As long as it's not covertly imposed on countries.
Myki, could you explain more? How would it covertly be imposed on countries? Do you mean like how fractional reserve banking is imposed on countries?
Religious blockchain this sounds awkward as I think blockchain is borderless tech I don't think this idea has any chance to grow where everything comes under the religious thought we already have well established blockchain financial system than it will be much hard for this project to grow.
One of the reasons for the early success of Islam and the Islamic golden age which gave us much of the science we depend on today was free trade and open borders. As mentioned in the OP, the demand for Islamic banking services is growing at a faster rate than coneventional banking. One project in this area is ArabianChain, #240 on coinmarketcap as of yesterday.
Is it really one of the first of its kind?
As I mentioned ArabianChain is working on coding Islamic contracts, but while they are more focused on the business side, Ummati is intended to focus more on individual users, ie. P2P crowd funding, joint ventures, charitable projects, and to focus more on the religious aspect.
Many of the players in the Islamic finance industry at the moment basically try to deal in interest while calling it by another name- and I have personally met many Muslims who are hesitant to use their services for this reason. It's not hard to find a religious scholar who is willing to take payment to declare something as being moral.
Even so, there is room for differences of opinion, so competition in this field is a good thing- not just in terms of profit, but also in terms of conscience.
did you planing any bounties?
We are still working on the concept- that's part of the reason for the thread. We are debating whether to build on the bitcoin blockchain, the ethereum classic blockchain, or to establish a native blockchain. All options are open in terms of fundraising. Once we start to hammer out the technical details we can talk more about bounties in the form of coins or tokens.
Since this post I've gotten offers for help, and I'll be keeping a list of who contributes what, and later down the line if in sha Allah (God willing) we launch a coin or ico, contributors will be the first to receive coins or tokens.
there have been many attempts to bind the blockchain to Islam, all scams and none have proven to follow the guidelines set .
they all tried to make a fast bankroll with the using of the Islamic word but down deep they have no idea of what they were doing simply because it is a instrument to make money for them! fast and simple- then they are gone!
I'm very sorry to hear that- unfortunately it is all too common that people who claim Islam do not reflect it in their actions.
If you look at my post history you will see that I have been involved with the IBB the Islamic Bank of Bitcoin for over four years. I had the key to the IBB wallet where we have between 10-20 BTC. The bank is currently inactive since I learned that our practice of taking gratuities on loans is not allowed in Islam. This means to utilize any of those funds we have to go through the archives of our loans, figure out how much we earned from gratuities, and give it to charity. I'll see if I can dig up the address to prove it.
I was working with senbonzakura on it, but he has been offline for some time. He also didn't want to be publicly known, so I'll be curious to see if the BTC are still in the wallet, since he also had the keys. He wanted to finance a number of ideas, including video games with elements of gambling, that are not permissible in Islam, this is part of why I want to start a new project.
There are so many ways to make money being dishonest with crypto, and this is one of the reasons I absolutely want multisignature wallets to be a basic part of Ummati- this is one of the great qualities of NEM imo.
But yes, I am fully open about my identity, and happy to skype or meet with anyone who wants to network or collaborate.
I agree, mixing religion and something that should be barrier free doesn't seem to match.
Question though, does the dev has any company/banking supporting this project?
The basis of Islam is unity and truth, so barrier free and transparent is what we want! There may be rules in a blockchain that prevent malicious behavior that threatens a network like DDoS attacks- Muslims happen to believe that interest is malicious behavior that threatens the network.
I have spoken to the Bugshan group
which invested in Arabian Chain, and they expressed interest, but right now this is just an idea, so we need to have more concrete details. I also spoke to Matthew Martin of
Blossom finance, who is a Muslim experienced in fundraising for startups and is an experienced fintech software developer and startup mentor, and he has helped me with some guidance for pitching to investors.
I have moved to Malaysia which is an established center for Islamic fintech venture capital, and I am applying to the INCEIF (Global University of Islamic Finance) Ph.D in Islamic finance program to network with other industry professionals and gain relevant knowledge and experience- both in religion and business.
Right now we are trying to raise money so our CTO can drop out of college and work full time on learning the code necessary for this project. If anyone wants to help with a crowdfunding campaign this would certainly earn a spot on the list of future recipients of coins/tokens.
Thanks for all the interest, looking forward to more questions, comments, or constructive criticism.
