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Origin Protocol OGN – NFTs + DeFi

Origin Protocol (OGN) is the development platform that wants to bring “NFTs and DeFi to the masses”.

Imagine this, NFTs (non-fungible tokens) and DeFi (Decentralized Finance) that are accessible and understandable to everyone. With the same ease as getting a sandwich from the bakery, you should also be able to buy an NFT or use a DeFi application. 

Easy, everywhere, and for everyone: whether it’s an IT genius from Silicon Valley or a 67-year-old grandmother with 10 grandchildren. That is Origin Protocol’s mission in a nutshell. 

In any case, this approach has attracted the interest of a number of prominent figures from the entertainment, tech, and crypto world. From Paris Hilton to the founders of Youtube: everyone is talking about Origin Protocol. And that makes Origin Protocol a project that is definitely worth following. 

In this article, we’re going to take a look at how the mission of the team behind Origin Protocol takes shape. Here you will receive an extensive explanation of the possibilities and an answer to the question: what is Origin Protocol (OGN)?

What is Origin Protocol?

Sharing is just fine. It is something that economists also seem to realize in recent years. The sharing economy is a trend. By sharing resources and resources together, the ultimate profit can be increased. The market is also so divisible: everyone can arrange a peer-to-peer sale themselves.

The market is not controlled by a few big players, but everyone can create their own marketplace. A number of companies offer the possibility to easily arrange this for you, such as Marktplaats, Amazon or Uber. Beautiful right?

Indeed, these are wonderful ideals. Yet it has become apparent that in the systems of a sharing economy, the distribution is not yet completely fair. As a private individual or small entrepreneur, you depend on the sales opportunities of larger online companies such as Amazon, Marktplaats or AirBnB. Setting up your shop or sales in your own way is not possible.

The markets are actually still dominated by large multinationals. The fact that these large companies consist of thousands of small providers does not change that. Often the intermediaries and marketplaces also take a disproportionate part of the transaction. This makes sharing not always pleasant for the smallest parties.

The idea of decentralization and the entire development of blockchain technology may therefore fit better within the actual purpose of the sharing economy. The Origin Protocol is a perfect example of this. It wants to be a market and creation place where everyone can contribute in an equal way and share in the success.

Now you can access the internet with separate accounts to central marketplaces like Craiglist or AirBnB. Here you can buy and sell peer-to-peer (person-to-person) products or services. The data and applications are independent of each other. And you can still only sell services and products through a number of central channels.

Origin Protocol wants to make it possible with an Origin account that you can use different dApps that are all built on a common open source platform. You have access to several equivalent providers via your Origin account.

Origin Protocol is built on the Ethereum network with tokens of the type ERC20. Origin is therefore part of the largest ecosystem in the blockchain industry. Certain data, such as an NFT image, for example, is stored with the IPFS storage system.

The choice to store metadata via this system has to do with the fact that this ensures dynamic and simple storage. This ensures that the Origin Protocol is more scalable and can therefore also be used for mainstream projects with a lot of transactions and data traffic.

Products and opportunities

Origin Protocol was founded in 2017 and has been creating a truly decentralized marketplace ever since. A number of important steps have already been taken in this regard in 2021. Here we discuss what has been achieved. 

NFT launchpad

According to the developers behind the Origin Protocol, NFTs are the blockchain products that will be the first to be accepted and used by the general public. 2021 proves that they definitely have a point in this. In particular, NFT collectibles that you can collect and usable NFTs that you can use in games as an avatar, building material, or weapon, have grown enormously in value and popularity.

Well-known brands are therefore stepping in. For example, LaLiga is collaborating with Dapperlabs to release an NFT collection. An NFT market in which everyone can sell their NFTs in their own way is therefore the first step of Origin Protocol to make “blockchain for the masses” possible.

The Origin platform offers various tools with the NFT Launchpad to launch an NFT collection. What the developers of Origin Protocol want to distinguish themselves in is the freedom and possibilities to organize the launch and NFT marketplace. The marketplace and launch can take place in a completely customized environment, separate from other NFT products and markets on the launchpad. The profit model and sales systems can also be set completely yourself.

