CoinMarketCap takes a deep dive into Orion Money, an ecosystem of tools that helps stablecoin holders maximize their yields, minimize risk, and do more with their unused assets by bringing Luna technologies to cross-chain users.
One of the most common dilemmas cryptocurrency users face is the challenge of maximizing the value and utility they can extract from their assets. Ranging from yield farms to open lending platforms, insurance underwriting, staking and dozens of other potential revenue streams, it’s quite easy to suffer from choice overload and end up settling for subpar returns.
Orion Money, a new cross-chain stablecoin bank, looks set to resolve this challenge by providing users a safe, stable return on their stablecoins, while helping users do more with their idle assets.
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What Is Orion Money (ORION)?
Orion Money is a new cryptocurrency savings platform and DeFi ecosystem designed to enable users to maximize their yields on their stablecoins. Orion Money is poised to deliver a cross-chain bank for stablecoins, as well as a hub of DeFi products that help users do more with their assets.
The Orion Money product ecosystem will be initially comprised of three products, each of which is briefly highlighted below:
- Orion Saver: A cross-chain stablecoin savings platform designed to offer high, stable yields irrespective of which chain the deposits are made on.
- Orion Yield and Insurance: A yield-farming platform that will leverage a range of strategies to deliver high yields to depositors and offer rewards to insurance underwriters.
- Orion Pay: A solution that allows users to easily spend their interest via a number of integrated payment solutions, e.g. crypto-to-fiat off-ramps, crypto native merchants, and more.
These solutions are being built by a global team of early cryptocurrency adopters with a wealth of experience in managing and building high-tech startups. The founder, Vol Pigrukh, previously held roles at Google and Microsoft, and co-founded the massively successful e-commerce analytics platform Profitero — which helped major brands like Adidas and L’Oreal grow their eCommerce success.
The platform is scheduled to conduct its initial DEX offering (IDO) on DAO Maker, Polkastarter, StarTerra, and Pylon beginning late September 2021. The token generation event (TGE) for the $ORION token is set to take place on Sept. 30, 2021. Following this, the token will be listed on Gate.io, PancakeSwap and Uniswap.
How Does Orion Money Work?
Under the hood, Orion Money’s main product (Orion Saver) leverages EthAnchor to convert Ethereum-based stablecoin deposits into Wrapped UST (a Terra-based stablecoin) before then bridging Wrapped USDT to Terra native UST and then depositing this to the Anchor protocol.
The Anchor Protocol then generates a yield in the form of TerraUSD (UST).
Conversely, when a user wants to withdraw their interest, the reverse of this process occurs. The interest (earned in native UST) passes back through a bridge and is converted into Ethereum-native stablecoins through EthAnchor before being distributed to the user.
Eventually, Orion Money will set up its own liquidity pools — likely on the Terra side — to minimize the fees and slippage that come with exchanging assets. The platform will also be taking over the development of EthAnchor from the Anchor core team, intending to further expand its integration with other Ethereum-based protocols.
Want to learn more about Terra? Check out our deep dive!
The platform features a native utility token, known simply as ORION. It performs multiple functions within the Orion Money product suite and is designed to accrue value from a variety of streams.
For one, the token can be staked in order to boost the yields generated from Orion Saver. It also entitles the holder to a share of the revenue generated by Orion Money DApps and enables them to participate in the governance of the platform. Moreover, ORION stakers benefit from a number of value generation mechanisms, including a buyback program, insurance revenue, and more.
Orion Money will initially launch with three plans. The differences between these plans is summarized in the table below:
As of writing, Orion Saver is currently operational. However, the opportunity to maximize interest rates by staking ORION tokens will go live shortly after its TGE. Near term, the Orion Money team plans to launch Orion Saver on Polygon, Terra and Binance Smart Chain (BSC) to support more cross-chain stablecoin types.
Beyond this, the Orion Yield & Insurance product is estimated to go live in H1 2022, while Orion Pay is slated to go launch by Q3 the same year.
What Makes Orion Money Unique?
Orion Money is on a mission to make high-yield savings safer and more accessible to the masses. To accomplish this, it incorporates a range of unique features that not only help distinguish it from the competition but also give it the best chance of achieving success.
Some of these include:
Working Product
Unlike many other pre-IDO stage projects, Orion Money already has a working product, and users can already begin using the platform to begin earning up to 16% yield on their stablecoins. Shortly after the ORION token is launched, users will then be able to opt to earn their yield in ORION to maximize their returns.
Value Delivery
One of Orion Money’s key distinguishing factors is the sheer utility of the ORION token. The token is an integral part of the Orion Money ecosystem — being both its native governance token and the asset that unlocks the best of what Orion Money has to offer. It’s also designed with long-term growth in mind, thanks to the numerous mechanisms in place to funnel value back to holders/stakers.
Insurance
In line with its goal to make stablecoin investing safer and more attractive, Orion Money will be introducing an insurance option — allowing users to protect their principal and yields against a variety of risks with ease. Likewise, as part of its commitment to security, the platform has secured several security audits, including those from Solidified and RD-auditors. Click here to see an up-to-date list of its audit reports.
Large TVL
Despite being a pre-IDO stage project, Orion Money has already generated an extraordinarily large total value locked (TVL) of almost $75 million. This places it among the top 100 largest DeFi platforms in current operation by TVL.
Strong Partners
Orion Money has secured working partnerships with several heavyweights in the blockchain space, including both Terra and Anchor, as well as Delphi Digital — one of the leading venture funds and blockchain research firms. In August, Orion Money also established a partnership with its first DeFi insurance provider, InsurAce — helping it protect user deposits against potential smart contract vulnerabilities.
How Does Orion Money Compare With Anchor Protocol?
As you may have noticed, Orion Money is heavily reliant on Terra’s Anchor Protocol for its Orion Saver product.
But while that may be true, its main value proposition is that it offers up to 20% APY to those that hold one of a variety of stablecoins on several different chains. Anchor, on the other hand, only offers up to 20% APY to those that stake native TerraUSD (UST). This makes it more accessible to those unfamiliar with the Terra ecosystem.
Orion Money also features a number of value transfer systems in place to help reward holders of the ORION token, whereas Anchor’s ANC token is primarily used for governance.
Beyond this, Orion Money is an entire suite of products, each of which is designed to help users make the most of their assets — whether that be by saving, spending or extracting additional utility from their tokens.
Long-term, Orion Money intends to evolve into a feature-complete stablecoin bank and DeFi ecosystem, through a range of in-house projects and integrations.
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