WTF is…Orion Money?
As the demand for leverage in DeFi shrinks, yields have started to dry up across the board leaving places like Aave and Compound with less than satisfactory lending rates. Orion aims to solve this issue as a cross-chain stablecoin bank, allowing users to utilize savings, spending, and lending, all at a predictable rate.
Brass Tacks
The days of high variable interest rates are dwindling with demand for leverage across most DeFi majors dipping due to greater uncertainty in the market. This is concerning — good yield on stables is something that can be of great use when market downturns inevitably come. Anchor protocol on Terra solved this problem to some extent, offering fixed yield on UST by utilizing interest-bearing assets across multiple chains, backstopped by a thicc cash reserve injection by Terraform Labs, a nonprofit run by none other than Do Kwon.
Unfortunately, the complexity of the Terra seigniorage model is off-putting to many users. This leaves a huge gap to be filled within the market as a multi-chain portal has become more of a need. Enter Orion. The protocol looks to offer frictionless access to Anchor’s yield, no matter the chain of your choice, through their multiple products. In addition to wrapped UST, Orion also allows users to deposit common ERC20 compatible stablecoins such as USDC and USDT, reducing the barriers to entry even further.
Spotlight
Cross-Chain Deposits
Orion works cross-chain, from Ethereum to Terra, with plans to eventually branching out to Polygon and BSC. The draw to Orion’s biggest product, Orion Saver, comes from the hands-off approach that is made available to platform users in which the protocol takes care of all of the dirty work that leads up to yield generation. Users can deposit any major stablecoin into Orion Saver, which is the protocol the swaps into UST using Curve, bridges the swapped UST to Terra, and deposits into Anchor to start earning some of the best yields in the game. The team is looking to optimize for cheaper and more efficient swaps, at first by batching smaller transactions together and later by implementing their own liquidity pools for the major stables. This same flow will be applied to withdraws too.
EthAnchor
EthAnchor is the “anchor” for Orion, as it is a set of smart contracts that enables the use of Ethereum stablecoins on Anchor through automated swaps, bridging, and deposits. This tool is critical for the success of Orion Money as a whole. The Orion core team will be taking over the development and maintenance of the tool, with an all-encompassing goal of bringing utility to the Terra ecosystem and UST as a whole. To reward the Orion team and community for their work contributing to growing the Terra ecosystem and users, a small portion of the yield earned in EthAnchor will be distributed to Orion stakers, bolstering the project's token economics and value accrual.
Coming s00n
Orion Money will be launching multiple components in the coming months, and it is worth keeping an eye on each one. There is a detailed roadmap on the Orion Money Medium, but in short, Orion private whitelisted farming starts today. There will be an IDO in September, there will be airdrops for BOTH Ethereum and Terra users, and the team is looking to rapidly grow their long-term user base. This is a really innovative protocol and we are really excited to see where this goes!
Closing Thoughts
When the bear market hits and hits hard, people will be scrambling to find some sort of yield on their stables, but we will be well equipped with that classic Yunt Capital alfalfa. If Orion can successfully implement everything they want to, they have the opportunity to become one of the most useful protocols in DeFi.
Disclaimer: Some members of Yunt Capital are invested in Orion via its token and private farming.
As always, please do your own research. This is not financial advice. Every strategy is not for everyone. Each investor needs to understand what is right for them.
