Orion Money Litepaper Release
Building the Cross-Chain Stablecoin Bank
Table of Contents
- Executive Summary
- Introduction to Orion Money
- Orion Saver
- Product and Development Roadmap
- ORION Tokenomics
- ORION Token Distribution
- Private Farming, IDOs, and Airdrops
- Team and Partners
1. Executive Summary
Orion Money’s vision is to become a cross-chain stablecoin bank providing seamless and frictionless stablecoin saving, lending, and spending. Within the Orion Money stablecoin bank, we have three main products planned — Orion Saver, Orion Yield and Insurance, and Orion Pay.
Orion Money is capitalizing on a significant untapped opportunity in the stablecoin savings market. The majority of stablecoin savings solutions currently offer unappealing and unpredictable yields. Additionally, they are often siloed within their individual blockchains. Interoperability will be at the heart of Orion Money, and it will bridge these gaps by providing solutions that other stablecoin savings protocols have yet to offer.
We are extremely excited to introduce our first product, Orion Saver. Orion Saver is a cross-chain savings dApp that will provide one of the highest and most stable yields for your stablecoins, regardless of which blockchain you are on.
Our next product, Orion Yield and Insurance, will provide additional high-yield and insured products, bringing even more value to Orion stakers and the Orion Money depositors.
As a cross-chain stablecoin bank, Orion Money will also create avenues and gateways for users to freely spend their stablecoins. This would be made possible through Orion Pay, a cross-chain payments dApp that will integrate with fiat on-off ramp solutions and allow several avenues for users to spend their stablecoins.
With its suite of dApps, Orion Money will offer users a convenient and frictionless way to earn high yields on their stablecoin deposits and spend them with ease — all without the hassle of moving assets across chains.
2. Introduction to Orion Money
Orion Money is building a cross-chain stablecoin bank, powered by an ecosystem of dApps and infrastructure, to enable cross-chain stablecoin saving, lending, and spending.
Compound and Aave pioneering decentralized money markets within Ethereum
We have seen the establishment of Compound and Aave, two of the pioneering decentralized money market protocols built on Ethereum, and have empowered cryptocurrency users to exchange the time value of their Ethereum assets frictionlessly. The demand for the products and yields that decentralized money markets protocols offer exploded as part of the DeFi boom and, at their peak, accumulated more than $20 Billion TVL over the past year. Compound and Aave money markets utilize interest rate models, which adjust over time as the relationship between supply and demand changes. The yields that lenders (depositors) get from supplying liquidity are a factor of the leveraged demand for credit and are hence very volatile. During strong bull runs, when borrowing rates are high, lending yields shoot up. However, during severe market drawdowns, lending yields plummet as a result.
Anchor enabling attractive and stable yields on savings
The DeFi market needed a fixed-income solution — the ability to provide accessible, safe, stable, and attractive yields for the main street investor, even in the most severe moments of market volatility. Anchor Protocol filled this gap. Anchor is a decentralized money market and savings protocol on the Terra blockchain. At its core, Anchor serves the same function as other decentralized money markets. The caveat? A stable and low volatile 20% APY interest rate paid to depositors on their Terra stablecoin (UST) deposits which are principal protected. It achieves this by stabilizing the deposit interest rate with block rewards accruing to assets used to borrow stablecoins.
Anchor has essentially enabled the “yield transfer” from borrowers to depositors through passing on the yields generated from borrowers’ overcollateralized bAssets. The yields that a stablecoin depositor can expect are hence a function of borrowers’ on-chain income.
Anchor has created a sophisticated yield generating mechanism yet straightforward enough to understand for the main street investor. Anchor’s ultimate vision is to become the gold standard for passive income on the blockchain.
