What is Origin Protocol?
Are you tired of dealing with sketchy middlemen and high fees in online marketplaces? Well, Origin Protocol is here to help! By utilizing the power of decentralized networks and peer-to-peer transactions, Origin is creating a new era of online commerce that is faster, cheaper, and more secure.
Origin Protocol was founded in 2017 by a team of experienced entrepreneurs and blockchain experts. The team's vision was to create a decentralized platform that would allow anyone to buy and sell goods and services directly with each other, without the need for intermediaries or middlemen.
The team began by building a proof-of-concept for a decentralized, blockchain-based ride-sharing platform, which they called Origin Shuttle. The platform demonstrated the power and potential of blockchain technology for creating decentralized marketplaces, and it quickly gained attention from investors and blockchain enthusiasts.
In 2018, the team shifted their focus to building a broader platform for decentralized commerce, which they called Origin Marketplace. The platform would allow anyone to create their own decentralized marketplace, with their own unique branding, listings, and payment options.
Today, Origin Protocol is one of the leading decentralized marketplaces in the blockchain space, with a growing community of users and developers. With its focus on decentralization, security, and user control, Origin Protocol is looking to take on tech giants like Shopify.
How does Origin Protocol work?
The Origin Platform consists of a series of smart contracts at the protocol layer, intermediary APIs that allow for in-house and third-party dapp creation, and the application layer that end-users interact with to transact on the network. The components of the Platform are designed to be modular, meaning developers, e-commerce merchants, and marketplace operators to can create their own dapps for various business use cases.
Origin Protocol is built on the Ethereum network and uses IPFS to store users' data (i.e pictures, store details) in a decentralized and secure manner. Using this architecture, Origin takes on marketplaces such as Uber, Airbnb, Doordash, GetAround, by offering much lower fees and better security.
Origin Dshop
In the sea of blockchain use cases, Origin made their niche on creating decentralized alternatives to Shopify, or Dshop. Their secret sauce for competing with e-commerce giants is the open nature of blockchain on top of the flawless user experience.
E-commerce platforms like Shopify made their name thanks to their simple interface and integrated payment methods. However, the centralized nature of Shopify leads to vulnerabilities that the user simply can't defend from. All users' personal information is stored on Shopify's servers. In case of a hack, Shopify users might be targeted for phishing and malware attacks.
Dshop provides greater privacy and security than Shopify. Transactions on Dshop are processed directly between the buyer and the seller, without any intermediaries. This means that sensitive information like payment details and personal data are not stored on a centralized server, reducing the risk of data breaches and hacks.
Towards the end of 2021, Origin Dshop has been shut down and morphed into a new platform for issuing NFTs: Origin Story.
Origin Story
In 2022, Origin jumped on the NFT bandwagon and announced their own marketplace, called Origin Story. Creators from all over the world can now launch their own NFT storefronts and sales. This tool represents an alternative to existing NFT marketplaces like OpenSea or Magic Eden, and leverages the same mechanics as Dshop.
Origin Story supports advanced NFT analytics on their partner marketplaces, and NFT Compare is their next foray into NFT data analytics. It pulls on-chain collection data in real time, thanks to Origin's NFT intelligence platform (NIP) they built. NFT Compare is still in the beta phase as of 2023. The team is working on collecting more data via APIs in order to give users the full picture of the NFT market. The analytics tool gathers data only for the Origin NFT storefronts.
OUSD Dollar
OUSD is a 1:1 dollar-backed stablecoin issued on the Ethereum network. it is backed by a basket of stablecoins such as DAI, USDC, and USDT.
Users can convert their OUSD back into other stablecoins at any time using the Origin Dollar DApp. The Origin DApp will route user's transactions to give them the best available price while taking slippage, gas costs, and the vault's exit fee into consideration.
