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Is Arbitrum (ARB) halal?

Permitted

The six conditions are met for a spot purchase.

Verdict calculated by Halal Bourse's published rules from an investigation of primary sources (project documentation, registers, decisions), conducted on 10/07/2026 and not reviewed by a human.

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The asset

Governance token of the ArbitrumDAO, which controls the Arbitrum One and Arbitrum Nova chains (Ethereum layer 2 networks, optimistic rollups); ERC-20 token issued on Arbitrum One, with a copy on Ethereum Issuer: The Arbitrum Foundation, a Cayman Islands foundation company (registered on November 3, 2022, identified as issuer in the MiCA white paper by Crypto Risk Metrics GmbH); Offchain Labs, Inc. (a Delaware company, original developer; the MiCA white paper names Ed Felten, Steven Goldfeder, Harry Kalodner, Karthik Raju and Gary Wachtel as involved); governance is exercised by the ArbitrumDAO, with token holders voting by delegation.

ARB gives a right to vote in the ArbitrumDAO, which controls the contracts of the Arbitrum One and Nova chains (upgrades, parameters) and spends the treasury funded by transaction fees. It does not pay network fees: these are paid in ether. Initial supply of 10 billion (token generation event on March 16, 2023, airdrop on March 23, 2023): 35.28% to the DAO treasury, 26.94% to the team, contributors and advisors, 17.53% to investors, 11.62% to users, 7.5% to the Foundation, 1.13% to DAOs; the team and investor shares are locked for four years, with monthly releases since March 16, 2024. New minting is possible at up to 2% of the supply per year, by constitutional decision of the DAO: none has occurred (total supply read on-chain on October 7, 2026: about 9.999999 billion). According to CoinMarketCap (October 7, 2026, 11:02 UTC): rank 58, 6.79 billion tokens in circulation. The contract on Arbitrum One is upgradeable through a proxy, but the contract's owner and administrator is the DAO's upgrade executor, not a team.

Why this verdict

  1. Permissible purpose : met. ARB is the governance token of a DAO that actually exercises control over the Arbitrum One and Nova chains (contract ownership, upgrades, treasury funded by fees): the use is a voting right documented by the Foundation and verified in the contract addresses. ARB does not pay network fees (ether) and gives no right to any income; a 2024 proposal says it is “struggling to accrue value.”
  2. No riba : met. Holding ARB pays no yield derived from a loan: the chains' fees go to the DAO treasury, not to holders, and the token confers neither a share in profits nor a claim. Staking (delegation against possible rewards) is a product built on the token, covered in autres_constats.
  3. No gambling : met. A spot purchase is of an ERC-20 token recorded on Arbitrum One (and Ethereum), with a known initial supply, freely transferable; it is not a contract on a price difference. It is not among the sixteen “digital commodities” cited as examples by the SEC and the CFTC on March 17, 2026 (non-exhaustive list).
  4. No excessive gharar : met. The token, its distribution (team and investor shares locked for four years) and the issuance rule (minting of at most 2% per year, reserved to the contract owner, which is the DAO's upgrade executor, once a year) are published and verifiable in the published code. The parties that control the token are identified: the DAO by vote, the Security Council of 12 members elected each year (9-of-12 threshold), the Foundation (directors named in the MiCA register), Offchain Labs. Non-blocking reservations: the chains' sequencer is run by the Foundation, and the Security Council can act without a DAO vote in an emergency.
  5. Real ownership : met. ARB is an ERC-20 token held in a personal wallet and transferred without technical restriction. Point to flag: in April 2026, the Security Council of the Arbitrum One chain froze, through an emergency upgrade, 30,766 ETH held by the perpetrator of a hack (KelpDAO): the power to act on balances exists at the chain level; it is not in the token contract and was not exercised on ARB (see autres_constats). The choice of purchase platform was not studied.
  6. No fraud or manipulation : met. No sanction, fine or deception toward ARB buyers was found. The AMF blacklist returns no result for “arbitrum.” The team is public, the token code is published and the governance contracts were audited by Trail of Bits (report of January 6, 2023, then successive audits through 2026). Concentration: 15.3% for the top ten wallets excluding exchanges and contracts on Arbitrum One (information only under A.8).

Contract security scan

GoPlus security scan of the ARB contract on Arbitrum One (the main contract): 2,390,355 holders; top ten wallets excluding exchanges and contracts 15.3%; code published; token on GoPlus's trust list; no honeypot, tax or freeze signal; only signal: contract upgradeable through a proxy (is_proxy). Reading under A.8: the proxy's administrator is the chain's ProxyAdmin, whose owner is the DAO's upgrade executor (0xCF57…A827, direct chain reading on October 7, 2026, address confirmed by the Foundation's deployments page); the same executor owns the token contract. The minting function in the published code is reserved to the owner, capped at 2% per year and once a year, and has never been used (total supply below 10 billion, chain reading). These are governance powers of an identified issuer, exercised by DAO vote: no rug pull signal within the meaning of A.8. Copy on Ethereum (0xB507…4ad1, bridged token): 66,794 holders; supply of 239.6 million units (about 2.4% of the 10 billion); top ten wallets excluding exchanges and contracts 59.4%; proxy administered by the DAO's Ethereum upgrade executor (0x3fff…Cedd, deployments page): the concentration there concerns a marginal copy, information only, not retained as a signal.

Opinions found during the research

Opinions reported as read, named for what they are; they do not enter into the calculation of the verdict.

What could not be verified

Sources read

Other cryptos analyzed

General information: neither investment advice nor a fatwa. Verdict calculated by published rules, from financial statements read automatically and not reviewed by a human. Read the methodology