Launch AppEvery month, the Origin team publishes a monthly update to our token holders and the broader community. Welcome to the October 2022 edition.
Lots has happened for both OUSD and Origin Story since September. From boosted APYs for OUSD to an industry-first NFT sale, even the mayor of Columbia had something to say about us!
Honestly, you’re going to want to read the whole thing (it’s not that long).
For those of you strapped for time, here’s a summary. Origin Story sold a $175,000 NFT this month, and it wasn’t a cartoon JPEG; instead, it was an industry 1st sale. Origin Story facilitated the first IRL real estate transaction on an NFT marketplace, bought in USDC. Shortly after the transaction, the sale went viral on Twitter and was picked up by news nation-wide.
OUSD is going through an audit by OpenZeppelin––the firm responsible for auditing the Ethereum Foundation, among other protocols with billions of dollars in TVL. The audit is for new yield strategies being implemented on OUSD, increasing the yield holders will accrue by an estimated 150%.
This is the part where the mayor of Columbia comes in.
OGN Season 1 ends in just over a week, and Story is ending its first season with a bang. If you haven’t already seen, Story facilitated the 1st home sale via its NFT marketplace this month. In partnership with Roofstock onChain, the Columbia-based home sold in a matter of seconds for a fraction of the cost of traditional real estate brokerage fees.
The mayor of Columbia spoke to ABC and Fox News regarding the NFT home sale. In his own words, “This really is the future of how people will buy houses. The fact you can buy a home this way––and finance it––why would we not look at these opportunities?” said Daniel Rickenmann on ABC. While local news stations covered the sale, so did mainstream, nationwide media.
Forbes interviewed our co-founder Matthew Liu on the sale, while The Block, MSN, and Market Watch were among the dozens of media outlets that covered the transaction.
Origin’s original vision aims to bring the benefits of disintermediation to the masses. The first sale on Roofstock’s NFT marketplace, powered by Origin Story, represents a significant step towards realizing this bold undertaking.
Real Estate is a monolithic, $11T industry rife with costly red tape and crowded with redundant intermediaries. The same holds true across the spectrum of traditional markets at present, placing unnecessary pressure on individuals already struggling to amass assets and savings.
While NFTs have become synonymous with digital artwork, the potential of this nascent technology is immeasurably vast. Recognizing that NFTs will be key to unlocking tremendous value in untapped industries, Origin continues to further innovation through groundbreaking products in new sectors.
This sale marks the first milestone on a journey towards disrupting legacy systems to drive value back to individuals––where it belongs.
If you’re part of our Discord, you may have heard Nick Hong lead our community Tech Talks this month. As announced on the call, the Origin engineering team now leverages storybook.js to write reusable UI components for partner marketplaces . Embracing open-source software, the use of storybook.js aligns with our “public by default” philosophy, while our public Tech Talks continue to reinforce this practice.
Apart from this, Story partnered with some new NFT collections in the month of October. A couple collections Origin built marketplaces for this month include The Doge Pound and Non Fungible Films. As we head towards 2023, we’re honing in on quality over quantity in regards to Story partnerships.
As a reminder, OGN Season 2 staking commences on November 9th. No action is needed for those staking in Season 1 to continue staking in Season 2, but make sure to claim your staking rewards for Season 1 within 30 days of the season ending! All unclaimed rewards will rollover into the Season 2 staking pool.
Higher yields and even better security. Check it out.
Security is a top priority for all of Origin’s products. OpenZeppelin, the auditor for the Ethereum Foundation, Aave, and Coinbase, has signed a retainer with Origin Protocol, and our engineers are working closely with the team to finalize the audit in the coming weeks.
The OpenZeppelin audit is in regards to new developments for OUSD. We’re currently implementing new yield-bearing strategies, allowing for APYs to be significantly boosted from the current rates. Specifically, we aim to implement a Convex meta and Convex generalized strategy––our finance gurus estimate that APY for OUSD will increase between 2.5x and 3.5x as a result of these new strategies.
On a similar note, our Origin Dollar team is now collaborating with Morpho. We are currently evaluating integrations with its lending protocol, as new strategies using its protocol will further boost OUSD yield while maintaining similar levels of risk.
In efforts to keep MakerDAO decentralized and grow OUSD’s TVL, Origin Dollar set forth MIP87 to allow MakerDAO to earn interest on its DAI holdings while retaining full custody of its funds. We’ve proposed an allocation of $100M DAI from Maker––to learn more about the proposal, check out the forum post or MakerDAO community call. Voting goes live in November, and we’re calling on all MKR holders to help make this happen!
With high OGV staking yields and new strategies coming to OUSD very soon, Origin Dollar Governance (OGV) is up nearly 50% in the month of October. As OUSD earns yield, 10% of earnings are sent to the OGV rewards pool. As the TVL in OUSD increases, so does the OGV rewards pool. To get a slice of the OUSD reward pool, users must stake OGV.
OGV is also used for governance of OUSD, allowing holders to vote on which protocols are used to earn yield with the collateral backing Origin Dollar. When holders stake OGV, they receive vote-escrowed OGV (veOGV) to vote on proposals. With more Convex strategies coming soon, token holders will have more options as to where OUSD earns yield.
At 78.04% of its supply, the majority of OGV is currently staked. This reduces the amount of available OGV in circulation and grants veOGV voting rights to the majority of the token’s supply. Moreover, the current OGV yield sits at 56.75% APY, allowing investors to accrue significant rewards for OGV staking.
Origin Story’s OGN accrues value from our NFT marketplace fees, and Season 2 is quickly approaching. 100% of the fees Story marketplaces earn in a given season are placed in the OGN rewards pool, and users earn points based on the amount of OGN staked and the amount of time the tokens have been staked. At the end of each season, rewards are distributed based on the number of points a user earned during the season.
In Season 1 of OGN staking, over 35.6 million OGN was staked. Accounting for both OGN and ETH rewards from marketplace revenues, estimated APY from season 1 staking is currently 6%.
Out with the old, in with the new.
Origin’s now using its own content management system (CMS) instead of Medium. As of today, Origin Protocol’s new blog is live, and you can find articles pertaining to new hires, token holder updates, and general announcements here.
In the coming weeks, both the Story and OUSD product sites will undergo a redesign. After the redesign is live, you’ll be able to see product announcements and educational articles pertaining to both products on their respective websites.
We stole another executive from big tech.
We’re incredibly excited to announce that Amit Patel has joined Origin Protocol as Head of Business Development for Origin Story! Amit comes from Lyft, where he spent over 10 years building its ride sharing services as Director of BD and Founder of Lyft Business: Lyft’s b2b division.
Amit was previously employee #7 at Lyft and founded the company’s b2b division that now drives $1B+ in annual revenue. To actualize this, Amit led partnerships with Delta, Apple, McKinsey, Facebook, and other F500 companies at Lyft Business. His team also built strategic partnerships with health systems including BlueCross BlueShield and United Health, providing reliable, safe rides to millions of eligible patients every year. Before joining Origin, Amit spent 15+ in silicon valley and is excited to begin building in web3!
Amit has already begun to help Story reach high-profile partners, and we’re eager to see where he takes us on our journey to make NFT marketplaces that impact millions of users.
Did you know that we’re hiring? Our corporate treasury is strong; Origin has some of the brightest minds in the space, and we’re seeing more interest from A-tier partners than ever before. Why not join us?
We’re still searching for the right:
We are in search of experienced Product Managers for our NFT and DeFi platforms, a Frontend Engineer, a Solidity and Full-stack Engineer, and an Email and Performance Marketer. Check out our job postings, come join us, or refer your giga-brain friends!
