Why CoinStudy Sometimes Changes Its Verdict — And Why That Is a Sign of Strength, Not Weakness
On August 5, 2026, CoinStudy published a preliminary analysis of Ducat Protocol giving it an 88 out of 100 Halal classification. On August 6, 2026, that classification was revised to Haram following a formal ruling by our Shariah Board Chairman Dr. Usman Quddus.
Within 24 hours of publishing the preliminary verdict, CoinStudy removed all listings, withdrew the blog post, removed the Q&A entries, informed the Ducat Protocol founder directly, acknowledged the sharia quant founder who raised the question, published a completely revised analysis explaining exactly what changed and why, and our founder personally withdrew his own funds from the Ducat vault.
Some people reading this sequence will ask: how did CoinStudy get it wrong in the first place?
That is the right question. And Muslim investors who rely on CoinStudy for their investment decisions deserve a complete and honest answer to it.
The Process Behind Every CoinStudy Verdict
Most people who use CoinStudy see the finished product: a score, a classification, a chairman's ruling, and a detailed analysis explaining the reasoning. What they do not see is the process that produced it.
That process involves human beings at every step. And human beings make mistakes.
Here is how every CoinStudy analysis is produced, without any simplification or omission.
Step 1 — A project contacts CoinStudy or CoinStudy identifies a project for analysis.
Projects reach out requesting review. Community members ask about specific coins. New developments in the market prompt CoinStudy's research team to analyze projects our audience is asking about. This initial contact is the starting point.
Step 2 — CoinStudy's research team studies the project.
We read the whitepaper. We study the official website and documentation. We research the founding team, investor backing, tokenomics, and technical mechanism. We look for recent developments and news. We assess the mechanism against our five-red-line framework. This research phase takes hours or sometimes days for complex projects.
Step 3 — The team explains the mechanism to the Shariah Board.
This is the most important step and the one where human limitation enters most directly.
Dr. Usman Quddus and Dr. Muhammad Ayub are PhD Islamic Studies & Finance scholars. They are not blockchain engineers. They are not cryptocurrency traders. Their expertise is Islamic jurisprudence, Sharia principles, and the scholarly tradition of Islamic commercial ethics that spans fourteen centuries.
When we bring a project to the Shariah Board, we explain the mechanism to them in language they can engage with as Islamic finance scholars. We translate the technical into the conceptual. We describe what the protocol does, how money flows through it, what the fee structures are, what the yield mechanisms are, and what risks exist.
This translation is where human error can enter.
Step 4 — The scholars listen and apply Islamic finance principles.
The scholars do not read whitepapers. They cannot be expected to independently navigate thousands of lines of smart contract code or parse the technical documentation of hundreds of blockchain protocols. Their role is to apply centuries of Islamic commercial jurisprudence to the mechanisms we describe. That application requires a clear and complete description of the mechanism.
If the description is incomplete, the ruling is applied to an incomplete picture.
Step 5 — CoinStudy publishes the verdict in English.
The chairman's ruling comes in Urdu and reflects his scholarly assessment of what was explained to him. CoinStudy's research team then writes the published analysis explaining the ruling in English for a global audience. This published analysis incorporates our own research alongside the scholarly ruling.
Where Things Can Go Wrong
Understanding this process makes clear where mistakes can happen and why they happen.
The team may not fully understand a mechanism.
Some blockchain protocols are genuinely complex. The financial engineering inside certain DeFi products, novel stablecoin structures, and hybrid financial instruments can be difficult to understand completely. If our research team does not fully grasp how a fee is structured, how yield is generated, or how capital flows through a protocol, we cannot explain it completely to the scholars.
This is not negligence. It is the honest limitation of a research team that analyzes hundreds of protocols across an industry that invents new financial structures constantly.
The team may not know what to ask.
Every analysis involves deciding which questions to bring to the scholars. With a protocol like Ducat, our initial research focused on the most obvious Islamic finance question: does any interest mechanism exist? We correctly identified that there was no ongoing interest, no compounding, and no T-Bill backed reserve. These are genuine and important positive findings.
What we did not sufficiently emphasize in our initial explanation to the scholars was the specific nature of the one-time fee as a condition of the loan and the fact that it scaled with the loan amount rather than with the service cost. Mohammad Wais of Sharia Quant, identified this specific nuance and brought it to our attention.
We then submitted this specific question to the chairman. His ruling confirmed the concern.
The team's description may emphasize the positives.
When a research team is excited about a genuinely innovative project, there is a natural human tendency to describe its strengths more vividly than its potential weaknesses. This is not dishonesty. It is human enthusiasm for genuine innovation. But it can result in a description to the scholars that frames the mechanism more favorably than a completely neutral description would.
The scholars can only rule on what they are told.
This is the most important limitation to understand.
Dr. Usman Quddus is one of the most distinguished Islamic finance scholars accessible to the Muslim cryptocurrency community. His PhD is in Islamic Studies and Finance from a program aligned with AAOIFI standards. His rulings reflect deep scholarly knowledge and precise application of Islamic commercial principles.
