How Origin Ether works

Origin Ether (OETH) is a fully collateralized asset that is backed 1:1 by ETH and liquid staking derivatives (LSDs) including stETH, rETH and sfrxETH. OETH shares much of its codebase with Origin Dollar (OUSD), the main difference being that OETH is designed to accumulate ETH instead of stablecoins. Users can mint OETH from the official Origin Dollar front-end app by converting their ETH or supported LSDs. Once minted, OETH begins to immediately accrue compounded yield. The Origin app will automatically route user transactions to give them the best available price while considering slippage and gas costs. This means that the router will sometimes encourage users to buy OETH that is already in circulation versus minting new OETH. Redeeming OETH back for the underlying ETH or LSDs is the same process but incurs a 0.5% exit fee upon vault redemption. This means the app will often route the user's transaction through an AMM to sell the OETH instead if it is cheaper after accounting for slippage, gas costs, and the exit fee. This exit fee is distributed as additional yield to the remaining OETH holders, as well as serves as a security feature to make it more difficult for attackers to take advantage of lagging oracle prices (incentivize long-term holders over short-term speculators). For redemptions, the vault determines which underlying assets to return to the user. This also serves to protect the vault in the event any supported LSD loses its peg. OETH generates yield from staking rewards and deploying market making on Convex-Curve. The yield generated from interest, trading fees, and protocol rewards is pooled and reinvested to produce OETH-denominated yield. This yield is passed on to OETH holders through a constant rebasing of the token supply. This allows the OETH price to stay pegged at 1 ETH while the user's token balance adjusts in real-time to reflect the accrued yield.

How Origin Ether makes money

The protocol currently does not earn any revenue from yield generated by OETH. However, Origin anticipates that veOGV voters will eventually take a 10% performance fee like OUSD. This revenue will be used to buyback OGV on the open market and distributed as additional rewards for stakers.

How you make money on Origin Ether

You can deposit your ETH or LSDs to mint OETH or buy it on the open market to start earning passive yield directly to your wallet. You can also stake the OGV governance token to earn inflationary token rewards and a portion of future OUSD + OETH (via future governance decision) yield.