Furthermore, it is also possible to introduce payment systems that are not only suitable for payments in cryptocurrency, but also in fiat. So with your dollars through a credit card, you can bid on NFTs without any problems. Below we mention two examples of successful drops via the Origin NFT Launchpad.

Useum collectibles

An example of an NFT Launch built on the Origin NFT Launchpad is the Useum Collectibles. It is part of Useum.org. This platform wants to make art through the ages accessible to everyone via a virtual route. An NFT launch naturally fits in with this.

“Journey to Mindfulness” is an NFT collection by illustrator and artist Steve Simpson for which Origin Protocol facilitates the auction for Useum. This auction will take place on October 12, 2021.

Inspiration4 Collectibles

Inspiration4 was a milestone in human history with the first commercial space flight in 2021. The crew wanted to give this flight even more meaning by launching NFT art from the astronauts. Origin Protocol was the launchpad for this project, with proceeds from the auction going towards research and treatment of cancer in children. 

Origin USD (OUSD)

OUSD is a stablecoin that you can use in various DeFi applications. In general, a stablecoin is a coin where the value is tied to the value of a fiat, cryptocurrency, an asset, or a combination of the values ​​of these. The advantage of a stablecoin is that it is price-fixed and cannot quickly fluctuate in value.

Stablecoins will therefore most likely also contribute to the wider adoption of crypto. It cannot be the case that due to a sudden price fluctuation you can only buy a carton of milk with your crypto coins, while you could load a shopping cart with the same amount an hour before. With stablecoins, you get value for money and always the same value.

OUSD is pegged or tied to the US dollar. In addition, the value is assured by a number of cryptocurrencies namely USDT, USDC, and DAI. These are also stablecoins. 

You can currently earn money with the OUSD in three yield farming strategies. You can use the stablecoins for lending (providing loans), you can also receive fees by using OUSD at Automated Market Makers and by minting growth tokens. These strategies are executed via the DeFi Compound Protocol.

But for this, you don’t have to move the OUSD coins to this platform. From your wallet stablecoins go to work The advantage of the OUSD is that you simply keep it in your wallet and watch the value grow. Your stablecoins will not be locked or staked. This is, as Origin Protocol also likes to see, easy to arrange and follow. This gives you further freedom of movement, but you also earn revenues.

To get OUSD you must have a wallet that is suitable for Ethereum (ETH). For this, you can use Metamask, an online wallet, or a hardware wallet. Of these, the Ledger wallets are the best. The APY is 9.64% in October 2021. This is the Annual Percentage Yield, a type of interest that you earn over a year.

The OSDD token has been tradable on various exchanges since September 2020. However, a major setback came when in November 2020 more than 7 million dollars in OUSD was stolen through a hack. The losses were compensated and the team immediately did everything possible to limit the damage. The OUSD was briefly out of trade and was relaunched in January 2021.

The OUSD is tradable via Kucoin, UniSwap and Virgox. In October 2021, the stablecoin’s market cap is USD 273,08018. There are 271,92027 coins in circulation. These are also all OUSD coins in total. 

OUSD
OUSD

Origin Protocol token (OGN)

This is the token used within the Origin Protocol. OGN is used in various purposes. One of its main purposes is that it is a governance token. As a holder of tokens, you have control over the development of the protocol. Furthermore, the payment method is within the protocol.

There is a total of 1 billion tokens. In the last quarter of 2021, 356,077,498 of these are in circulation. At USD 3.35, the token reached its preliminary All-Time High in April 2021. The Low was set on January 2020 at 0.10 USD cents. 

The OGN has actually been instantly added to a large number of exchanges. We mention Binance, Huobi, Coinbase, Gate.io, and UniSwap among others.

In January 2020, the token was released and unlocked in several phases. This is to prevent a large sell-out and thus extreme price fluctuations. The unlocking of the tokens was largely completed in the last quarter. In January 2022 all tokens from the sales and pre-rounds are unlocked, only the tokens reserved for lengthy processes such as development and funds will continue to be unlocked gradually until July 2024.

