Islamic Finance Principles Assessment
Riba — Does MyStandard involve interest?
MyStandard's core marketplace revenue — companies purchasing MYST to access candidate data — is a fee-for-service model with no apparent interest income. However, its staking program pays a fixed, pre-determined 6% APY rather than a variable, performance-linked reward, which raises a genuine riba concern for the portion of the ecosystem tied to staking.
Assessment: Riba Dominant
Score: 48.1/100
Our methodology examines 10 criteria to evaluate how well MyStandard avoids interest-based mechanisms.
MyStandard's disclosed revenue model is transactional: organizations buy MYST to purchase or validate candidate data, and the company retains a 2% treasury (20M MYST) locked for two years at management's discretion. Nothing in the available sources indicates this treasury is held in interest-bearing instruments, nor is there evidence of lending, bond-holding, or bank-deposit-style income streams. The core business — a data marketplace paid in its own token — is not itself interest-based. This transactional core appears free of riba, though the treasury's discretionary, non-transparent deployment leaves some ambiguity about how idle funds are managed.
The staking mechanism is the more pressing riba consideration. Stakers lock MYST for a 9-month initial period and earn a fixed 6% APY drawn from a dedicated 200-million-token rewards pool — not from a share of actual marketplace revenue or profit. This decouples the reward from real economic performance, resembling a guaranteed-return loan structure rather than a mudarabah-style profit-share. Because the return is fixed and pre-committed regardless of platform earnings, this staking design is difficult to classify as Shariah-compliant profit distribution and should be treated with caution by Muslim investors, even though the underlying data-marketplace business is not itself interest-driven.
Gharar — How much uncertainty does MyStandard involve?
MyStandard reduces some uncertainty through a named, traceable team and a genuine operating product, but increases it through absent audits and inconsistent market data. On balance, informational gharar is moderate-to-elevated and warrants care before participation.
Assessment: Excessive Gharar (High Uncertainty)
Score: 45.5/100
Our methodology examines 15 criteria including team transparency, audit quality, and governance.
Unlike anonymous meme projects, MyStandard's co-founders — Adam Zec (CEO) and Joshua Sklüt (COO) — are publicly identifiable, have given conference talks (including at Avalanche Summit), and are traceable via LinkedIn and interviews. The company is based in Blackwood, New Jersey, founded in 2021, with reported backing from Iron Key Capital, Chainlink Labs, Avalanche, Winklevoss Capital, and Gaingels. This level of named accountability meaningfully reduces gharar relative to fully anonymous ventures. However, fee-handling mechanics on marketplace transactions and precise open-source code repositories are not clearly detailed in available documentation, leaving some operational opacity.
No audit firm has published a security review specific to MyStandard's own smart contracts; Halborn, CertiK, and Trail of Bits materials retrieved in research pertain to unrelated platforms, not MYST's code. This absence of independent audit coverage is a legitimate gharar concern for a project handling user data and token transfers on-chain. Compounding this, listed market-cap and circulating-supply figures conflict across sources (roughly $8.8M versus a ~$5M fully diluted value), suggesting thin and unstable reporting. Prospective participants should treat the lack of an audited, verifiable contract base as an unresolved risk rather than a minor omission.
Maysir — Does MyStandard involve gambling or speculation?
MyStandard is categorized here as a small-cap, thinly-traded token, and its price action shows speculative characteristics typical of low-liquidity assets, even though its stated purpose is a functioning data marketplace rather than pure meme speculation. The maysir concern centers on secondary-market behavior rather than the protocol's stated design.
Assessment: Moderate Maysir (High Risk)
Score: 57.8/100
Our methodology examines 11 criteria to determine whether MyStandard is a gambling instrument or a genuine economic tool.
With a small market capitalization and conflicting supply data across listings, MYST trades in a thin, volatile market where price swings are likely driven more by speculative positioning than by underlying marketplace usage. In this environment, buying and selling MYST purely for short-term price movement — detached from its intended use in the talent-data marketplace — functions much like a wager on volatility rather than participation in a productive economy. This speculative trading pattern, common to low-cap tokens, carries a maysir-like character regardless of the project's underlying design.
Weighed against this, MyStandard does present genuine utility: a mobile employment/data-marketplace app with a reported 2025 mainnet launch, real fee-for-data transactions, and an 18-year emission schedule designed to limit early speculative dumping. This distinguishes it from tokens with no productive function whatsoever. Still, thin trading volumes, conflicting market data, and the absence of audited contracts mean much of the observable market activity looks speculative rather than usage-driven. Muslim investors should weigh actual platform adoption over price speculation, and treat trading MYST purely for short-term gains as the primary maysir risk to avoid.