Orion Money enabling cross-chain access to Anchor’s attractive and stable yields
The access to Anchor’s attractive and low volatile lending yields are currently only exclusive to Terra stablecoin (UST) depositors on the Terra network. Users with stablecoins on other blockchains are not able to have direct access to Anchor. As a result, we have identified two prevailing gaps that we seek to tackle:
- There is a huge stablecoin market that lacks direct access to Anchor’s money market protocol. As of May 2021, the stablecoin market cap reached a key milestone of $100 Billion. However, >85% of the stablecoin market cap is dominated by the top 3 Ethereum-based stablecoins (USDT, USDC, DAI). The Terra stablecoin (UST), while fast-growing, currently makes up ~2% of the entire stablecoin market. In addition, the complexity of understanding Terra’s ecosystem and the costs of swapping, such as gas fees, swap spreads, and slippages have deterred many people from switching their stablecoins to Terra and Anchor. Thus, a gateway that bridges these stablecoins into Anchor immediately opens the protocol up to a much wider user base with a greater volume of liquidity.
2. Stablecoin deposit yields on the Ethereum blockchain are highly volatile, and on average, not as attractive as the Anchor Rate. The 30 days average crypto lending rates across decentralized money market protocols and crypto exchanges have been sitting at a range of 8–12% APY. As mentioned above, we have further observed the average crypto lending rates dipping way below this range during periods of massive market drawdowns. The Anchor savings protocol overcomes these limitations and offers a very clear value proposition over its competitors.
Orion Saver, which we soft-launched last month, is the first product of Orion Money’s cross-chain stablecoin bank. Orion Saver will directly address the issues raised above by providing frictionless access to Anchor’s attractive and stable deposit yields across multiple blockchains.
3. Orion Saver
Overview and key value proposition
Orion Saver is Orion Money’s native savings protocol, allowing users on other blockchain networks to easily access Anchor protocol’s attractive stablecoin deposit yields without leaving their networks or performing any swaps.
Orion Saver will initially focus on the Ethereum network. Users can deposit their Ethereum stablecoins such as USDT, USDC, BUSD, and DAI and receive 15–25% APY depending on the amount of ORION tokens staked.
Target APY levels for Orion Saver
Leveraging Orion Money’s native token, ORION, we have implemented incentive levels for Orion Saver depositors to increase the APY on their stablecoin deposits:
- Users can increase the APY on their stablecoin deposits up to 20% depending on how much they have staked ORION tokens in the Orion Saver dApp.
- Users who choose to receive their interest in the ORION tokens will also be able to increase their stablecoin deposit APY up to a maximum of 25%.
Target APY levels on Orion Saver can be found in the table below:
* APY will be lower at the initial Orion Saver launch — the APY numbers here are the target APY that we aim to achieve some time after the launch
How Orion Saver works
- Managing Ethereum stablecoin deposits
Orion Saver users deposit their Ethereum stablecoins (USDT, USDC, BUSD, DAI) in the Orion Saver Web App to immediately start earning high yields on their deposits.
Behind the scenes, Orion Saver’s smart contract will place their deposit into EthAnchor. EthAnchor will exchange the Ethereum stablecoins into Wrapped UST and bridge the deposits from the Ethereum blockchain into the Terra blockchain before depositing the UST into the Anchor Protocol.
As illustrated in the image below, the Alpha version of Orion Saver will be leveraging on the EthAnchor gateway and exchange Ethereum stablecoins to Wrapped UST using Curve. Users should be mindful of the risks of Ethereum gas fees and potential exchange rate slippages on Curve. Moving forward, Orion Money aims to improve the exchange infrastructure and optimize for higher efficiency to reduce fees for users of Orion Saver.
We plan to reduce swap fees in the near future as part of our roadmap through batching small deposits. Down the road, we will also be setting up our own liquidity pools (potentially on the Terra side) for Wrapped USDT, USDC, BUSD, and DAI to UST. We are currently in the process of exploring the implementation of liquidity pools and are considering establishing Curve-style liquidity pools for stablecoins on Terra in partnership with the Terraswap team.
2. Managing Ethereum stablecoin withdrawals
Orion Saver users can send a withdrawal request from the Orion Saver WebApp to withdraw their deposited stablecoins. The withdrawal and exchange of UST into the user’s preferred stablecoin will be done via EthAnchor. There will be swap fees associated with the withdrawal process, which will be covered jointly by Orion Money and the user.
Similar to deposits, the Orion Money team aims to optimize the withdrawal process through exchange pools to minimize fees and increase APY on deposits.
