Islamic Finance Principles Assessment
Riba — Does Mt Pelerin Shares involve interest?
Mt Pelerin Shares does involve interest-based elements, not through the token mechanics themselves but through the underlying company's revenue mix. Since MPS represents literal equity in Mt Pelerin Group SA, holders are proportionate owners of a business that explicitly issues interest-bearing loans. For Muslim investors, this indirect riba exposure is the central and disqualifying concern rather than any token-level flaw.
Assessment: Moderate Riba
Score: 50/100
Our methodology examines 10 criteria to evaluate how well Mt Pelerin Shares avoids interest-based mechanisms.
Mt Pelerin's revenue is a blend of fee-based income — exchange, brokerage, OTC and tokenisation service fees, tiered between 2.5% and 3.8% — and an explicitly interest-based product: crypto-collateralised Lombard loans issued through partner Swiss banks at a stated rate of 3% plus a currency component. Treasury composition is not disclosed in available sources, so it is unknown whether idle capital is held in interest-bearing instruments. The fee-based lines are structurally permissible service charges, but their presence alongside a disclosed interest product means the company's overall income stream is mixed, not clean.
The core business is asset tokenisation and brokerage, which is not inherently interest-based. However, Mt Pelerin explicitly offers Lombard loans as a revenue-generating service line through bank partnerships, at a stated interest rate. Because MPS token holders own equity in this same company, dividends paid to them are sourced, at least in part, from interest income generated by this lending activity. This is a direct, disclosed link between the token's economic returns and riba, distinguishing MPS from tokens whose issuers stay entirely within fee-based or profit-sharing business models.
Gharar — How much uncertainty does Mt Pelerin Shares involve?
Uncertainty around Mt Pelerin Shares is moderate and asymmetric — the company and its founders are unusually transparent and verifiable, but the token's smart-contract-level documentation and audit trail are thin. What reduces gharar is regulatory oversight and named leadership; what increases it is the absence of a dedicated audit and near-zero trading liquidity. On balance, informational uncertainty is manageable but not negligible.
Assessment: Moderate Gharar (Material Uncertainty)
Score: 57.9/100
Our methodology examines 15 criteria including team transparency, audit quality, and governance.
Mt Pelerin is a rare case of strong identity disclosure in crypto: founder Arnaud Salomon (EPFL, prior UBS experience) and COO/Head of Legal Gregory Falk are named with credentialed backgrounds, and the company operates under Swiss regulatory supervision, cited by the OECD as a tokenisation reference case. A legacy version of the underlying Bridge Protocol code was open-sourced on GitHub, though the current production contracts' open-source status is unconfirmed. This level of named accountability substantially reduces gharar relative to typical anonymous-team crypto projects.
No security audit specific to Mt Pelerin's Bridge Protocol or the MPS token itself was found in available sources; audit reports located under adjacent search terms (Halborn reviews of Substance Exchange, zeta-chain, SSP Wallet, Send Earn Protocol) belong to unrelated projects. This absence of a named, dated audit for MPS itself is a genuine gharar concern and should be treated as such rather than assumed away. Governance terms (dividends, voting, fee discounts) are disclosed clearly in company materials, but technical risk disclosure for the token layer is lacking.
Maysir — Does Mt Pelerin Shares involve gambling or speculation?
Mt Pelerin Shares does not resemble gambling or pure speculation in its design — it is structured as equity with dividend and voting rights, not a chance-based instrument. What distinguishes it from typical meme coins is the presence of an underlying operating business and KYC-gated shareholder rights. The category label "meme coin" applied here appears to be a data misclassification rather than a reflection of the asset's actual nature.
Assessment: Moderate Maysir (High Risk)
Score: 58.6/100
Our methodology examines 11 criteria to determine whether Mt Pelerin Shares is a gambling instrument or a genuine economic tool.
Despite the meme coin label attached in this dataset, MPS's own design is not built for speculative, utility-free trading. It carries genuine dividend entitlement and one-token-one-vote governance tied to a real, regulated Swiss company, and initial tokens were time-locked post-sale rather than immediately released for flipping. This stands in contrast to coins whose sole function is price speculation with no underlying productive activity, and the maysir concern that applies to genuine meme coins does not map cleanly onto MPS's actual structure.
Against this, secondary market data shows negligible trading volume for MPS, meaning whatever speculative activity might occur is minimal simply due to illiquidity rather than restrained by design. Shareholder rights (dividends, voting) require KYC and registration, but once tokens are unlocked they can trade freely without KYC, opening a narrow channel for speculative transfer divorced from the underlying equity relationship. Overall, genuine utility and disclosed corporate substance outweigh speculative trading concerns, though illiquidity itself remains a practical risk for any investor.
