Every month, the Origin team publishes an update to our token holders and the broader community. Thanks for reading the November 2022 edition.
While November 2022 wreaked havoc on the broader crypto markets, Origin continues to have a well-managed treasury and battle-tested security to drive its products’ growth. We did not have any direct exposure to FTX and have multiple years of runway in cash and stablecoins to continue pursuing our mission.
Our condolences go out to the investors that are victims of the FTX scandal. Now more than ever, transparent, decentralized, and trustless solutions are needed to replace corrupt legacy corporations.
Here’s what we’ve done in November to get closer to our shared goal.
For those of you strapped for time, here’s the tl;dr.
Following months of development and strict auditing, OUSD V2 is now live. The token is exactly the same as before, and no action is needed by users to gain additional yield via OUSD V2 strategies. OUSD V2 utilizes new Convex and Morpho strategies to earn higher and more diversified yield, while maintaining support for Compound, Curve, Aave, and Convex strategies OUSD has used prior.
Current trailing 30-day APY is 8.49% – nearly a 300% increase since the launch of OUSD V2. While the Origin team expects OUSD yields to vary with macro conditions, boosted APYs are an indicator that the OUSD V2 launch was a success.
Internally, Origin Story launched its NFT Intelligence Platform (NIP) this month, our enhanced backend platform that powers blockchain data intelligence on our Story NFT platform. This important infrastructure update will also serve as the foundation for us to pursue novel new NFT use cases with established brands and Web2 companies coming into Web3.
Also new this month, Story user profiles allow users to select owned NFTs as their profile picture and display names on partner marketplaces. This is a first step toward a rich collector profile experience.
The Origin team did extensive strategic planning and goal setting at our company offsite in the Dominican Republic this month, and we came back with insights regarding Origin Protocol’s products and market positioning. We’re honing in on our most valuable product offerings as we build the groundwork for what’s to come.
Guess what anon? You can now use NFTs as PFPs on Story Marketplaces.
We’re excited to have launched our NFT Intelligence Platform (NIP) this month. NIP is a next generation back-end for Origin Story that gathers and stores metadata for NFT collections––NFT traits, ownership, listings, and sales history. NIP will provide an incredibly fast and up-to-date user experience for our NFT marketplaces, and give traders, collectors and holders critical insights into NFT collections and activity.
The technology exposes a set of simple internal APIs for our marketplace front-ends to query all the data necessary for a great user experience. The data is kept fresh by monitoring blockchain events in real-time, and it subscribes to a variety of data sources across the industry to receive up-to-date NFT transaction data.
Separately, our new Story website is live! The site now displays a handful of our top partner marketplaces, making it easy for collectors to navigate across Story products. Visitors can also view OGN price, circulating supply, and market capitalization directly from story.xyz. Importantly, the site supports our new content management system, allowing for Origin to create its own blog and benefit from in-house content production.
Moreover, Origin Story launched its profile page update earlier this November. The update allows users to select an NFT from their collection to use as a PFP on partner marketplaces, as well as choose a display name in replacement of their wallet address.
Profile support is the first addition to creating an NFT marketplace that serves as an all-in-one platform to better bolster community, conviction, and communication between partner collections and their holders. We’re excited to roll out features to further community interaction, as legacy solutions in this sector are polluted with scammers, grifters, and fraud.
In regards to OGN, the token gained exposure to over 3 million investors this month with integrations on Edge App and Exolix Exchange. Over 50 million (~10%) of OGN supply is currently locked in season 2 staking, which commenced earlier this month on November 8th. Token holders can continue to stake in OGN Season 2 until February 6th, 2023 to receive a share of marketplace revenue generated by Story products.
OUSD V2 yields have hit it out of the park… even without MakerDAO’s help.
After intense auditing, OUSD V2 is now live! OUSD V2 adds improved Convex strategies and implements completely new strategies on Morpho. The trailing 30-day yield sits at over 8.2%––the best risk-adjusted rates currently available in DeFi. As a reminder, OUSD earns yield strictly through stablecoin strategies, eliminating risk of impermanent loss or directional exposure from holding volatile assets.
We’re convinced OUSD V2 is the ideal stablecoin allocation for DAO and company treasuries, as these organizations can benefit from full asset custody and DeFi money market exposure with instant liquidity.