The relationship between Orion Money and EthAnchor
EthAnchor is a set of smart contracts that expands the Anchor Protocol offering to Ethereum-based stablecoins, allowing users to deposit a greater variety of stablecoins on Anchor Protocol. EthAnchor was developed by the Anchor team and launched jointly with Orion Saver Alpha on June 11th, 2021.
Considering the importance of EthAnchor to Orion Money and the overall Terra ecosystem, Orion Money will take over the development and maintenance of EthAnchor from the Anchor team. One of the core objectives of Orion Money is to leverage EthAnchor for Orion Saver and integrate it across major Ethereum-based money markets and platforms.
We believe that developing interoperability at our core while building out the products in our ecosystem roadmap will provide us with an extremely strong competitive advantage that will benefit both the Terra and Orion Money communities. To compensate Orion Money for the resources invested into developing, maintaining, and promoting EthAnchor, a minor portion of EthAnchor’s yield will be routed to ORION token Stakers in the form of staking rewards. This is part of the ORION token value accrual, which will be covered in greater depth within the Tokenomics section.
4. Product Development Roadmap
We plan to expand Orion Saver to multiple blockchain networks. Ultimately, Orion Saver will be the core gateway for external blockchains to get seamless and convenient access to high yield savings protocols like Anchor Protocol.
As part of Orion Money’s ecosystem plans, we plan to build out additional capabilities outside of savings. You may find our focused priorities and projected timeline below:
Core product development objectives and projected timelines
- Orion Saver Ethereum: Develop and establish Orion Saver as the premier stablecoin savings destination on Ethereum. [Projected Date: June — September 2021]*
- Orion Saver Terra and Orion Saver BSC: Launch Orion Saver on Polygon, Terra, and BSC. Additionally, we aim to establish Curve-style liquidity pools for stablecoins on Terra in partnership with the Terraswap team.
[Projected Date: Q4, 2021]* - Orion Yield & Insurance: Orion Money will provide high-yield savings to its users, and use the liquidity to invest in diversified strategies. Orion Money Stakers will receive a share of extra yield generated in exchange for underwriting the insurance for depositors.
[Projected Date: Q1-Q2, 2022]* - Orion Pay: Orion Money aims to create an ecosystem where stablecoin depositors can easily spend their earned interest. We are exploring implementation options such as fiat on-off ramp solutions, crypto-to-fiat direct payments, crypto-to-fiat subscription-based services, and crypto debit cards. These may be developed organically or in collaboration with other protocols, depending on our go-to-market strategy.
[Projected Date: Q2-Q3, 2022]*
*Note: Dates are subject to change depending on future changes in development priorities.
Additional development objectives
As part of Orion Money’s vision to become a cross-chain stablecoin bank, we aim to implement value-adding products that will be beneficial for Orion Money users and holders. These are a few additional development objectives that we have planned out (official deadlines to be determined and subsequently announced):
- Tokenized Derivatives: Orion Money aims to develop tokenized versions of stablecoin deposits (i.e. oUSDT, oUSDC, oBUSD, etc.) on Orion Saver, and further develop liquidity options for them to be traded on and off Orion Money.
- Orion Loans: Orion Money aims to implement loans to complement the suite of dApps within the ecosystem, with a potential roadmap for self-paying loans and no-liquidation loans.
- Protocol-specific Optimizers: Orion Money aims to develop optimizers for specific protocols within Terra, where applicable and feasible (E.g. Anchor Borrow + Earn optimizers, Luna staking optimizers, Liquidation protection mechanisms, etc.).
5. ORION Tokenomics
Total supply: 1,000,000,000 ORION
ORION Token Generation Event (TGE): ETA September 2021
The ORION token will be minted on Ethereum and a portion of it will be bridged to Terra, Polygon, BSC (and other protocols as needed) to enable Orion Money dApps to operate across these networks.
Orion Money Stakeholders
There will be three types of stakeholders within the Orion Money protocol:
- Orion Money dApps Users: Users across the multitude of dApps built across Orion Money (E.g., stablecoin depositors on Orion Saver dApp).
- Investors & Speculators: Users who purchased ORION tokens through buying on the open market, or accumulated through token farming or airdrops.
