December 2021 Origin Token (OGN) Holder Update
By: Coleman Maher
Tags: Stable Coin, Cryptocurrency, Nft Marketplace, Blockchain, Ethereum

Every month, the Origin team publishes a monthly update to our token holders and broader community. Welcome to the special December 2021 Year-in-Review edition. We are eager to hear feedback and suggestions from our community. Please email support@originprotocol.com for support requests and info@originprotocol.com for general inquiries/comments. Please email nft@originprotocol.com if you are a creator looking to launch NFTs on Origin.

Summary

Welcome to a special OGN token holder update for December which will also serve as a year-in-review for 2021. Both of our flagship products in Origin Dollar (OUSD) and Origin Story have grown tremendously this year with key milestones reached in this month. OUSD has grown to nearly $300 million in circulating supply and is now one of the largest stablecoins in crypto since relaunching in early 2021. OUSD is now significantly larger than Gemini Dollar (GUSD) and sUSD (Synthetix). Origin Story has launched several record-breaking primary sales in 2021 and is poised to scale tremendously in 2022, democratizing access to NFT sales and allowing creators to launch their own branded secondary marketplaces.

Product

OUSD’s circulating supply has nearly doubled since the end of November to $296 million from $175 million. APY remains excellent and has spent most of the month north of 20%. We are implementing changes that should take effect soon that will dramatically increase APY. We are getting an unprecedented amount of inbound attention for OUSD from both small holders and large DeFi whales. Decentralized governance of OUSD has also taken off. We now conduct weekly community votes on capital allocation to specific strategies and our Discord server is busier than ever.

The OUSD and OGN holder community are among the most active participants in Curve and Convex governance as well. We have also submitted a proposal for OUSD and OGN to be included as collateral assets for minting DAI on MakerDAO. We are in active discussion with the top protocols and platforms in DeFi to strengthen our place in the wider ecosystem. OUSD has already been integrated into Curve, Convex, Yearn Finance, APY.Finance, Nexus Mutual, InsurAce, and other leading DeFi platforms this year.

December has been a busy month for Origin Story. We opened up Story for beta testing and announced two incredible NFT launches by Orbseer and 888 Inner Circle with BT. Nearly a thousand creators have signed up to beta test Story and we have also surpassed over 17,000 total users.

2021 has been an incredible year for Story. We broke records with the largest primary sale of a music NFT collection ever at nearly $12 million. We created international headlines by auctioning off one of the most iconic videos ever on YouTube as an NFT. We set a record for selling a cask of whisky with a proof-of-ownership NFT for over $2 million. We have worked with top creators like Don Diablo, KSHMR, Trevor Jones, Jake Paul, Michael Yamashita, and more. The NFT industry experienced explosive growth in 2021. Things look even better for 2022 and we are in a prime position to capture much of the value generated by NFTs next year.

Meet Origin Story, a record-breaking NFT platform built by Origin Protocol.

Token economics

There are 94,286,029 OGN tokens staked which represents nearly 24% of the entire circulating supply. Nearly all of these tokens are staked for a year. This is a very strong signal that OGN holders believe in the future of OGN.

Circulating supply is currently at 397M compared to a projected 482M tokens. The circulating supply number includes the millions of OGN staked in our staking program, reducing the actual float further. There is only one remaining investor unlock which is scheduled for February. After this there will be no more tokens distributed to investors, reducing potential sell pressure on OGN.

Community

To showcase our dedication to cultivating a vibrant creator-focused ecosystem, we hosted our first invite-only NFT exhibition in Miami with some of the most innovative creators in the space, including Orbseer, TedsLittleDream, Ali Sabet, Subtractive and Dr. Sian Proctor, Lost Boi, Alex Alpert, and Ninocence. As we continue to scale our platform and introduce many new, innovative features, we will be working closely with our early creator partners to ensure what we are building truly matters to them and their collector communities.

Hiring

This month we announced the addition of Aaron Faulkner to the Origin core team. We are still looking for an experienced Product Manager for our NFT platform, an NFT Analyst, a Finance & Operations Manager, a Treasury Manager, a Full-stack Engineer, a Senior Growth / Marketing Engineer, and a Senior Solidity Engineer. Check out our job postings, and come join us or refer your friends!