In a similar vein, more DAO proposals are in the pipeline to allocate part of their treasuries to OUSD. While the MakerDAO proposal MIP87 wasn’t ratified, initial polling from PopcornDAO, among others, indicate OUSD is on track to be added to their treasuries. With competitive yields paired with an emphasis on self-custody, we expect retail interest in OUSD to increase as we roll out our OUSD V2 campaign this December.
OUSD and OGV were listed on Exolix this month, allowing a wider investor base access to these tokens. While DAO treasury management has been a recent focus for OUSD, we recognize that retail investors need a decentralized, transparent, and trustless way to generate yields now more than ever.
OGV rewards increase as OUSD interest rates increase. OUSD interest rates are up BIG.
As previously mentioned, OGN Season 2 is off to a strong start with nearly 10% of OGN’s total supply currently staked. As revenue is accrued across our partner marketplaces, these funds are used to fuel OGN staking seasons. To mitigate revenue risks associated with volatile NFT trading volumes, Story has begun to experiment with different revenue models. Up front revenue, such as the revenue from our partner Roofstock onChain, was dispersed in OGN Season 1 and will continue to be dispersed in Season 2.
Those who stake OGV earn yield from protocol revenue and OGV token distributions. As OUSD yields have increased nearly 300%, OGV staking rewards remain high. Moreover, investors who stake OGV have governance rights over OUSD allocations, and as more users mint OUSD to earn yield via OUSD V2, these governance rights become more valuable.
OGV staking rewards currently sit at 56.3% APY. Impressively, 78.5% of OGV is currently locked in staking, eliminating the majority of the circulating supply from hitting the market. OGV is supported on multiple centralized exchanges like Huobi, Gate, and KuCoin, although the simplest way for crypto-native users to gain exposure may be through Uniswap.
We’re honing in on what matters most.
The lack of mania in the markets has allowed Origin to take a step back and hone in on our foundation during the next bull market. Story plans to dive deep with its most valuable partners, and we expect to expand our partnerships with large tech companies looking to integrate non-fungible tokens into their technology stack.
Now more than ever, there’s a clear need for self-custodial alternatives to centralized platforms, particularly in the sector of interest-bearing assets. Unfortunately, investors in FTX, Celsius, and BlockFi have learned the importance of transparency and self-custody the hard way from trusting corrupt institutions with their digital assets. Our goal with OUSD isn’t to simply provide an alternative, however.
OUSD is built to onboard the next generation of crypto users to blockchain, offering the benefits of DeFi with next-level ease of use, security, and convenience. As more users adopt self-custody practices, Origin believes investors will seek passive yield opportunities with instant liquidity. In wake of CeFi insolvencies and complex DeFi functions too cumbersome for everyday users to manage themselves, crypto newcomers are left with few options. OUSD will fill this gap by providing users a safe and easy to use platform for wealth creation.
Talent is still running from CeFi to DeFi, and we’re here for it.
We’re excited to announce the newest addition to the Origin team Hrik Bho, joining us as a full-stack developer! Hrik is a full-stack and smart contract developer specializing in Solidity and JavaScript.
Hrik entered the web3 space by purchasing his first NFT during the 2021 bull market. Over that summer he fell in love with the community and decided he wanted to contribute to the space in a significant way. Outside of development, Hrik is obsessed with NFTs. He monitors market trends and prices daily, looking to add new pieces to his collection. As Origin Story continues to grow from both a technical and partnership perspective, Hrik will support the platform’s growth in various capacities.
Aside from new hires, many Origin team members got to meet for the first time this November. Our team traveled to the Dominican Republic for its first team offsite since pre-covid, and the team shared its business development, engineering, and marketing plans for OGN, OUSD, and OGV under one roof.
Want to join us on our next team offsite, and in the meantime, help us build the necessary infrastructure for sustainable, transparent, and secure wealth creation? Origin is still hiring for a handful of roles, and you may qualify! Below are some positions that we’re still searching for someone to fill:
Did you catch that? We’re hiring!!
We are in search of experienced Product Managers for our NFT and DeFi platforms, a Solidity Engineer, and a full-stack engineer. Check out our job postings, come join us, or refer your giga-brain friends!
