Ether.fi

Holding ETHFI pays nothing, but sETHFI stakers receive ETHFI bought with protocol revenue that includes a small share of borrower interest.

Riba means interest or any guaranteed increase on a loan. ETHFI itself is a plain ERC-20 token and holding it earns nothing. Stakers of ETHFI (sETHFI) receive ETHFI bought on the market with protocol revenue: 5% of monthly revenue under proposal #8, all eETH withdrawal fees under the buyback programme, and a share of Stake, Liquid and Cash revenue. Most of that revenue is a fee of about 10% on Ethereum staking rewards and card transaction fees, which are payment for services.

ETHFI governs a large, working protocol and has some product uses, but it gives no claim on assets and religious bodies disagree on whether crypto is property (mal).

Mal is property that Islamic law recognises as having value and that can be owned and traded. ether.fi is a real, working business: a staking protocol with billions of dollars deposited, lending, vaults and a Visa card. ETHFI's own utility is narrower: it is used to vote on proposals, can be staked to receive bought-back ETHFI, unlocks card tiers and is paid out as card cashback. It gives no legal claim on the protocol's assets or revenue.

ETHFI is not a gambling token, but its trading is dominated by futures and its price has fallen about 91% from its peak.

Maysir is gambling: winning or losing by chance rather than through productive exchange. Ordinary price swings are not maysir, and ETHFI has no chance-based payout. Its market is heavily speculative, though. In a 24-hour snapshot on 27 September 2026, Binance ETHFIUSDT perpetual futures traded about $31.1 million against about $5.8 million on the spot pair, so futures were about 84% of that volume (one exchange, one day). The token peaked at $8.53 in March 2024 and traded near $0.73 in September 2026, after a low of $0.27 in June 2026.

Most revenue is staking and card fees, but ether.fi also earns from borrower interest and yield vaults, and the only revenue split available is a secondary estimate.

This criterion asks how the protocol earns, and whether any of that income is impermissible. By DefiLlama's estimate for the year to 27 September 2026 (about $45.9 million), roughly 70% came from ether.fi Stake (mainly a fee of about 10% on Ethereum staking rewards, plus shares of restaking and validator rewards and eETH withdrawal fees), about 25% from Cash card transaction fees, about 3% from Liquid vault management fees and about 1.5% from the protocol's share of borrower interest in its own lending market.

ETHFI is used for governance, card tiers and cashback, but the ecosystem it serves includes interest-based borrowing and yield vaults.

This criterion looks at what the asset is actually used for. ETHFI itself is used to vote, to stake as sETHFI, to unlock ether.fi Cash card tiers and, since September 2026 according to a market report, as the currency of card cashback. It can also be posted as collateral in ether.fi's lending market at a 20% loan-to-value. The protocol it governs is mostly used for Ethereum staking and card payments, which are permissible uses.

ether.fi offers useful non-custodial staking and payments, but it also promotes borrowing against volatile collateral, with liquidation risk for users.

Maslahah weighs public benefit against harm. The benefit is real: ether.fi lets people stake ETH without running a validator while keeping a liquid token, publishes its admin controls and audits, and lets users spend their holdings through a Visa card. The harm is also significant. The product encourages borrowing against volatile crypto collateral, including through the card's Credit mode; the docs warn that collateral can be liquidated, and a Chaos Labs analysis notes the treasury backstops liquidations when outside liquidators do not act. Vaults can lose value or delay withdrawals.