Tag: Bringing

  • MRHB DeFi: Successful US$5.5M Fundraise to Fuel Vision of Bringing Ethical DeFi to Excluded Communities Everywhere | by Bit Media Buzz | Jan, 2022

    MRHB DeFi: Successful US$5.5M Fundraise to Fuel Vision of Bringing Ethical DeFi to Excluded Communities Everywhere | by Bit Media Buzz | Jan, 2022

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    Bit Media Buzz

    Dubai, UAE, Jan 31st, 2022MRHB DeFi, the world’s first decentralized finance ecosystem platform focused on ethical, sustainable and halal crypto opportunities, has successfully raised a total of USD 5.5 million through a series of private and public funding rounds which culminated in an initial DEX offering (IDO) that was oversubscribed on the DODO and ZeeDO launchpads.

    Prior to its IDO, the startup gave the community direct access through two public sales on its official website, which saw tremendous support from its community of over 50,000 members.

    Our funding rounds have surpassed our expectations and prove beyond doubt the huge demand for ethics in the cryptoverse,” said MRHB DeFi CEO Naquib Mohammed. “We want to take the opportunity to express our heartfelt appreciation for our valued partners and loyal supporters, without whom we would not have made it this far. These are just the first steps of our ambitious multi-year journey that we have begun, together with our community, to ensure that everyone can participate in building an ecosystem where trust and values matter — hence giving access to the growing opportunities of the crypto-economy.

    The ethical startup is also backed by investors and partners which include Polygon Technology, Sheesha Finance, Australian Gulf Capital, Mozaic, NewTribe Capital, Blockchain Australia, Contango Digital Assets, Masary Capital, ZKSync, Acreditus Partners, EMGS Group, Sinofy Group, Sukhavati Protocol and MKD Capital amongst others.

    “It always seems impossible until it’s done.” — Nelson Mandela

    MRHB began as an idea 15 months ago, when Naquib, who was at that time working on Enterprise Blockchain use cases, was interviewed by a crypto news agency about the general trends of DLT.

    The questions came around to the acceptance of crypto within the muslim communities in the Middle East, an interesting angle which led Naquib to delve further into the DeFi world, where he noticed the absence of halal projects. Understanding that there was a gap, he started putting down ideas and developing conversations with tech friends and like-minded connections, all of whom saw the immense possibilities with crypto but were disheartened by the absence of projects and protocols that were halal and consistent with their financial and ethical principles. The immense complexity of the cryptoverse as a whole also stood out as a further deterrent.

    Resident in Saudi Arabia, he soon realised through various community discussions — both in the middle east and farther afield — that many fellow Millennials and Gen Z’ers were facing the same challenges and were hence avoiding the entire cryptoverse. This meant that many communities — especially Muslims — were excluded from the opportunities in this new tech frontier. Thus began his journey of taking on the challenge and goal of building a landmark halal project in the DeFi ecosystem.

    Over the course of six months, Naquib assembled a team that included not just developers but reputable industry professionals and Shariah experts, all of whom shared his vision of creating an ethical DeFi ecosystem that reflects community values and beliefs. It would be the first to fill a major gap in the crypto space and address the needs of communities that number more than a billion, who have all thus far been excluded due to ethics, faith, fear and complexity.

    While the DeFi offerings were aimed at adhering to ethical investment and financing principles rooted in Islamic Finance (primarily the prohibition on interest-based lending and income, and sectors deemed unethical or exploitative like gambling, pornography etc), MRHB would also be focused on removing technological complexity. Thus the overall objective was to build a more empowering and ethical community-focused platform that would also cater to those new to crypto while addressing the negative perception created by extensive instances of fraud, risk and opacity in the crypto space.

    The Islamic Finance sector is the first target and is the largest and most active faith-based market. It is currently sized at around USD 3 trillion — attracting even a small portion of Islamic liquidity into DeFi will represent a major boost to the total value of the DeFi sector worldwide.

    Community Focused and Community Supported

    Approximately 85% of the funds raised came from the MRHB global community which spans from Canada to Australia — all of whom are looking for an ethical and halal entry into the cryptoverse. The inclusive startup is aptly named, with MRHB being short for “Marhaba”, which means “welcome” in Arabic, as the project ushers in entire crypto newbie communities.

    The platform’s $MRHB token is now available for trades on PancakeSwap, one of the leading decentralized exchanges on the Binance Smart Chain (BSC) network and remains above the launch price in spite of overall bearish markets.

    To reward the community and encourage more market liquidity, a 5 million pool of MRHB token rewards has been set aside for token holders who provide liquidity to the MRHB/BNB pool on PancakeSwap. These rewards are for the next two months and apply on top of their share of trading fees earned. Token lockups for early project supporters will begin soon, allowing liquidity providers to invest their $MRHB tokens and receive additional rewards.

    MRHB DeFi is already moving forward with their production roadmap, having recently launched its Souq NFT Marketplace, the first NFT marketplace guaranteed to contain halal-only content. The launch of Sahal Wallet, a non-custodial mobile wallet featuring filtering technology that will allow for frictionless access to halal tokens, is slated for the middle of next month. The pioneering Liquidity Harvester, MRHB’s passive and stable crypto income product, will be launching in Q2 and the project is currently in advanced discussions with pioneering regulated institutional partners to offer halal crypto-wealth products. More decentralized and centralized exchange listings are also coming up in the near future, welcome news for the MRHB community.