In this video Stev Chen (The founder of Youtube) explains why he believes in the Origin Protocol.

https://youtu.be/qNj1qRZeeaM

Who are the founders of the Origin Protocol?

The Origin Protocol team consists of people who come from various places in both the blockchain and the tech industry.  The original founders of Origin Protocol are Josh Fraser and Matthew Liu. Both were employed as software engineers. Josh Fraser has previously founded EventVue and Torbit (later acquired by Walmart Labs) among others. Matthew Liu previously worked at YouTube.

Yu Pan is the founding engineer. He was one of the engineers who developed the protocol together with the founders. He also comes from YouTube and was also involved during the development of Paypal.

If you look at the team and the founders, it is striking that they have all mainly worked in large consumer-oriented companies. These are companies that, in order to be successful, must be accessible to new customers. The name YouTube has already been mentioned several times in connection with Origin Protocol. What YouTube wanted to achieve, to increase the accessibility of the internet for the general public, Origin Protocol now seems to want to achieve for blockchain technology. 

Origin Protocol was founded in 2017 by its two original founders in San Francisco. They wrote the white paper. After a period of building, development, testing phases, and operation in beta versions, the protocol was launched at the beginning of 2020.

Origin-Protocol
Origin Protocol

Who are the investors in Origin Protocol?

“Backed by the best” are words that apply to the Origin project. Because the platform receives support from well-known and major players from both the tech and the blockchain world. These investors also come from all over the world.

For example, a very well-known investor is Pantera Capital. If this name is among the investors in a project, it is generally a sign that this is a project with potential. Pantera Capital has a share in the largest and best-known crypto projects to date. polka dot, Ripple, and Near, just to name a few projects, are powered by Pantera Capital.

Blockchain.com from the UK is also a major investor and partner in many well-known blockchain projects. They also assist institutional investors and large firms in the financial world with a switch to the blockchain industry. A total of $38.1 million has been raised to develop the Origin protocol. Below is an overview of the major investors worldwide in Origin Protocol:

US

  • Pantera Capital
  • Foundation Capital
  • Blocktower Capital

China 

  • PreAngel Fund
  • FBG
  • SNZ Holdings
  • Continue Capital
  • BlockAsset
  • Danhua Capital

Germany

  • 1kx

UK

  • Blockchain.com
  • Eterna Capital

Hong Kong

  • Sora Ventures
  • Kenetic Capital

Saudi Arabia

  • KBW Capital

Russia

  • Crypto Bazaar

Korea

  • Hashed
  • Metaps+

Singapore

  • Spartan
  • QCP Capital

Japan

In addition to organizations, there are also a number of notable personal investors. Steve Chen, to cite one example, is the founder of YouTube and probably also a close acquaintance of founder Matthew Liu. Alexis Ohanian is the founder of Reddit and has also invested in Origin. 

In addition to investors, the team also has support from a group of advisors. They work for large crypto investors or companies. It is striking in many ways that Origin also has social media celeb Paris Hilton as an advisor. She is one of the first NFT adopters and certainly contributes to a wider awareness of NFTs and blockchain.

Conclusion

Whether it’s an OGN tweet from Paris Hilton, or a collaboration with the space crew of Inspiration4: In all, Origin Protocol shows that it is not an elusive complex technical project. It is a blockchain project for the masses and the mainstream. The team focuses on making the NFT market and DeFi applications accessible. It wants to make the sharing economy easy for everyone.

The implementation may be easy to understand, but the use of blockchain technology and products such as the OUSD coin are innovative and well thought out. Given the impressive list of investors and advisors and the interesting rise of the OGN token on the stock exchange, many see great opportunities for this project.

Josephine Tsang

Josephine Tsang

Software Engineer, Blockchain enthusiast, Bitcoin miner, gamer and anime fan. Love to share knowledge on the web (on my own blog, for immla, on twitter or reddit). Always on the look for the coolest and newest Web3 updates. Hope you guys enjoy my writing!

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