To our Origin Community,
After building relentlessly through the last bear market cycle, we are excited to present our renewed vision and product roadmap. In addition, we want to share our proposed tokenomics improvements, starting with the unification of OGN and OGV.
Origin’s vision is to build open, permissionless protocols that increase economic opportunity for all. We started Origin with a desire to get rid of middlemen and gatekeepers, and we’re still committed to that mission today. We imagine a future world where hundreds of millions or billions of users are active within our DeFi ecosystem, using our multi-chain yield generating products for positive financial outcomes.
Today, we are laser focused on creating powerful money legos that can be adopted by both end users, other protocols, and businesses alike. Our financial primitives, whether liquid staking tokens (LSTs), liquid restaking tokens (LRTs), yield aggregators, and other future products, will always be permissionless and easily composable.
Our first, and perhaps most exciting announcement to kick off Origin’s new roadmap is the proposal for OGN to merge with OGV. With our high-conviction focus on DeFi, we believe the core team and community are best-served by aligning under a single value accrual and governance token for all of our present and future initiatives. This token should be OGN, Origin’s original token that benefits from a very wide diverse set of holders, high liquidity and trading volume across over 70 centralized and decentralized exchanges, and a global community numbering in the hundreds of thousands.
The decision to make this proposal was not taken lightly. We have heard strong calls for a merger from internal team members as well as members of our community, including early investors and active governance participants. Based on extensive analysis and community input, we believe this decision will create the most value for all Origin token holders.
Feedback and governance participation from the community is highly encouraged. We won’t pursue this new vision, roadmap, and tokenomics revamp without broad community alignment and support. Please see more on the proposed token merger below, but first let us introduce you to the exciting suite of products that will be accruing value to our token holders.
Origin has a renewed focus on building financial primitives for Ethereum and the greater EVM ecosystem. We believe we have an edge to create the best multi-chain yield ecosystem. In the last couple of years, we have demonstrated product-market fit and compelling traction with our suite of yield-bearing tokens, and now is the time to leverage our expertise and aggressively expand across multiple vectors.
Using the OETH model that we have proven on Ethereum, we have the exciting opportunity to launch native LSTs on other EVM-compatible chains. We are already working with a notable Ethereum sidechain to create our first toehold in this expansion strategy, with a target launch date in the next quarter.
The longer-term goal is to create the flagship liquid staking model for generalized LSTs across multiple networks, capturing market share in nascent markets where Origin will power the de facto LSTs on these chains. We have already proven our technical model out, and we believe scaling this to multiple EVM chains will result in at least a high 9-figure TVL opportunity.
We’ve recently partnered with Chainlink CCIP to bring OETH to layer 2s. To start, wrapped OETH on Arbitrum (wOETH) will launch in April with integrations by a top money market and other protocols, giving users the ability to lend and borrow OETH.
In the upcoming months, we will also be launching OETH derivatives on L2s that will give users the ability to earn supercharged yield across other chains as well. To maintain the low-risk profile of our successful Mainnet product, we will create a derivative specific to each chain. These derivatives will offer high yield and deep liquidity for other protocols to utilize. They will use Mainnet OETH as an initial building block but will safely deliver 2-3x the yield of holding just an LST. Given the substantial yield, we will be able to both buy back OGN and build a war chest of flywheel tokens. Acquiring flywheel tokens like AERO and VELO on L2s will enable us to generate deep liquidity for our governance token pools and any new product launches.
We will target Base and Optimism for our initial launches of these new derivative tokens. Similar to Mainnet OETH, end users only need to hold these new yield-bearing tokens in their wallets to automatically and passively earn industry-leading APYs.
We are excited for the Mainnet launch of EigenLayer and accompanying AVSs to open new opportunities for yield generation and composability for our liquid restaking token, primeETH. The restaking narrative and paradigm might be the most consequential change to Ethereum this market cycle, and we are well-positioned to capture value in this quickly growing vertical.
primeETH leverages SSV’s distributed validator technology (DVT) network, shielding it from centralization risks faced by other LRTs and enabling primeETH to farm SSV tokens as additional rewards for holders on top of native OETH yield, EigenLayer points, and primeETH XP.
Origin Ether’s new design will dramatically increase its integrations across EVM chains, giving it more utility and liquidity. This will allow end users to borrow against OETH in money markets, mint stablecoins with CDPs, and increase earnings through leverage. Protocols will also be able to use OETH and OUSD for capital rehypothecation, allowing them to earn more yield for their end users or DAOs. One of the top multi-chain AMMs is our first protocol partner for this initiative, with a target launch date in Q2 with new pools using OETH and OUSD that give liquidity providers extra yield on top of trading fees.
We’re unveiling a new DeFi product for OGN this week. Stay tuned for all the details about Origin’s new ARM. IYKYK. 💪
The core team is officially putting forth a decentralized governance proposal for OGN to acquire OGV. If the proposal passes, OGN will serve as the backbone for all of Origin’s current and future products. Protocol revenues would directly benefit OGN and all products would be governed by OGN, accruing immense value to OGN holders and ensuring Origin’s products are open, decentralized, and accessible to all.
We encourage the community to read through and vote on the proposal given significant changes to tokenomics and mechanisms are proposed. The core team believes this is the best path forward for all token holders and will position the token economy for healthy growth post-merger.
If both the OGN and OGV communities accept the merger proposal, the entire Origin ecosystem will be centered around OGN. OGN will command 9-figures of current TVL, with more resources to bring Origin’s aggregate TVL into the billions. Flywheel tokens like CVX and additional rewards tokens like MORPHO that were being controlled by the OGV community will also be migrated to the OGN community. OGV holders will have an opportunity to migrate their positions to an equivalent value of OGN, which benefits from deep liquidity and a broader base of token holders. Our product roadmap will become more cohesive, with new product launches and feature upgrades compounding on the effort of our prior work.
OGN will adopt veToken governance and economic properties similar to OGV/veOGV and other DeFi tokens. This model has proven to be effective at maximizing protocol security and rewarding long-term supporters.
We would also take this opportunity to introduce exciting new tokenomics features to OGN that our community has been asking for, including token buybacks and the ability to unlock staked tokens early. More details on these mechanics will come in a future governance proposal if the initial merger proposal passes.
We’re still in the first or second inning of enabling open finance and commerce. The best is yet to come, and we are committed to impacting the world for the better with revolutionary products in DeFi while capturing value for Origin’s token holders. There is at least a 100x opportunity to serve active customers of our products and to generate protocol revenues in the next few years.
Josh, Matt, and the entire Origin team
