Mar 11, 2022
OlympusDAO Fundamentals: The Foundations of Web3’s Decentralized Reserve Currency
Welcome to OlympusDAO
We invite everyone to join our mission to become the global, community-owned, and decentralized financial reserve system for web3. In fact, OlympusDAO has attained astounding success in its first 12 months, onboarding more than 85k Ohmies into the DeFi space.
We’re proud to have over 150 individuals dedicated to building Olympus, having gone from 0 to 60 developers in our first year, the most of any protocol in DeFi. This was achieved by word of mouth alone, thanks to our strong, non-stop growing community! Plus, there’s 50 partnerships lining up to join forces with OlympusDAO, with more coming across the threshold each day.
As newcomers arrive, this may seem overwhelming and often have questions about Olympus’ intricate mechanics, ambitious mission, and passionate culture. More often than not, they are new to blockchain projects entirely and pose broader questions about how this new decentralized economy fits together.
In this foundational piece, we’ll help guide you to an understanding of the basics of Olympus by answering some simple questions, which we’ll call the Who, What, Why, and How of Olympus. We’ll then review the three supporting structures of this foundation; The Reserve, Liquidity, and Utility Pillars.
Let’s jump in.
The Why
Take one look at the world and you’ll quickly realize that the financial system as we know it could use vast improvement. Centralized governments have a tyrannical hold on banks that dictate local currencies. Their irresponsible fiscal policies and regulations have been a detriment to a majority of the population and have even left some completely unbanked, without hope for a secure future.
We will never be free unless we declare our independence from traditional finance systems.
OlympusDAO is shouting from the mountaintop that we’re here for change.
We are building a global, community-owned, and decentralized economy to introduce stability & transparency back into financial markets, while creating financial inclusion for all. OlympusDAO is giving everyone with internet access a chance to adopt a decentralized reserve currency that’s independent of nation state politics. It is the gateway to an open financial technology that can tackle world-wide challenges like banking, inflation, and even climate change. We’re providing access to a global network filled with like-minded individuals with mutual goals and aligned incentives.
Best of all, it’s also an incredibly fun community! When you join Olympus, you join in a quest to secure a new financial future for your fellow stakeholders that preserves wealth, embraces stability, and fosters greater economic cooperation in Web3. Just don’t wander into #off-topic if you don’t have the stomach for it…
The Who
You have no doubt heard the ancient tales of Mount Olympus. The mythological heavens where deities reigned supreme as they commanded over the realms of Earth below. This magnificence is what inspired Zeus, the founder of Olympus, along with other core team members to create OlympusDAO — a mighty DeFi protocol that would empower protocols and mechanisms of web3.
At Olympus’ inception, the core team made two initial and foundational innovations:
1. They aligned their own incentives to the long term success of Olympus by structuring their “shares” called pOHM. The core team is only awarded these tokens when Olympus is succeeding. The vesting of these tokens is not based on time, which prioritizes long-term growth.
2. Zeus and the rest of Core understood the most important part of a protocol is its community and contributors. From the very first moments the team started working on how to decentralize power.
The first step towards decentralization was to create OlympusDAO, the decentralized autonomous organization (DAO) that manages the Olympus protocol. A DAO is an organizational structure where control can be distributed rather than hierarchical. DAOs are organized using smart contracts, with members using governance tokens to vote on topics such as allocations, partnerships, treasury functions, or other matters of community importance. You can participate in the DAO governance process on the Olympus Forum or join our Discord to contribute.
The What
Olympus aims to install OHM as crypto’s decentralized reserve currency. As ambitious as that sounds, what do we mean by this?
A reserve currency is one that market participants use as a stable form of value, with the ability to facilitate large volume transactions. Whereas USD’s stability hinges on the whims of the federal reserve, OHM’s stability is maintained by autonomous market operations incentivized by the protocol. Stability is also preserved by backing tokens with a basket of decentralized assets, both risk-free and risk-on. Staking keeps supply off-market. Bonding grows treasury reserves. Economic policy creates conditions for sustainable growth. Partnerships bring in more assets to the treasury. And the flywheel continues to rotate.
Of course, a reserve currency must be tradeable. Price slippage must be minimal and liquidity must be deep enough to accommodate trades in hundreds of millions. This requires OHM to be a common liquidity pair.
A reserve currency must be accepted as the unit of account everywhere. Whether you’re on Ethereum, Avalanche, Terra, Arbitrum, or any future chains, OHM must denominate all trading pairs and be available on all chains.
Lastly, a reserve currency must have utility. In DeFi, this means utility as superfluid collateral to work in the variety of money LEGOs. In the real world, utility means funding for everyday tasks where OHM will be, like buying groceries, paying rent and/or donating to charitable causes. Where utility is needed, is where Olympus will be.
So how does Olympus plan to achieve these ambitious goals? We’re glad you asked.
How: The Pillars of Olympus
After outlining the necessary conditions to become a reserve currency, we’ve come up with an approach that achieves these conditions by building three core pillars:
- Reserve Pillar to establish Purchasing Power
- Liquidity Pillar to foster Universal Acceptance
- Utility Pillar to encourage High Usability
Each of these pillars support the protocol with numerous initiatives being carried out by our dedicated team of contributors. For example, projects that comprise the Reserve Pillar will focus on preserving OHM’s purchasing power and add to its reputation as a trusted backing. The Liquidity Pillar will have campaigns to bootstrap deep OHM liquidity with wide acceptance in DeFi on all layers and chains. Finally, the Utility Pillar will drive the usage and adoption of OHM in Web3 as the reserve currency that can be easily exchanged for other assets, products and services.
These sturdy pillars built on the solid foundation already formed in the past year will provide the support necessary for pioneering the world’s decentralized reserve currency. Our team and community are putting so much time and effort into these pillars, that just one article won’t do it justice. Stay tuned for subsequent series of articles that dive into each individual pillar.
Welcome to Olympus
You should now have a good idea on who we are at OlympusDAO, why our mission is important, what we’re doing about it, and how we’re delivering. If you’re still hungry for knowledge, then you can learn more about each of the projects linked above or check out some more info below:
If this resonates with you, we’d love for you to join us creating a better financial system. Join our Discord to get started in the community.
Onward & upwards!
About OlympusDAO
Olympus is a decentralized financial reserve protocol that provides sustainable compounding interest through its community-owned and protected treasury.