The Full 27-Point Screening
1. Legitimacy (4 criteria)
| Criterion | Score | Analysis |
|---|
| Team Transparency | 78/100 | Co-founders are named, publicly interviewed, and appear at industry conferences with a traceable company address. |
| Fraud & Scam Risk | 60/100 | No fraud, hack, or regulatory action is reported in these sources, but confirmation is limited to absence of negative coverage rather than positive verification. |
| Use Case Legitimacy | 72/100 | Multiple sources describe a functioning mobile app and mainnet data marketplace for employment use cases, indicating genuine utility beyond hype. |
| Ethical Practices | 82/100 | The protocol's own design (data ownership/employment marketplace) touches no prohibited industry. |
Summary: The team is named, publicly active, and appears legitimate, with no fraud or regulatory red flags found in the sources reviewed.
2. Project Operations (9 criteria)
| Criterion | Score | Analysis |
|---|
| Core Protocol Business | 78/100 | The base protocol facilitates a data/employment marketplace, not gambling, interest, or other prohibited sectors. |
| Transaction Fees | 30/100 (low evidence) | Sources do not describe how transaction fees on the marketplace itself are handled (burned, retained, or distributed). |
| Treasury Assets | 60/100 | The treasury is described only as company-discretionary token holdings with no mention of interest-bearing instruments, but composition detail is thin. |
| Revenue Model | 78/100 | Revenue comes from companies purchasing tokens to access data, a non-interest-based model per the whitepaper. |
| Transparency | 55/100 | Multiple whitepapers and tokenomics pages are public, but core governance/decision processes remain vaguely disclosed. |
| Governance | 32/100 | Treasury and refund decisions rest explicitly with senior management, and formal on-chain governance is only loosely described via staking-linked voting. |
| Launch Fairness | 30/100 | Discounted seed/private rounds and differentiated pricing tiers indicate insider price advantages over public participants. |
| Token Distribution | 50/100 | A majority of supply is allocated to community-focused pools, but early investor/team tranches received preferential pricing and vesting. |
| Speculation/Utility Ratio | 48/100 | The token has a genuine utility case, but small market cap and price volatility suggest meaningful speculative trading alongside utility use. |
Summary: MyStandard runs a data/employment marketplace on Avalanche with centralized treasury and governance control and a launch structure that favored early/insider investors.
3. Financial Health (4 criteria)
| Criterion | Score | Analysis |
|---|
| Protocol Revenue | 78/100 | Revenue is generated from token purchases for data access rather than lending or interest. |
| Financial Status | 38/100 | Reported market cap and circulating supply figures are small and inconsistent across sources, suggesting financial instability or thin data. |
| Interest Assessment | 30/100 | The staking program offers a fixed 6% APY, a guaranteed-return feature that resembles interest rather than a profit-sharing arrangement. |
| Audit Quality | 15/100 (low evidence) | No named audit firm or audit date for MyStandard's own smart contracts appears in the retrieved sources. |
Summary: Revenue is non-interest-based but the project's market footprint is small and inconsistently reported, and no independent smart-contract audit of MyStandard itself could be found.
4. Token Economics (5 criteria)
| Criterion | Score | Analysis |
|---|
| Token Purpose | 75/100 | The token is explicitly categorized as a utility token used for data access, staking, and platform participation. |
| Governance Rights | 38/100 | Staking is said to confer "some voting rights," but no detailed governance framework or proposal process is documented. |
| Rewards Distribution | 40/100 | Rewards are split between a fixed APY staking rate and variable, activity-based incentive pools, mixing fixed and performance elements. |
| Speculation Controls | 62/100 | Long vesting cliffs and an 18-year emission schedule are explicit design features intended to limit short-term dumping. |
| Asset Backing | 45/100 | The token is not backed by a hard asset; value depends on network adoption and usage rather than collateral. |
Summary: MYST is a genuine utility token with vesting-based anti-speculation controls, though it lacks strong asset backing or fully documented governance rights.
5. Staking Mechanism (5 criteria)
| Criterion | Score | Analysis |
|---|
| Mechanism Type | 48/100 | Staking involves locking tokens for rewards and limited voting rights, but custody model and delegation mechanics are not detailed. |
| Islamic Contract Classification | 20/100 | A fixed guaranteed APY on locked tokens resembles Qard-with-increment rather than a clean Mudarabah/Wakalah profit-sharing structure. |
| Rewards Structure | 22/100 | The documented staking reward is a fixed rate rather than variable returns tied to actual marketplace revenue. |
| Documentation | 58/100 | Whitepaper discloses lock-up periods and reward rate, but lacks full risk disclosure or slashing/custody terms. |
| Shariah Alignment | 25/100 | The fixed, guaranteed-rate staking reward leaves an unresolved core Shariah question around riba-like structuring. |
Summary: A native staking mechanism exists offering a fixed 6% APY, a structure that raises an unresolved question about resemblance to interest-bearing lending rather than profit-sharing.
Overall Assessment: MyStandard appears to be a real, team-identified utility project rather than a meme coin, but centralized governance, an unaudited codebase, and a fixed-rate staking reward are the main areas requiring further scrutiny before a compliance conclusion can be reached.
Scoring note: Meme coin: maysir-capped (C13=48); score already below the cap.
Written by ThanvirFounder, Ex Director S&P Global Energy
Reviewed by Imam Omar SiddiqiShariah Scholar