IBF Net: The Islamic Business and Finance Network is the maiden online community in the field created in the year 1999 for exchange of views among students, researchers, knowledge-seekers and professionals interested in this sunrise discipline. Two decades later, this Network is being moved to the blockchain with an expansion of its mandate – from a forum for exchange of “views” to a meeting place for exchange of “values” facilitated through a pair of native tokens – IBF Exchange (IBFx) and IBF Esteem (IBFs).
Transformed into a membership-based virtual Network of individuals with verifiable identities, it provides for platforms in line with the trichotomy of an Islamic economy into philanthropy, not-for-profit and for-profit sectors. These platforms use smart contracts to facilitate the entire array of Islamic financial transactions within the Network amongst its members in a multitude of roles – donors, volunteers, lenders, borrowers, guarantors, beneficiaries, buyers, sellers, investors and what-have-you.
As more and more platforms and use cases are added to the Network, it gets configured as a “replicable” miniature Islamic economy on the blockchain. This miniature economy is predominantly a “decentralized” one with no institutional intermediation and that facilitates person-to-person contracting or transactions involving small groups of individual members.