There is a 0.25% exit fee upon redeeming the underlying collateral. This fee is distributed as additional yield to the remaining participants in the OUSD vault. The fee serves as a security feature to make it difficult for attackers to take advantage of lagging oracles, preventing them from siphoning stablecoins from the vault in the event of mispriced underlying assets. The fee exists to incentivize long-term holders over short-term speculators.
Upon redemption, the vault will determine which stablecoin(s) to return to the user. In the current implementation, the vault will return coins in the same ratio as the current holdings.
Origin Ether (OETH)
Origin Ether represents a basket of liquid staking tokens. Much of the codebase of OETH is similar to the Origin Dollar, with the key difference that OETH is an Ether denominated token.
Origin Ether earns yield from liquid staking tokens stETH, rETH, and sfrxETH. Holders earn superior yield with Origin Ether, as APYs are optimized between liquid staking tokens and liquidity provision strategies within DeFi. In other words, OETH is collateralized by yield staking tokens that are yield farmed across DeFi protocols to give users yield.
The main feature for holding OETH is that the token auto-compounds as the users holds full custody over the asset.
Funds allocation into DeFi protocols is being voted on a weekly basis by the Origin Dollar Governance (OVG) token holders.
Origin DeFi Governance (OGV)
OGV represents the governance tokens for both Origin Dollar and Origin Ether. Launched in 2022, OGV represents a step to further decentralize Origin Protocol.
OETH is initially governed by a 5 of 8 multi-sig wallet with a plan to transfer ownership to OGV stakers.
How to make money on Origin Protocol?
As a P2P marketplace, users can make money by selling their items on Origin (including NFTs). In addition to its marketplace, Origin also offers a way to make money by using its DeFi platform.
Origin Story
Making money on Origin Story involves buying and selling NFTs. The key in securing a bigger profit margin is to keep an eye on whitelists for upcoming collections and to generally be active in the NFT space.
A whitelist is a list of approved wallet addresses that are allowed to participate in a specific NFT sale. Typically, NFT creators or marketplaces will use a whitelist as a means of ensuring that only a select group of individuals or organizations can purchase or bid on a particular NFT.
Whitelisting can be used to create a sense of exclusivity around a particular NFT sale, or to ensure that the sale is conducted fairly and transparently. By limiting the number of participants and verifying their identities or qualifications, whitelisting can help to prevent bots, scalpers, or other malicious actors from unfairly dominating a sale or bidding process.
To participate in a whitelisted NFT sale, users must have their wallet address added to the whitelist by the NFT creator or marketplace. This process may involve submitting an application, providing proof of ownership or qualification, or meeting other requirements specified by the sale organizer. In practice, obtaining a WL relies on you being active in the Discord of the respective project. Once approved, whitelisted users will be able to participate in the sale or bidding process on equal footing with other approved participants.
Since you are among the first to mint the NFT, this creates an advantage. For example, users can quickly sell on the secondary markets as the floor price often goes up. Timing is of the essence when it comes to NFT flipping, so you may want to set up notifications for each event.
Origin OUSD Dollar
Users can easily earn APY on their OUSD by lending the stablecoin to different DeFi protocols. One of the advantages is that OUSD can be redeemed for USDT, DAI or USDC, and the gains are auto-compounding.
Here's how you mint OUSD:
Go to app.ousd.com
Input the amount of DAI, USDT, or USDC you want to swap
Deposit and approve the transaction
With your newly minted OUSD, you can provide liquidity on Aave and Compound.
Origin Ether (OETH)
Holding Origin Ether can be a simple method to gain indirect exposure to ETH. Because OETH is collateralized by liquid staking tokens, holders can redeem the underlying collateral at any time and then hold the stETH/rETH/frETH, or convert them into WETH.
The difference between holding OETH vs holding liquid staked tokens separately is the extra work involved. For every single liquid staked token, users have to pay deposit fees on liquidity pools, and rotate the capital when yields dry out.
