Pyth Network
PYTH#83PYTH is the governance and staking token of Pyth Network, an oracle feeding real-time prices to blockchains.
- Market cap
- $630.02M
- Volume 24h
- $23.56M
- All-time high
- —
- Circulating supply
- 7.87B of 10B
Passes our 8 Shariah criteria. Needs caution: business model and usage.
- 6 pass
- 2 caution
- 0 fail
Verdict history
- HalalCurrent
First publication
Fundamentals, market picture and news will appear here.
Halal analysis
Can a Muslim hold Pyth Network?8 Shariah criteria
6 pass · 2 caution · 0 failHolding PYTH pays nothing, and neither the DAO's revenue nor its buybacks are paid out to holders as a return.
Riba means interest or any guaranteed increase on a loan. Simply holding PYTH earns nothing. Staking PYTH for governance gives voting power, and the DAO constitution provides no reward for it. Oracle Integrity Staking (OIS) let holders stake behind data publishers, with stake at risk of slashing (a penalty that cuts stake) for bad data; its rewards came from a fixed pool of 100 million PYTH, not from lending, and the pool ran dry on 22 April 2026, after which the reward rate was set to zero under OP-PIP-103.
The DAO's income comes from selling data and from usage fees; a third of the treasury buys PYTH each month, and those tokens are returned to the DAO treasury rather than distributed to holders. Some scholars see reward pools funded by token emissions as debatable, and ShariaQuant flagged this, but it was not interest on a loan and it has stopped, so no interest mechanism remains and the criterion is at the maximum.
Pyth is a working data network with paying customers; PYTH itself is mainly a governance and staking token.
Mal is property that Islamic law recognises as having value and that can be owned and traded. The network behind PYTH clearly works: more than 138 institutions publish data to it, it lists more than 720 consumers and 3,600 price feeds, and it earned about $10.4 million of annual recurring revenue in August 2026. PYTH's own utility is narrower: it is used to vote in the DAO and to stake as a data-quality guarantee, and it is not needed to pay for data, which keeps the score somewhat below the maximum. Sharlife, the authoritative source for Pyth, lists it as Shariah-compliant.
The general disagreement among scholarly bodies on whether cryptocurrency is property is reflected in confidence, not in this score.
PYTH is not a gambling token and has a real data network behind it, though its trading is dominated by perpetual futures.
Maysir is gambling: winning or losing by chance rather than through productive exchange. Ordinary price swings are not maysir, and PYTH has no chance-based payout of its own. Its market is heavily speculative, though. On Binance on 27 September 2026, perpetual futures made up about 83% of PYTH/USDT volume (about $49.1 million against $10.3 million spot, a single-day snapshot). The price fell from an all-time high of $1.20 in March 2024 to about $0.044 in July 2026 and was about $0.086 on 27 September 2026.
A real function exists behind the token, a data network with paying customers, so the asset is not built for gambling; the concrete futures dominance lowers the score within pass. The network's own service to prediction markets and lotteries is assessed under usage.
Pyth earns mainly by selling market data, a service, but many paying users are interest-based lenders and derivatives venues, and the revenue mix by customer is not published.
This criterion asks how the protocol earns and whether any of that income is impermissible. Most of Pyth's revenue is subscription fees for market data: Pyth overall passed $10.4 million of annual recurring revenue in August 2026, and Pyth Pro alone brought $538,391 of gross revenue in July 2026. The DAO receives 60% of Pyth Pro revenue (in July 2026, $323,034 of $538,391, paid in PYTH), and apps pay small per-update fees for price feeds and per-request fees for Entropy randomness. Selling data is a service, and ShariaQuant rated the revenue clean.
But Pyth's largest on-chain users are interest-based lending markets and perpetual futures exchanges, and it also serves prediction markets and lottery-style randomness. Pyth does not publish revenue by customer type, so the share earned from these businesses cannot be checked against the 5% and 20% thresholds. Sharlife lists Pyth as compliant, and selling data is a permissible service; but fees from Entropy randomness used by lottery and gaming apps are income from gambling activity that is shown to exist while its share is unknown, which keeps this criterion at caution. Each month the DAO spends a third of its treasury buying PYTH on the market and keeps the tokens; this buyback supports the token price but pays no one a return.
