With Highly Performant Liquid Staking Tokens, Origin Protocol and PrimeStaked Buck the Crypto Downtrend; Fresh PrimeStaked Inflows Help Push Origin Protocol OETH Deposits Beyond a Record $180M
As revolutionary as cryptocurrencies and blockchain technology are, a longstanding obstacle to their adoption has been restricted use cases and unclear – or not very reliable – value-generating products. This is particularly true for the Decentralized Finance (DeFi) space, which is where much of blockchain’s groundbreaking value creation is anticipated.
Origin Protocol Disrupts DeFi with OETH, LSTs and New Blockchain Capabilities
Origin Protocol was launched in 2017 to address these issues. The platform is recognized today as the largest Ethereum yield aggregator on mainnet with over $200M in Total Value Locked (TVL) across its proprietary products and services. These include Origin’s yield-bearing stablecoin and Origin Ether (OETH), a radically new Liquid Staking Token (LST), which was successfully launched in May of last year.
LSTs are tokenized representations of staked assets that users receive whenever they stake or lock their assets in a smart contract. These LSTs, as secure and verifiable representations of a set of staked assets, can be traded, sold, or used in other DeFi applications and protocols, thereby providing liquidity to the staker – even when the originally staked assets remain locked in a smart contract.
OETH is tightly integrated with numerous apps and services within the Origin and Ethereum ecosystems and has unlocked hundreds of millions of dollars’ worth of value for users, investors, and developers alike. Over the past year, Origin’s innovations and services have attracted a large, growing, and dedicated following, with OETH’s market cap more than doubling from $75 million to $180 million during this time.
The Restaking Revolution
One of Origin’s newer DeFi innovations is PrimeStaked. The PrimeStaked protocol provides liquidity for restaked assets. In other words, users who, for example, stake $ETH, can choose to restake the tokenized version of their holdings to provide crypto-economic security and other capabilities to other applications, users, or nodes in a network in the form of their LSTs. This is made possible with the EigenLayer platform on which smart contracts enable this restaking of LSTs. EigenLayer essentially aggregates and extends the value and capabilities provided by assets staked within the Ethereum ecosystem using LSTs such as OETH.
Soon after its launch on February 5, 2024, the TVL of PrimeStaked quickly surpassed $40 million. EigenLayer and PrimeStaked LST deposits initially closed on February 9, but the massive influx of funds spurred a reopening of deposits with added support for native ETH restaking on March 11, with new deposits now being accepted on an ongoing basis.
“PrimeStaked has exceeded our expectations, demonstrating the demand for innovative liquid restaking solutions. The strong response from the community affirms our commitment to delivering user-centric platforms,” said Origin Protocol co-founder Matthew Liu commenting on the success of PrimeStaked.
LST holders earn rewards from PrimeStaked in numerous ways, primarily in the form of ETH staking yield, EigenLayer points, and primeETH experience points. PrimeStaked also announced plans to distribute 1 million EigenLayer Points from its treasury during the Eigen Bonus Week, which started on Monday, March 18 and will go on throughout this week. Eigen Bonus Week allows users to boost their EigenLayer restaking rewards, with earnings of up to 4.20x possible on their EigenLayer Restaked Points. With the success of PrimeStaked, industry pundits expect the market to see an increase in OETH adoption, heightened traction in the LST space, and the continued growth of not just Origin products and services but applications of all kinds throughout the DeFi sphere.