- ORION Stakers: Users who stake ORION tokens to receive staking rewards and participate in the Orion Money governance. Further explanations regarding the benefits of ORION staking can be found in the ORION token staking section below.
The Orion Money ecosystem has been uniquely designed in a way to incentivize Orion Money’s users and investors to stake their ORION tokens so as to maximize their benefits. Stablecoin depositors will get boosted yields depending on the amount of ORION tokens staked, while investors or speculators will be incentivized to stake their ORION tokens to maximize the value of their tokens.
This methodology will kick-start the Orion Money ecosystem and its underlying protocols while also serving as a growth lever for user retention and adoption. The staking incentivization mechanism will further ensure that a sizable proportion of the ORION token supply is being staked. As the Orion Money ecosystem grows, it increases the value that users will receive from the ecosystem itself.
ORION token value accrual
The Orion Money ecosystem will generate revenue from the dApps and bring value to the ORION token. We have highlighted a list of value accrual mechanisms that we have put in place or are in the process of implementation:
- Orion Saver’s revenue and buyback: The majority of Orion Saver’s initial revenue will come from the yield differential between what Orion Money receives from Anchor Protocol and what Orion Money pays to its users. The full net revenue, after accounting for operating expenses, will be used to buy ORION tokens on the open market which would subsequently be added into the Staking Fund (see ORION token distribution chart below on Staking Fund).
- Orion Saver Tiered APY Staking Incentive: Orion Saver users will have to buy ORION tokens in order to increase the APY on their stablecoin deposits. The more users come to Orion Saver and deposit their stablecoins, the more ORION tokens will be bought to achieve higher APY. Consequently, the ORION token value will grow proportionally to Orion Saver’s TVL growth.
- Conversion of stablecoin yields to ORION: When an Orion Saver user chooses to receive his/her stablecoin deposit yields in ORION tokens — Orion Money will apply the user’s yield to purchase ORION tokens on the open market which would subsequently be added into the Staking Fund and paid as yield to the user.
- Orion Yield and Insurance Revenue: Revenue generated from the upcoming Orion Yield and Insurance product will be used to buy Orion tokens on the open market which would subsequently be added into the Staking Fund and paid to ORION Stakers.
- Revenue from future Orion Money dApps: As the Orion Money ecosystem grows, the revenue streams coming from future dApps in our roadmap will serve as an additional value accrual mechanism for the ORION token. Revenue earned across dApps will be used to buy ORION tokens on the open market which would be added into the Staking Fund and distributed to ORION Stakers. This aligns the incentives of token holders and the Orion Money team with the success of the Orion Money ecosystem and dApps.
- Orion Validator revenue and buyback: Once the Orion Validator on Terra starts charging a 5% validator commission, the net commission earned after accounting for the associated costs of running the validator, will be used to buy ORION tokens on the open market which would subsequently be added into the Staking Fund and paid to ORION Stakers.
ORION token staking
ORION holders have an option to stake their ORION tokens (with a 7-day unstaking period) and receive xORION tokens as their staking proof. ORION token staking rewards will come from revenue earned across Orion Money dApps. However, the staking APY will be initially subsidized by a portion of the Orion Money Staking Fund to help kickstart the system.
ORION Stakers will receive the following benefits:
- Governance: ORION Stakers can participate in governance activities such as the creation of proposals and voting. Proposals may include topics such as changing APY interest and tiers, community fund spending, marketing fund spending, and funding for new Orion Money dApps.
- Incremental Staking Yields: Staking APY for the ORION token will be calculated based on the staking duration. The longer the staking duration, the higher the staking APY would be for the ORION Staker. However, upon an un-staking event (regardless of amount), the cumulative staking APY will reset to the base rate.
- Preferential benefits on Orion Money dApps: ORION Stakers will get preferential terms within all Orion dApps — such as Orion Saver, Orion Yield and Insurance, Orion Pay, and future dApps.
- Revenue share from Orion Money dApps: ORION token Stakers will be receiving a share of Orion Money dApps’ revenue. The revenue earned on dApps will be used to purchase ORION tokens from the open market which are then distributed as staking rewards to ORION Stakers in the form of xORION tokens.