Supply is fixed and no one can mint more, governance and code are public, and the remaining unlock schedule is disclosed, though about 21% of supply unlocks at once in May 2027.
Gharar is excessive uncertainty or hidden information in a deal. Much about PYTH is transparent: the Solana mint account shows about 10 billion PYTH with mint and freeze authority removed, so no new tokens can be created and no holder can be frozen. The DAO constitution is public, votes are stake-weighted on-chain, and the oracle code is open source. Some uncertainty remains. About 2.1 billion PYTH (roughly 21% of supply) is still locked; Pyth's tokenomics set the last cliff 42 months after launch, and Tokenomist lists the next unlock, to the ecosystem growth allocation, on 19 May 2027.
Earlier cliffs added large amounts of supply while the price fell from $1.20 to under $0.10. The network is also mid-transition: Pythnet is being retired in 2026 in favour of new infrastructure, and day-to-day treasury operations run through multisig councils acting on DAO votes. The allocation and cliff schedule come from Pyth's own tokenomics post (2023); the current unlocked share comes from a secondary tracker. Because the cliff schedule was published in advance, this is disclosed risk rather than hidden information, so the criterion is in pass, below the maximum.
Pyth is data infrastructure used widely in traditional finance, but on-chain its main users are interest-based lending, perpetual futures and prediction markets.
This criterion looks at what the network is actually used for. Part of the use is plainly permissible: institutions subscribe to Pyth Pro for market data, and Pyth works with Nasdaq, Tradeweb, LMAX and other data firms. On-chain, however, the largest consumers are lending markets such as Kamino, which charge and pay interest, and perpetual futures exchanges such as Drift and Jupiter Perpetuals, whose leveraged contracts fail under AAOIFI Shariah Standard 20.
Pyth also lists prediction-market platforms (Polymarket, Kalshi, Jupiter Predict) among its success stories, and its Entropy randomness service names lotteries and gaming among its use cases. A price oracle is neutral infrastructure and the data itself is permissible, so this is a notable share of disputed use rather than an impermissible main purpose. The breakdown of on-chain users comes from secondary sources, so a 'fail' is not supported. Sharlife lists Pyth as compliant, but these named on-chain users are a concrete reason to stay at caution.
Fully paid spot PYTH is available on major exchanges, and it can be held in one's own Solana wallet.
This criterion asks whether the asset can be owned in a permissible way. PYTH trades spot, with full payment and delivery, on major exchanges such as Binance, and as a Solana SPL token it can be withdrawn to a self-custody wallet. In Europe the VanEck Pyth ETN offers price exposure through a collateralised note, but direct ownership does not depend on that or on any derivative. How specific products are structured is assessed under trading mechanisms.
Pyth makes accurate market data openly available on-chain and to institutions; the harm lies mainly in who uses it, which is counted under usage.
Maslahah weighs public benefit against harm. The benefit is clear: Pyth publishes first-party prices from more than 138 institutions in a verifiable way, lowers the cost of market data, and distributes data such as Nasdaq Basic and fixed-income prices. Accurate prices also protect users of on-chain apps from unfair liquidations.
The harms are real but indirect: much on-chain demand comes from leveraged derivatives, interest-based lending and prediction markets, which is already counted under usage, and a faulty feed could trigger wrongful liquidations, although no slashing proposal was ever needed under Oracle Integrity Staking. No evidence was found of Pyth being used as a tool for fraud or sanctions evasion. With no separate harm found, the criterion is at the maximum.
How you can use it
Tap a card for the ruling and sourcesBuying PYTH with full payment and immediate delivery is available on major exchanges, and tokens can be moved to a self-custody Solana wallet. Spot ownership is acceptable for an asset rated HALAL.
There is no US spot PYTH ETF. In Europe the VanEck Pyth ETN (VPYT) tracks PYTH and, according to VanEck, is fully collateralised with PYTH held in cold storage, but an ETN is legally a debt note of the issuer rather than a share in a fund, and whether the underlying is ever lent was not verified.
