Introduction
What Rayyan is
Rayyan is a permissionless lending protocol that implements murabaha, the cost-plus-markup sale structure behind 80–90% of global Islamic banking, as about 240 lines of modification on top of Compound V3 (Comet), one of the most audited lending codebases in DeFi.
A borrower deposits collateral (WETH, WBTC) and receives USDC at a fixed, disclosed contract price: principal plus a markup locked at the moment of borrowing. The markup accrues linearly, never compounding, and is capped. The contract price is the most a borrower can ever owe, and they know it before they confirm. Repay early and the unearned markup is forgiven automatically (ibra'). Liquidity providers fund the pool under a mudarabah (profit-sharing) arrangement and earn continuously as markup streams.
There is no interest rate, only a sale price disclosed up front and collected over time.
Who it serves
1.8 billion Muslims are categorically prohibited from paying or receiving interest (riba). Every major DeFi lending protocol, including Aave, Compound, Spark, and Morpho, is built on interest accrual, making them impermissible for a quarter of the world's population. Consumer halal DeFi exists (token screening, staking, wallets), but no one operates a Shariah-structured lending marketplace at institutional scale. Rayyan is that missing primitive: the yield and credit rail that halal neobanks, Islamic fintechs, and faith-motivated capital have been blocked on.
A second market arrives with the same contract, made up of anyone who wants fixed-rate, non-compounding borrowing. At the same nominal rate, Rayyan is always cheaper than a variable-rate protocol, because the rate is locked at borrow, the accrual never compounds, and the maximum cost is a ceiling rather than an estimate. Every position carries what traditional finance calls a zero-cost collar: the fixed rate caps your cost if rates rise, and ibra' lets you exit free and re-borrow if rates fall. Banks charge six figures for that combination, which on Rayyan comes as part of the structure.
The design in one paragraph
Rayyan keeps Compound V3's proven machinery (collateral management, health factor, liquidation, oracles, pause guardian) and replaces one thing: how debt grows. Liquidation changes by a single line, which credits the borrower against what they owe after the early-repayment rebate. The utilization-driven rate curve still discovers the price of capital, but each borrower's rate is snapshotted and locked at borrow time, the full contract price is recorded as the debt (making liquidation and health factor work natively against the maximum obligation), and a streaming accrual mechanism distributes the markup to LPs block-by-block, stopping each position's stream exactly at its 360-day settlement date. The result is an LP experience identical to Aave or Compound, a balance that grows every block, funded by fixed sale contracts instead of floating interest.
Where things stand
| Contracts | Complete: murabaha Comet fork + RayyanCloser settlement contract + keeper |
| Verification | 31 unit tests, 15 fork tests against live Uniswap V3, 6 fuzzed invariants (incl. strict solvency), an internal line-by-line spec review |
| Chain | Arbitrum (Compound V3 already deployed there; deep liquidity; low fees) |
| Shariah | Structural compliance analysis complete; scholar board engagement planned pre-mainnet |
| Audits | Two independent audits planned pre-mainnet; open items tracked in Security & Risk |
Next: How Rayyan Works →