Islamic Finance Principles Assessment
Riba — Does ZINC involve interest?
ZINC's fee and reward flows do not rely on interest-bearing instruments or fixed-return lending; revenue derives from a 10% deployment fee and buyback/burn mechanics. There is no lending, borrowing, or debt-based yield anywhere in the described protocol. On the riba axis specifically, ZINC's structure is largely clean, though this must be read alongside its gharar and maysir concerns below.
Assessment: Moderate Riba
Score: 50/100
Our methodology examines 10 criteria to evaluate how well ZINC avoids interest-based mechanisms.
Protocol revenue comes entirely from a 10% fee charged on SOL deployed into each 30-second round, split across buybacks (8%), the Stockpile jackpot (1%), and development (1%) [13]. Buyback SOL is converted to ZINC, with 90% burned and 10% distributed to stakers [5,13]. Treasury holdings consist of SOL and ZINC rather than interest-bearing instruments, bonds, or lending positions. No sources indicate any interest-based income stream, credit facility, or fixed-coupon treasury asset. The revenue model, while wagering-derived (a maysir concern addressed separately), is not itself structured around riba.
Staking rewards are variable and performance-dependent rather than fixed or guaranteed: stakers receive 10% of the buyback-converted ZINC pool, itself contingent on how much SOL was wagered and how much was bought back that round [5,13]. There is no promised annual percentage yield, no principal guarantee, and no lock-up; users may stake or unstake freely [13]. Because rewards fluctuate with round activity and buyback size rather than accruing as interest on a loaned principal, this staking model does not resemble riba-based lending. However, its ultimate funding source — wagering fees from a chance-based game — carries its own separate concern under maysir.
Gharar — How much uncertainty does ZINC involve?
ZINC carries meaningful uncertainty stemming from anonymous leadership, an unresolved governance dispute, and the absence of any confirmed security audit. Some transparency exists around fee mechanics and reward math, which are publicly documented, but critical disclosure gaps remain. On balance, the gharar profile here is elevated and warrants caution.
Assessment: Excessive Gharar (High Uncertainty)
Score: 36/100
Our methodology examines 15 criteria including team transparency, audit quality, and governance.
ZINC's founders operate under pseudonyms ("Shift Boss," MetaDAO co-founder "Proph3t") with no verifiable real-world identity or credentials disclosed [61]. Compounding this, a public dispute has emerged with the ZKFG DAO over ownership, governance, and an alleged unmet commitment to route protocol revenue to a shared treasury; the founder disputes the claim, but the conflict itself is a documented trust concern [61]. Open-source status, full governance structure, and complete token allocation or vesting schedules are not disclosed in available sources beyond round-level mechanics. This combination of anonymity and active dispute materially raises informational uncertainty for prospective participants.
No named security audit of ZINC's smart contracts appears in the available sources; a Halborn audit surfaces in the source set, but it belongs to an unrelated project ("Substance Exchange"), not ZINC [2]. This absence of a confirmed audit for a protocol handling live SOL deployments and reward pools is a genuine gharar concern and should be named plainly as such. Documentation is limited to an Arcium Substack announcement and DefiLlama methodology notes, with no dedicated risk disclosure, terms of service, or Shariah-relevant documentation identified [5,13]. Users face unaudited contract risk alongside undisclosed governance and custody details for staking.
Maysir — Does ZINC involve gambling or speculation?
ZINC's core protocol is, by its own design, a rapid-round wagering mechanism: users deploy SOL into 30-second rounds, a winning tile is chosen via on-chain randomness, and winners split losing participants' pooled SOL plus newly minted ZINC. This is not a case of a neutral tool being misused by third parties — the redistribution-by-chance structure is the primary and intended function of the protocol itself. This is the defining Shariah concern for ZINC.
Assessment: Maysir / Qimar (Gambling)
Score: 31.8/100
Our methodology examines 11 criteria to determine whether ZINC is a gambling instrument or a genuine economic tool.
The protocol offers no lending, borrowing, payments, or infrastructure utility; its stated function is the round-based tile game itself, with variants like "Wildcat" rounds and "Bonanza" jackpots explicitly amplifying randomness and payout variance rather than offering any productive service [37]. The only "yield" beyond winning a round is the staking buyback distribution, which is itself funded by wagering fees. Because the protocol's designed purpose is the wager-and-win cycle rather than a productive or infrastructural service, it does not offer the kind of genuine real-world utility that would distinguish it from a game of chance.
Early metrics show substantial capital flow — reported annualized fee revenue of $73.87M and $18M deployed generating $1.8M in fees within two weeks of launch, alongside a single day exceeding $400k in revenue [5,8,21,61]. This activity level reflects strong speculative participation rather than durable productive adoption, and a lone price snapshot ($7.686, $219.3K 24h volume) cannot establish price stability [48]. Given that the wagering mechanic is the protocol's core design rather than an ancillary feature, the weight of evidence points toward a chance-based, speculative structure rather than one grounded in productive economic activity.
The Full 27-Point Screening
1. Legitimacy (4 criteria)
| Criterion | Score | Analysis |
|---|
| Team Transparency | 25/100 | Only pseudonyms ("Shift Boss," "Proph3t") are given for the ZINC team, with no confirmed real-world identity or credentials in the sources. |
| Fraud & Scam Risk | 40/100 | A documented public dispute over unmet revenue-sharing commitments with the ZKFG DAO is a direct trust concern, even though no hack or fraud has been confirmed. |
| Use Case Legitimacy | 20/100 | The protocol's described function is a randomized wagering/mining game rather than a productive real-world use case. |
| Ethical Practices | 10/100 | The protocol's own core mechanic — depositing SOL for a chance-based payout where winners take losers' funds — is a gambling-style design, not third-party misuse of a neutral tool. |
Summary: Pseudonymous founders and a public governance/revenue-sharing dispute raise trust questions, though no confirmed hack or regulatory action against ZINC was found.