OETH automates yield rotation and covers the gas fees from the yields. As an OETH holder, all you have to do is simply hold the asset and watch as the yield auto-compounds.
Here's how to get OETH:
Open the Origin Ether app
Click on "Get OETH"
Select the asset you want to deposit and the amount
Click "Swap"
Approve the transaction
Users can mint OETH themselves by depositing WETH or liquid staked tokens. OETH can be redeemed anytime via the Vault for a mix of WETH, stETH, rETH, and frxETH.
OGV Staking
By staking OGV tokens, users not only gain voting power within the Origin DeFi ecosystem, but they also receive rewards in the form of OGV tokens. The longer users choose to stake, the more power they receive.
Here's how to stake OGV tokens:
Open governance.ousd.com
Click on the "Stake" tab
Input the amount of OGV tokens you would like to stake
Select the duration
Deposit
Approve the transaction
Once deposited, you will receive veOGV tokens representing your staked position. veOGV can be claimed at any time for OGV tokens. However, if you want to maintain your voting power, the OGV must remain staked.
Price Prediction for Origin Protocol — Can it hit $1000?
Buying and hodling OGN — the native token of Origin Protocol — is one way of potentially making money on Origin.
By looking at its current price, it’s natural to think about the chance of OGN hitting $1000 per token. This can happen sooner, or way in the future, and is determined by a couple of ever changing factors.
Let’s examine the potential growth of the OGN token by analyzing its tokenomics. OGN’s current market cap sits comfortably at ${MARKET_CAP}. With {CIRCULATING_SUPPLY} OGN tokens being in circulation today, that means a price of {PRICE} per OGN.
How did we come to that calculation? It’s quite easy, the price of a OGN token is equal to its current market cap divided by the number of tokens in circulation. Dividing ${MARKET_CAP} by {CIRCULATING_SUPPLY} gives us a result of {PRICE} for each OGN coin.
By changing the order in the simple formula above we can use it to calculate other things as well. This helps us a lot because we can deduce the market cap of OGN at different token prices. Then, we can use the result to compare it to the current state of the network and see what would be required for OGN to hit that price.
At a price of $1000 per token, that means the current market cap of OGN would equal ${{CIRCULATING_SUPPLY} * 1000}. Remember that we arrived at this number by multiplying the amount of circulating tokens by $1000.
Now let’s shift our attention to the fully diluted market cap.
Some blockchains may have their tokenomics built in a way that only a small percentage of tokens are circulating at the beginning. This can be misleading because we don’t have the full picture and only take into account the current number of coins released in the market.
The fully diluted market cap represents the total value of a coin if all tokens were in circulation. OGN’s whole supply of tokens is {MAX_SUPPLY - TOTAL_SUPPLY + CIRCULATING_SUPPLY} OGN which means that no more coins above that number will ever be created.
These tokens are not created at the discretion of a specific entity. They are created automatically by the network to reward different actors that keep it secure.
How does this impact the price of OGN? Taking into account the current price of a OGN token, that would result in a fully diluted market cap of ${MAX_SUPPLY - TOTAL_SUPPLY + CIRCULATING_SUPPLY * PRICE}. OGN coins that have been burned are not taken into consideration because they have been permanently removed from circulation.
Whether it seems gigantic or not, the number we came to above only takes into account the current price of a OGN token. Doing the same calculation but with a price of $1000 gives us a result of ${{MAX_SUPPLY - TOTAL_SUPPLY + CIRCULATING_SUPPLY} * 1000} for the OGN protocol fully diluted market cap.
These are all crucial details to know when calculating if OGN can reach the price of $1000 per token. If the diluted market capitalization is way too high, the token has little room left to grow. Blockchains in general have no cap on the value they can reach, whether that number seems possible it’s totally up to you.
The future of OGN depends solely on its growth as a network used by tens and hundreds of millions of users.
If you’re looking to add some OGN to your portfolio, the most trusted places to get some are Binance and Coinbase.