PYTH is not used as a means of payment in practice. Tier-1 bodies such as Indonesia's MUI rule that using cryptocurrency as currency is not permissible, and paying with crypto is restricted in several jurisdictions.
Governance staking gives voting power; the DAO constitution provides no reward for it. Oracle Integrity Staking puts stake behind data publishers at risk of slashing; its rewards came from a fixed 100 million PYTH pool, not from lending, and have been zero since 22 April 2026. With no reward and a structure that some scholars see as closer to guaranteeing others' work than doing it, staking is rated caution rather than pass.
Margin trading in PYTH is offered on exchanges but is never acceptable: it is a deferred exchange with borrowed money and leverage (AAOIFI SS 20).
PYTH perpetual futures make up most of its exchange volume, but futures, perpetuals and options always fail under AAOIFI SS 20: deferred exchange without delivery, usually with leverage.
Lending PYTH through exchange earn programmes or DeFi lending markets pays interest from borrowers. This is riba.
PYTH yield products offered by exchanges or DeFi apps are typically built on lending and pay interest-like returns, so they fail. The protocol itself currently offers no yield on PYTH.
Scholars quotes
The opinion on this is the same as doing the same with any halal assets such as shares – 1) is permissible, 2) is more debatable and there are differing opinions on short-term trading.As I mentioned at the beginning of this article it is not necessary to substantiate the permissibility of something as long as there are no prohibited factors involved in it or surrounding it.Penggunaan cryptocurrency sebagai mata uang hukumnya haram, karena mengandung gharar (ketidakjelasan), dharar (bahaya) dan bertentangan dengan Undang-Undang nomor 7 tahun 2011 tentang Mata Uang dan Peraturan Bank Indonesia nomor 17 tahun 2015 tentang Kewajiban Penggunaan Rupiah di Wilayah Negara Kesatuan Republik Indonesia.Sebagaimana mata wang yang lain, mata wang digital hendaklah tidak digunakan sebagai bayaran kepada barangan, perkhidmatan dan aktiviti tidak patuh Syariah seperti pembelian dadah, pelacuran, perjudian dan pendanaan aktiviti keganasan serta penggubahan wang haram.The SAC has also resolved that investment and trading of Digital Assets that fulfil the above requirements and which are traded on Digital Asset Exchange (DAX) registered with SC are permissible.Third: In light of the above and given the significant risks associated with this type of currencies and the instability of their transactions, the Council of the Academy recommends pursuing research and studies on issues affecting its ruling.Bitcoin is a digital currency that does not meet the legal and Sharia criteria that make it a currency subject to the rulings of dealing with official legal currencies recognized internationally.بناءً على ذلك: فلا يجوز شرعًا تداول عملة "البتكوين" والتعامل من خلالها بالبيعِ والشراءِ والإجارةِ وغيرها، بل يُمنع من الاشتراكِ فيها؛ لعدمِ اعتبارِها كوسيطٍ مقبولٍ للتبادلِ من الجهاتِ المخُتصَّةِ، ولِمَا تشتمل عليه من الضررِ الناشئ عن الغررِ والجهالةِ والغشِّ في مَصْرِفها ومِعْيارها وقِيمتها، فضلًا عما تؤدي إليه ممارستُها من مخاطرَ عاليةٍ على الأفراد والدول.However, the token is rated Doubtful because its Oracle Integrity Staking yield has historically relied on inflation emissions, a scholar-debated mechanism, though it is transitioning to a fee-backed model.According to research and opinion of experts so far, cryptocurrency is not considered ‘ maal ’ (wealth) in Sharia.Muhammadiyah memandang transaksi dan investasi kripto pada dasarnya mubah (boleh) tetapi dengan syarat tertentu.Our current position is 'tawaquf'; we can't say it is halal or haram, but we say it is better not to engage in itAI-assisted analysis checked against sources. Not a fatwa or investment advice.
Where it trades
Section in preparation
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