- Revenue share from Orion Validator Commission: As mentioned in the value accrual mechanism above, the net commission earned after accounting for associated costs of running the validator, will be used to buy ORION tokens on the open market which would subsequently be added into the Staking Fund.
Orion Money Community and Governance
We believe in the power of the community and plan to move Orion Money governance to the DAO model where ORION Stakers will be responsible for all major decisions across proposals. We plan to do this as soon as ORION token ownership is sufficiently decentralized. ORION Stakers will be voting on governance proposals for each protocol (Ethereum, Terra, BSC). Where required, Orion Money and other community teams will be applying for grants from the Community Fund to execute these proposals for the benefit of all ORION holders.
6. ORION Token Distribution
7. Private Farming, IDOs, and Airdrops
Orion Money will run Private Farming, as well as several IDOs and Airdrops.
The main goals for these events are:
- Awareness: To raise awareness about the Orion Money project on the Ethereum blockchain;
- Conversion: To convert farming participants into Orion Saver long-term users;
- Liquidity: To jumpstart Orion Saver's initial TVL
1. Private Farming Event
Private Farming participants will deposit ERC-20 stablecoins in Orion Saver to earn ORION tokens. The amount of ORION tokens farmed will be determined by the participant’s deposit size and the duration of farming. Further details are described below:
- Timeline: ETA August 2021
- Audience: Selected community investors from the Terra/Ethereum community.
- Price: $0.035 per ORION token
- Stablecoin deposit amount: Deposit amount between $50,000 and $1,000,000; farming duration— 3 to 6 months
- Stablecoin yield — 15% APY will be used to farm ORION tokens. After completion stablecoins owners will continue to receive 15%-20% APY in their stablecoin
- Stablecoins included: wUST, USDT, USDC, DAI, BUSD
- Vesting: 15% vested monthly from the 3rd month of TGE (10 months total vesting period)
Drop a line to contact@orion.money if you are interested in participating in Orion Money Private Farming.
2. IDO
Orion Money will run IDOs on Ethereum and Terra with several selected launchpad partners. We will publish more detailed information closer to the IDO date.
- Timeline: ETA September 2021
3. Airdrops
Airdrops will be distributed on both Ethereum and Terra networks.
- Timeline: ETA September 2021
Ethereum Airdrop
Airdrops on Ethereum will be used for an aggressive marketing campaign to bring CeFi and DeFi users in and convert them into Orion Saver long-term happy users. Airdrops will be distributed via a farming approach similar to Private farming but for a much larger audience with a focus on CeFi and DeFi Ethereum users. (Details TBD)
Terra Airdrops
Airdrops on Terra will be distributed as airdrops for:
- Luna Stakers: A portion of genesis airdrop will be distributed to all Luna Stakers proportionally to their Luna staked.
- Orion Validator Delegators: A separate portion of genesis airdrop will be allocated to all delegators who staked their luna with the Orion validator. Additionally, delegators who continue to stake their Luna with the Orion validator after the 5% commission is switched on, will be receiving monthly airdrops for a period of 12 months. Orion validator commission will be routed back to ORION Stakers in the staking rewards, as explained in the ORION value accrual section.
To help decentralize ORION tokens ownership and Orion validator stake — there will be a cap on Terra airdrops for delegations over 500,000 Lunas per wallet. The ETA for the initial snapshot for Terra airdrops will be between the Private Farming event start and ORION TGE.
We will publish more detailed information closer to the Airdrop date.
Seed, Private Farming, and IDOs proceeds distribution
7. Team and Partners
Orion Money Core Contributor Team
Developers and designer
- Four developers with Solidity, Rust, backend, and frontend experience
- One core designer in charge of graphics design and illustrations
- The Orion Money team has a large network of software developers to scale the dev team as fast as required
Orion Money Partners:
Orion Money Advisors:
- Do Kwon — Terra Founder and TerraForm Labs CEO
- Matt Cantieri — GM of Anchor
- Luke Saunders — CTO of Delphi Labs
- José Maria Macedo — Partner at Delphi Digital
For more alpha and updates, join us at:
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