but such third-party behavior is a misuse of a stability-oriented tool, not evidence that MAI itself was designed for or primarily used in speculative maysir activity.
The Full 27-Point Screening
1. Legitimacy (4 criteria)
| Criterion | Score | Analysis |
|---|
| Team Transparency | 30/100 (low evidence) | No source names or credentials a specific founding team for the actual QiDao/Mai Finance protocol; unrelated "Mai"-named teams appear in results but cannot be attributed to this coin. |
| Fraud & Scam Risk | 55/100 | No fraud, hack, or rug-pull report specifically naming MAI/QiDao was found, and the protocol shows multi-year continuous operation, but this is inferred from absence of adverse reports rather than a direct clean bill of health. |
| Use Case Legitimacy | 78/100 | Sources clearly describe a functioning collateralised-debt stablecoin use case (borrow MAI against crypto collateral at 0% stated loan interest), indicating genuine utility rather than pure hype. |
| Ethical Practices | 45/100 | The protocol's own design (via its Peg Stability Module and Direct Deposit Module) actively places funds into interest-bearing venues like Compound and MakerDAO's DSR, which is a self-designed feature rather than third-party misuse. |
Summary: The sources cannot verify a named, credentialed team behind the actual QiDao/Mai Finance protocol, though no fraud or hack reports specific to MAI were found and the project shows years of continuous operation as a genuine stablecoin/lending platform rather than a meme.
2. Project Operations (9 criteria)
| Criterion | Score | Analysis |
|---|
| Core Protocol Business | 50/100 | The core business is collateralised stablecoin issuance, a neutral sector in itself, but the protocol's built-in treasury deployment into interest-earning money markets tempers this. |
| Transaction Fees | 60/100 | Fees (repayment, deposit, Anchor) are disclosed, service-linked and split between treasury and stakers rather than being retained opaquely, though no burn mechanism is described. |
| Treasury Assets | 20/100 | Treasury/PSM funds are explicitly deployed into Compound and MakerDAO DSR to earn interest, meaning treasury assets include interest-bearing positions by design. |
| Revenue Model | 25/100 | A defined portion of protocol revenue (DDM revenue) is explicitly generated by earning interest in external money markets. |
| Transparency | 68/100 | Public documentation details tokenomics, fee structure, PSM and DDM mechanics in specific terms, though explicit open-source licensing confirmation is absent. |
| Governance | 50/100 | Governance is referenced via QIP votes and a DAO treasury, but the degree of decentralisation and voter base is not detailed in these sources. |
| Launch Fairness | 62/100 | Documented vesting (keeper incentives over 3 years, early partners over 18 months, treasury linear release) suggests a structured, non-instant-dump launch rather than an insider dump. |
| Token Distribution | 68/100 | Allocation is heavily weighted to a community/DAO treasury (about 85%) with only a small early-partner slice, per the cited breakdown. |
| Speculation/Utility Ratio | 82/100 | MAI is designed and mechanically stabilised as a $1-pegged utility stablecoin rather than a speculative trading token. |
Summary: MAI is a collateral-backed stablecoin from the QiDao protocol with disclosed fees, a treasury-heavy token allocation with vesting, and documentation, but its Peg Stability Module and Direct Deposit Module by design route protocol funds into external interest-bearing venues.
3. Financial Health (4 criteria)
| Criterion | Score | Analysis |
|---|
| Protocol Revenue | 25/100 | Part of documented protocol revenue (DDM revenue) is interest income earned on deposited funds in external lending markets. |
| Financial Status | 50/100 | Peg-stability tooling (Anchor, PSM) is documented, but broader financial health/market-cap trend data is not substantively covered in these sources. |
| Interest Assessment | 30/100 | While vault loans are stated as 0% interest, the same protocol's DDM/PSM explicitly earns and distributes interest from external money markets, so interest is present at the protocol level. |
| Audit Quality | 5/100 (low evidence) | No audit report specific to the QiDao/Mai Finance smart contracts (vaults, PSM, DDM) could be found in these sources; the only audit retrieved belongs to an unrelated project. |
Summary: Protocol revenue combines service-type fees with an explicit interest-income stream from external money markets, the base protocol does offer native zero-stated-interest borrowing against collateral, and no audit for the MAI/QiDao smart contracts could be located in these sources.
4. Token Economics (5 criteria)
| Criterion | Score | Analysis |
|---|
| Token Purpose | 78/100 | MAI is structured and used as a functional stablecoin/debt unit, not a purposeless meme token. |
| Governance Rights | N/A | Sources confirm MAI itself carries no governance rights (these sit with the separate QI token), which is a neutral/expected design for a stablecoin. |
| Rewards Distribution | 48/100 | Rewards paid out to fee/reward participants are variable and activity-linked, but a meaningful share originates from interest earned via the DDM, mixing fee-based and interest-based sources. |
| Speculation Controls | 65/100 | Anchor module and PSM arbitrage/debt-ceiling mechanisms are explicitly designed to control depegging and stabilise MAI's price. |
| Asset Backing | 35/100 | MAI's collateral basket explicitly can include interest-bearing receipt tokens (Aave/Yearn/Beefy), so backing is not free of interest-bearing exposure. |
Summary: MAI is a genuine utility stablecoin with peg-stabilising controls, but its collateral backing and part of its associated reward flows are tied to interest-bearing assets and interest income by the protocol's own design.
5. Staking Mechanism
MAI has no native staking mechanism, so these five criteria are not applicable and are excluded from the score entirely rather than counted as zeros.
Overall Assessment: MAI (MIMATIC) is a functioning, multi-year collateralised stablecoin protocol with genuine utility and fair-looking distribution mechanics, but its own design incorporates interest-bearing treasury deployment and collateral options, and no team credentials or audit for the specific protocol could be confirmed from the sources provided.
Written by ThanvirFounder, Ex Director S&P Global Energy
Reviewed by Imam Omar SiddiqiShariah Scholar