2. Project Operations (9 criteria)
| Criterion | Score | Analysis |
|---|
| Core Protocol Business | 15/100 | The base protocol's core business is a randomized-outcome wagering game built on a privacy-compute layer, placing its core sector in a prohibited category. |
| Transaction Fees | 60/100 | Fees are transparently split into burn, jackpot, and development streams with no interest-like extraction mechanism, even though the fee itself is levied on wagering volume. |
| Treasury Assets | 70/100 | Treasury and vault holdings are described only as SOL and ZINC, with no mention of interest-bearing instruments. |
| Revenue Model | 55/100 | Revenue comes from wagering fees rather than interest, but the underlying activity generating that revenue is itself a chance-based game. |
| Transparency | 55/100 | DefiLlama references viewable code on GitHub for fee/revenue logic, but full open-source licensing and documentation completeness are not confirmed. |
| Governance | 35/100 | Only a 1% development fee is governed via Futarchy/MetaDAO, and a public governance/ownership dispute with ZKFG DAO suggests contested and partially centralized control. |
| Launch Fairness | 60/100 | The protocol is described as a "fair-launch mining protocol" by a third-party source with no presale mentioned, but this is not independently verified in depth. |
| Token Distribution | 50/100 | Round-level emissions (70% to winning miners) suggest broad, activity-based distribution, but no team/investor allocation or vesting schedule for ZINC is disclosed in the sources. |
| Speculation/Utility Ratio | 15/100 | The protocol's design centers on rapid, randomized wagering rounds, making it speculation-dominant rather than utility-dominant. |
Summary: The base protocol is a Solana, Arcium-powered randomized wagering game where users deploy SOL for a chance to win pooled funds and newly minted ZINC, funded by a fee split across buybacks, a jackpot pool, and development.
3. Financial Health (4 criteria)
| Criterion | Score | Analysis |
|---|
| Protocol Revenue | 55/100 | Reported protocol revenue derives from wagering fees, not classic interest income, though the revenue-generating activity itself is chance-based. |
| Financial Status | 45/100 | Strong early revenue figures are reported, but the protocol is only weeks old and involved in an active governance dispute, so financial stability cannot be confirmed. |
| Interest Assessment | 70/100 | No lending, borrowing, or interest-bearing mechanism exists at the base protocol level; the only native yield is the buyback-funded staking distribution. |
| Audit Quality | 5/100 | No named, dated security audit specific to the ZINC smart contracts was found; the Halborn audit present in the sources belongs to an unrelated project. |
Summary: The protocol generates significant fee revenue from wagering activity with no interest-based lending at the base layer, but no named security audit specific to ZINC's contracts could be found.
4. Token Economics (5 criteria)
| Criterion | Score | Analysis |
|---|
| Token Purpose | 20/100 | ZINC serves as the reward token of a wagering/mining game rather than a token with independent productive utility. |
| Governance Rights | 20/100 | Only a small development-fee allocation is governed via Futarchy/MetaDAO, and it is unclear whether ZINC token holders themselves hold direct voting rights. |
| Rewards Distribution | 75/100 | Rewards vary by round outcome, SOL deployed, and buyback size rather than being fixed or guaranteed. |
| Speculation Controls | 10/100 | No anti-speculation controls are described; special mechanics like Wildcat rounds and Bonanza jackpots actively amplify randomness and speculative appeal. |
| Asset Backing | 20/100 | ZINC's value is supported only by a buyback-and-burn flow funded by wagering fees rather than by any halal asset or independent productive utility. |
Summary: ZINC is primarily a reward token for a chance-based mining game with variable, activity-linked emissions and no described anti-speculation safeguards.
5. Staking Mechanism (5 criteria)
| Criterion | Score | Analysis |
|---|
| Mechanism Type | 65/100 | Staking is flexible with no lock-up and clear stake/unstake terms, but custodial versus non-custodial architecture is not specified in the sources. |
| Islamic Contract Classification | 10/100 | Staking yield is a distributed share of buyback proceeds funded by wagering fees, which does not map cleanly to Mudarabah/Wakalah and raises an unresolved core Shariah question. |
| Rewards Structure | 70/100 | Reward amounts vary with real buyback activity rather than being fixed or guaranteed. |
| Documentation | 50/100 | Staking mechanics are explained in a project announcement and a data-provider methodology page, but no formal risk-disclosure documentation is evident. |
| Shariah Alignment | 10/100 | The staking yield's dependence on wagering-derived buyback revenue leaves a decisive, unresolved Shariah question about the permissibility of its underlying source. |
Summary: ZINC offers flexible, unlocked staking whose yield comes from a share of wagering-fee-funded buybacks, leaving the underlying source of the reward Shariah-unresolved.
Overall Assessment: ZINC's own core design is a randomized wagering mechanic that raises significant gambling-related concerns independent of any third-party misuse, which weighs heavily against its Shariah standing despite transparent fee handling and burn-heavy tokenomics.
Written by ThanvirFounder, Ex Director S&P Global Energy
Reviewed by Imam Omar SiddiqiShariah Scholar