The world's first Shariah-compliant
perpetual-futures DEX.
Baraka removes riba (interest) from derivatives pricing at the protocol level — through the ι=0 / κ mathematics, not a compliance sticker bolted onto a conventional DEX.
A multi-trillion-dollar world, locked out.
The Islamic-finance world spans many trillions of dollars — and it has been shut out of crypto derivatives. Perpetual futures, the deepest instrument in the market, rely on a time-based funding rate — that funding rate is riba — on top of gharar. No amount of contract-level re-labelling fixes a number that is computed from interest. So the capital stays on the sidelines.
Swap the engine, not the sticker.
Baraka builds on Ackerer, Hugonnier & Jermann (2025, Mathematical Finance). They prove that a perpetual carries two parameters — a convergence intensity κ and an interest parameter ι — and that at ι = 0 the contract still has a unique, no-arbitrage price, governed by κ instead of interest. Pricing survives; interest does not.
ι = 0 ⇒ price governed by κFrom there, the native instruments all price off the same primitive:
π* = κ · BMutual cover where the fair premium is the expected loss — convergence intensity times benefit, with no cost-of-capital and no riba loading.
s* = κ (1 − δ)Islamic credit protection priced as a hazard — the spread falls out of the convergence intensity and the recovery rate, never a fixed interest rate.
κ-yield curveInvestment certificates marked off a riba-free term structure built from real sukuk data — a measured κ-curve, not a SOFR wrapper.
Live on testnet — and now on its own chain.
The protocol is live on Arbitrum Sepolia testnet — 21 contracts, 759 passing tests, and a 21-pass internal audit. The mathematics is backed by 14 research papers plus 1 whitepaper on SSRN. In May 2026 Baraka won “Best Emerging Innovation — Islamic Product Launch of the Year” at the Global Islamic Finance Innovation Awards 2026.
The thesis has since outgrown a single DApp: κ now runs as the native consensus primitive of κ-Chain, a dedicated interest-free Layer-1 — κ settled in consensus, pricing instruments on-chain.
Who built this.
Shehzad Ahmed
Designed and built the protocol, the κ mathematics, the research corpus, and the dedicated interest-free Layer-1.
Dr. Rafiqul Bhuyan
Fulbright Scholar, PhD in Economics, and author of 80+ peer-reviewed papers — anchoring the economic and academic foundations.
What we claim — and what we don't.
Riba is removed at the pricing layer. That is the part the mathematics settles: with ι = 0 there is no interest term anywhere in how the instruments are priced.
Gharar, maysir and qabd are reserved to a Shariah board — these are scholarly questions, not ones a smart contract can resolve. And the cash-settled perpetual itself remains an open question (SBR-5), left for a scholarly ruling.
Baraka is on testnet, pre-mainnet. We claim no fatwa. This is not financial or religious advice — consult your scholar.