But he cannot rule on information he was not given. If CoinStudy's description of a protocol omits a detail, the scholar's ruling does not account for that detail. This is not the scholar's failure. It is the process's limitation.
The Ducat Protocol Example — What Actually Happened
The Ducat Protocol revision is the clearest example of this process and its limitations in CoinStudy's history.
Our research team identified Ducat as genuinely innovative. Bitcoin-backed, no ongoing interest, debt that never grows, one-time fee. These are all accurate and genuine characteristics that distinguish Ducat from every other stablecoin we have analyzed.
When we explained Ducat to the chairman, our explanation naturally emphasized what made it different: the absence of interest, the Bitcoin-only backing, the non-custodial vault structure. We explained the 1% origination fee as a service charge for vault creation.
What we did not sufficiently emphasize in our initial explanation was the specific Islamic finance concern that a fee charged as a condition of receiving a loan and scaling with the loan amount has a specific status in Islamic jurisprudence regardless of whether it compounds over time.
Mohammad Wais, identified this specific concern and articulated it precisely. We submitted his exact question to the chairman. The chairman ruled that this specific characteristic makes the fee resemble Riba and that the Muslim finance system does not permit it.
The chairman had not changed his understanding of Islamic finance. He had been given a more complete and precisely framed description of the specific mechanism in question. His ruling followed naturally from that complete description.
Why This Is a Sign of Strength, Not Weakness
Some Muslim investors may worry when they see a verdict change. If CoinStudy said halal and then changed to haram, can I trust the next verdict?
We understand this concern completely. But we ask Muslim investors to consider what the alternative looks like.
A platform that never changes a verdict is either analyzing only the most obvious and unambiguous cases, or it is maintaining verdicts that should be revised to protect its reputation rather than to protect its users. Neither of these serves Muslim investors honestly.
CoinStudy's willingness to revise publicly, immediately, and with complete explanation of what changed and why is the proof that the process is real. A methodology that produces only correct verdicts from the first attempt is a methodology that has never been tested by genuine scholarly challenge. A methodology that can be corrected and improved through scholarly engagement is a methodology grounded in genuine Islamic finance scholarship rather than in appearance management.
The chairman's ruling on Ducat did not weaken CoinStudy's credibility. It strengthened it. Every Muslim investor who watched CoinStudy remove all listings, revise the analysis, inform all parties, and publish a complete explanation of the revision can trust that when CoinStudy's process works in the future, that same integrity will govern it.
How CoinStudy Is Working to Reduce the Risk of Future Revisions
Understanding that human limitation is inherent to our process, CoinStudy is implementing specific improvements that reduce the risk of incomplete mechanism descriptions reaching the scholars.
We now use a structured protocol questionnaire for every new analysis that specifically prompts the research team to ask: is there any fee charged as a condition of receiving a loan or service? Does any fee scale with transaction size rather than service cost? Is there any yield mechanism not yet identified? What is the complete source of any income the protocol generates?
We submit the strongest version of any challenge or objection we can identify to the scholars before publishing, rather than only submitting the questions that support our preliminary assessment.
We invite qualified Islamic finance scholars to review our preliminary assessments before publication for complex or novel mechanisms. Mohammad Wais's engagement, despite its uncomfortable public dimension, resulted in exactly the kind of scholarly review that CoinStudy should be inviting for novel financial structures.
We are transparent about the limitation: our preliminary classifications carry a specific note that formal scholarly review is pending. Muslim investors who make financial decisions based only on a preliminary classification before the formal chairman's ruling should understand that preliminary classifications represent our best current assessment, not a final scholarly determination.
What Muslim Investors Should Know
CoinStudy's verdicts are the result of a genuine process involving human research, human explanation, and genuine Islamic scholarship. That process produces real scholarly verdicts that no AI system and no automated screener can produce. It also produces occasional revisions when the process reveals a complexity that was not fully captured in the initial analysis.
When a revision happens, CoinStudy will always tell you exactly what changed and why. We will name the individuals who contributed to identifying the correction. We will acknowledge our own error precisely and without minimizing it. We will update every piece of content that reflected the prior verdict.
This is what accountability looks like in Islamic finance research. Not the absence of error, but the honest, complete, and immediate response to it when it occurs.
We are human beings serving the Muslim investor community with the tools and knowledge available to us. We will make mistakes. When we do, you will hear about it from us first, with complete honesty about what happened and why.
That is the only promise CoinStudy can honestly make. And we intend to keep it.
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CoinStudy is led by Sufwan Tariq, Director of ST Commodity Trading and Advisory Services Ltd and founder of CoinStudy. The Shariah Board is chaired by Dr. Usman Quddus, PhD in Islamic Studies and Finance, with Dr. Muhammad Ayub, PhD in Islamic Studies, as a member. CoinStudy has applied for registration as a Shariah advisory firm under SECP, the Securities and Exchange Commission of Pakistan, with approval expected within 60 days.