The Full 27-Point Screening
1. Legitimacy (4 criteria)
| Criterion | Score | Analysis |
|---|
| Team Transparency | 90/100 | Founder Arnaud Salomon and COO Gregory Falk are named with verifiable credentials and career history, making the team fully traceable. |
| Fraud & Scam Risk | 75/100 | No fraud, hack, or rug-pull indicators tied to Mt Pelerin appear in the sources, and the firm operates as a regulated entity, but this is inferred from absence of adverse findings rather than an explicit clean bill of health. |
| Use Case Legitimacy | 85/100 | MPS represents real tokenised corporate equity in an operating fintech company and was cited by the OECD as a genuine reference use-case, not hype-driven. |
| Ethical Practices | 40/100 | The company itself, whose equity MPS represents, directly offers an interest-based Lombard loan product with a stated interest rate, which is part of its own design rather than third-party misuse. |
Summary: Mt Pelerin is a named, credentialed, regulated Swiss team running a genuine tokenised-equity business with no fraud indicators found in the sources.
2. Project Operations (9 criteria)
| Criterion | Score | Analysis |
|---|
| Core Protocol Business | 40/100 | The underlying business combines legitimate fee-based crypto/fiat services with an explicit interest-bearing lending product line offered directly by the company. |
| Transaction Fees | 80/100 | Exchange fees are transparent, tiered, and fee-for-service, not structured as interest extraction. |
| Treasury Assets | 35/100 (low evidence) | The sources do not disclose the composition of Mt Pelerin's treasury, so whether it holds interest-bearing assets cannot be established. |
| Revenue Model | 35/100 | Disclosed revenue includes an explicit interest-based Lombard loan product alongside fee income, indicating a mixed and partly non-compliant revenue base. |
| Transparency | 70/100 | Legacy protocol code, a white paper, articles of association and a share register procedure are publicly disclosed, though current production contracts' open-source status is unconfirmed. |
| Governance | 40/100 | Governance follows a traditional centralised corporate model (board proposal, AGM approval) rather than decentralised on-chain governance. |
| Launch Fairness | 55/100 | The 2018 sale was transparent and KYC-gated with disclosed lock-ups, but only 5% of equity was ever offered publicly, with 95% retained privately. |
| Token Distribution | 30/100 | Token distribution is heavily concentrated, with 95% of equity retained by original shareholders and only 5% distributed to the public. |
| Speculation/Utility Ratio | 75/100 | MPS's rights (voting, dividends, fee discounts) are utility-driven rather than speculative, and market data shows minimal speculative trading activity. |
Summary: MPS is a transparently disclosed but centrally-governed and ownership-concentrated tokenised equity, built on Mt Pelerin's Bridge Protocol, whose parent company also runs an explicitly interest-based lending product.
3. Financial Health (4 criteria)
| Criterion | Score | Analysis |
|---|
| Protocol Revenue | 35/100 | A portion of disclosed protocol/company revenue derives from an explicit interest-based lending product. |
| Financial Status | 50/100 | The company appears to be an active, ongoing operation, but detailed financial statements are not provided and the token itself shows negligible trading volume. |
| Interest Assessment | 30/100 | While the tokenisation protocol itself does not run a lending pool, the company whose equity MPS represents directly offers interest-based lending as a business line. |
| Audit Quality | 15/100 (low evidence) | No security audit specific to Mt Pelerin's Bridge Protocol or MPS token could be found in the sources; audits referenced belong to unrelated projects. |
Summary: Mt Pelerin's revenue mixes legitimate service fees with an explicit interest-bearing Lombard loan business, and no audit of the MPS token or Bridge Protocol contracts could be found.
4. Token Economics (5 criteria)
| Criterion | Score | Analysis |
|---|
| Token Purpose | 85/100 | MPS is a genuine utility/security token representing real corporate equity rather than a speculative meme asset. |
| Governance Rights | 85/100 | Holders receive clear one-token-one-vote governance rights at shareholder meetings. |
| Rewards Distribution | 80/100 | Dividends are variable and discretionary, proposed by the board and approved by the AGM, not fixed or guaranteed. |
| Speculation Controls | 50/100 | KYC gating for shareholder rights and an initial lock-up provide some friction against pure speculation, but tokens trade freely thereafter without further controls. |
| Asset Backing | 65/100 | The token is backed by real equity in an operating regulated company, though that company's revenue mix includes some interest-based lending. |
Summary: MPS carries genuine equity-based utility, governance and variable dividend rights, backed by real business ownership rather than pure speculation, though the underlying business has some interest-based revenue.
5. Staking Mechanism
Mt Pelerin Shares 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: MPS is a legitimate, transparent, non-meme tokenised equity in a traceable Swiss company, but its underlying business's use of interest-based lending is a genuine and unresolved Shariah concern that should weigh on any compliance determination.
Scoring note: Meme coin: maysir-capped (C13=75); score already below the cap.
Written by ThanvirFounder, Ex Director S&P Global Energy
Reviewed by Imam Omar SiddiqiShariah Scholar