    About MRHB DeFi

    MRHB DeFi is a halal, decentralised finance platform built to embody the true spirit of an “Ethical and Inclusive DeFi” by following faith-based financial and business principles, where all excluded communities can benefit from the full empowerment potential of DeFi.

    The diverse team is comprised of researchers, technocrats, influencers, Islamic fintech experts & business entrepreneurs, who came together to ensure that MRHB DeFi prevails in a manner that will impact society as a whole, essentially bridging the gap between the faith-conscious communities and the blockchain world.

    MRHB DeFi Official Channels

    Website: https://mrhb.network

    NFT Marketplace: https://souq.mrhb.network

    Twitter:

    Telegram: https://t.me/mdf_official

    Telegram Announcements: https://t.me/marhabadefi_ANN

    YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/c/MarhabaDeFi

    Medium: https://medium.com/@mrhbdefi

    LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/marhabadefi

    Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/MRHB-DeFi-105893235209147

    Telegram (Arabic): https://t.me/mdf_arabic

    Telegram (Russian): https://t.me/marhabadefi_russia

    Telegram (Turkish): https://t.me/MarhabaDefiTR

    Telegram (Persian): https://t.me/mrhbdefi_persian

    Telegram (Urdu/Hindi): https://t.me/MRHBDeFi_Urdu_Hindi



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  • Panther protocol co-founder Oliver Gale discusses bringing zero-knowledge technology to multi-chain

    Panther protocol co-founder Oliver Gale discusses bringing zero-knowledge technology to multi-chain

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    Privacy coins and zero-knowledge technology, which some use to obfuscate the identity of sends/receivers and transaction amounts, have gained enormous popularity in recent years due to mounting regulatory surveillance against the crypto sector. But despite their rapid rise in market cap, critics continue to scrutinize such class of assets as enablers for masking illicit activities.

    In an exclusive interview with Cointelegraph, Oliver Gale, CEO, and co-founder of the Panther Protocol (ZKP), elaborated on the technology behind its privacy decentralized finance, or DeFi, solutions and why it’s necessary for today’s crypto space:

    CT: How much did you raise from your recent token sale, and what does your roadmap look like from here?

    OG: We’ve raised over $30 million in total. For Panther protocol, we did several private sale rounds, and then we did a public sale on November the 23rd, which was 90 minutes long, and raised over $20 million during that time. The second question is around the roadmap itself, so Panther Protocol is a multi-chain privacy protocol with several zero-knowledge, data disclosure tools built into it; what we’re delivering in January is our minimum viable product (MVP).

    We have multiple deployments this month. And that will be delivering an MVP that allows staking on Polygon and transferability of the ERC-20 token to ZKP token. And then, I estimate 30 to 60 days later; we’re going to deploy the complete v1.0 MVP, which will have the multi-asset privacy pools and multi-asset staking pools that are the shielded tools in which Panther assets can use be transacted privately. And that will also come with a version of ZK reveals, which is the mechanism by which users can voluntarily disclose their transaction data for compliance purposes or tax reporting purposes, etc. So that’s what can be expected across Q1.

    We have over five EVM compatible partnerships in place to deploy Panther v1 on Near, Flare, etc. These shielded pools are being deployed across different chains. And then, our team is building a ZK-driven interchange across other chains, and the goal is to allow these assets to be swapped securely, with low fees, low and high transaction throughput.

    CT: What’s the underlying cryptography behind these assets?

    OG: So the multi-asset shielded pools are based on ZK-SNARKS. So you have a combination. The shielded pools are, you know, a version of mixer technology with the ability to split join transfer assets. Then we use ZK snarks for proof of ownership. So essentially, transactions happen within the multi-asset shielded pools. And, and then the mechanism for data disclosure reveals is another ZK snark circuit, which is set up to allow Essentially a trusted provider to provide proof that can be verified on the planter network of some data condition being met. And that while it’s been applied to compliance is our first use case, and were put in ZK reveals into production with launched out, which is essentially a launch is launched out is what it sounds like.

    CT: Skeptics would say that private networks using zero-knowledge cryptography could become enablers of illicit transactions. What are your thoughts on the matter?

    OG: In my view, if you build technology and have no intention of facilitating aiding and abetting or enabling crime, you are not guilty of any crime. But why is privacy needed? Our white paper has this; the bottom line is that actors who are under surveillance behave differently from those who are not. In other words, the exact behavior of our societies is impacted by being watched. So inevitably, there are going to be bad actors. 

    But I’ve never seen a gun on trial. You don’t put tools on trial; you put people on trial. And the overwhelming consensus of our global society, for all of the tools and technologies we use, is that if the device is more beneficial for the majority than the minority who abuse it, then you use it. And if that weren’t the case, then I’m not sure we would have any kitchen knives because knives are used for criminal activity by a minority. So any attempt to put privacy technology or blockchain technology on trial because a minority abused the system is an argument that can be extrapolated to anything in life.