Orion Protocol is the first gateway to the entire crypto market: aggregating the liquidity of every CEX, DEX, and swap pool into one decentralized platform.

This AMA allowed users to connect with Timothea Horwell, chief marketing officer, who answered the questions and listened to the feedback.

I’m Timothea Horwell. I’m Chief Marketing Officer at Orion Protocol. Over the last decade I’ve worked with tech companies in the data, mobile, and fintech space – from building business strategies at a start-up incubator, through to founding and leading the research division as Head of Marketing and Research within Telefonica (one of the largest telecommunications companies globally).

I joined Orion Protocol at the end of 2019 when I saw the opportunity for Orion to totally change the crypto landscape, while noticing that few businesses in the space bridged the gap between crypto and traditional marketing. While it’s often said that crypto is ‘over-PRed and under-marketed’, I’m focused on driving revenue and growth sustainably through user acquisition.

Question from the CryptoRank team

#1. Can you tell us about Orion Protocol? What problems do you solve, both in the space and for the community?

Timothea: – In my opinion, fragmentation, centralization, and liquidity are the biggest issues in the space – and the largest barriers to the widespread adoption of crypto. In my opinion, fragmentation, centralization, and liquidity are the biggest issues in the space – and the largest barriers to the widespread adoption of crypto.

In 2018, the team (led by Alexey Koloskov, Chief Architect of the Waves DEX) set about bridging the gap between the centralized and decentralized worlds of crypto – by building the most advanced liquidity aggregator ever developed. Today, Orion Protocol aggregates the liquidity of every centralized exchange, decentralized exchange, and swap pool in the market into one decentralized platform.

This has enabled the creation of our flagship product, Orion Terminal: one portal to access the entire crypto market, without the need to give up ownership of your assets. Phase One of Orion Terminal’s Main Net will be live on December 15th – we’d love for your community to sign up to gain early access! orionprotocol.io/launch

#2. Could you shortly describe the milestones Orion Protocol has achieved, and about your upcoming plans?

Timothea: – Since our TGE in July, our ORN has been listed on 5 exchanges (Binance, Bitmax, KuCoin, MXC and Biki) and developed over 20 new partnerships in that time to further build out our ecosystem – it’s probably easier to share this visually

Some of our key partnerships developed in that time include:

– Elrond: Orion Terminal will be the first DeFi project build on Elrond Main Net
– Alliance Block: secure, compliant, non-custodial crypto trading to traditional finance entities
– Kira Network: decentralized staking of any asset on Orion Terminal (stable coins, fiat and NFTs)
– Dexe Network: decentralized copying of the best traders’ strategies across Orion Terminal
– Boson Protocol: cross-trade tokens for NFTs directly connected to the entire crypto market
– MobiePay: allowing ORN to be spendable (online and offline) 500+ top retailers
– Polkastarter: first Liquidity Boost Plugin client, providing bottomless liquidity to their DEX
– Aleph.im: optimizing off-chain centralized order books to be trustless and decentralized
– Certik: leading security firm Certik audits Orion Terminal’s mainnet

We’re focused on creating a sustainable future of DeFi, and so we’re building solutions that tackle issues of liquidity for an array of audiences: traders, blockchains, exchanges, and crypto projects.

Platform updates will be continually rolled out over the month following the phase one launch of Orion Terminal, with the final phase launched in early Q1. At thay point, our internal staking program will be launched, built on a network of brokers and stakers executing transactions on traders’ behalf and rewarded with a share of the transaction fee.

We’ll also be launching the first decentralized high-margin trading, while allowing users to further monetize their ORN through lending. Additional features to be added to the terminal though our partners include leveraged ETFs, derivatives, contract trading, NFTs, and staking of any digital asset type, with even more in the pipeline.

Questions from Twitter

#1.  What are the main differences between Orion Terminal and other trading platforms? Why is Orion Terminal better than these platforms? What are the benefits of being a user of Orion Terminal?

Timothea: – Well, with crypto having been described as “nothing more than a fight for liquidity”, I believe the future lies in aggregation of the industry in its entirety. CEX aggregators and DEX aggregators have grown in popularity, but no entity has transcended the two to aggregate the entire crypto market into one decentralized platform, until now.

But what does that mean for traders? Traders no longer need to waste time exchange-hopping. Traders no longer need to worry about finding the best price for their assets. And perhaps most critically, traders no longer need to risk their assets to access liquidity.

This alone is incredibly valuable, but we’re focused on constant development to build the future of finance. That’s why next year will see growth into other areas I mentioned previously, including lending, margin trading, leveraged ETFs, derivatives, contract trading, NFTs, and staking of any digital asset type added to the terminal.

#2.  Do you have any plans to attract non-crypto investors to ORION and how? What are the actions to increase awareness around ORION in non-crypto space?

Timothea: – Absolutely, expansion beyond the existing crypto space is critical for our sustainability as an industry. By solving the fragmentation of the industry, through creating the first portal to access the entire digital market in one decentralized platform, we’ve developed a protocol for bridging together crypto, traditional finance, and real-world assets…

The value of the traditional capital market is in excess of $100 trillion dollars – the opportunity to unlock this massive and latent pool of global liquidity and funnel it into DeFi presents enormous possibilities. Working with Alliance Block, we’ll provide the likes of private banks, wealth managers, and funds a singular, compliant, and non-custodial point of access to the crypto market – funneling new users and significant amounts of capital into the space. As we’ve seen from the huge growth in NFTs recently, the way that we invest in assets is on the cusp of fundamental change. Tokens can be used to represent shares in a company, a piece of real estate, a painting, or even a t-shirt. Working with Boson Protocol will allow Orion Terminal traders to, for the first time, cross-trade nearly any token with NFTs to buy, lend, borrow, or rent real-world assets in a decentralized way.

We’re building out this ecosystem through industry-changing parterships. Because only through bridging the gap between these worlds will we achieve real steps towards creating a truly decentralized, and sustainable, future of finance

#3.  How is ORN token uses for in Orion Terminal? How to keep motivation to hold ORN tokens in the long term? How will Orion plan to dominate DeFi market?

Timothea: – It’s been a huge focus of ours to ensure deep utility of our native ORN token across the entire protocol to create utility value, integrating it into all main transactions to take the form of an internal currency or utility token. The utility itself lies in the integral role ORN plays in the decentralized brokerage at our core, with every transaction within every product acting as a trade being carried out by a broker. It’s the fuel to our ecosystem: no product or feature can work without it.

We have one protocol, eleven products, and sixteen revenue streams (and we’re constantly developing more), all with the ORN token at their core.

The holder benefits are pretty expansive:

Discounted Trading: Orion Terminal users will be able to save up to 20% on standard trading fees by paying with ORN.

Advanced Features: Advanced features like arbitrage will be available for premium users based on their ORN holdings.

Priority Access: While the first product on our roadmap is Orion Terminal, we’ve got a lot more in the pipeline. Holding ORN will provide first access to Orion Margin Trading, Lending, and other products to come

Passive Income via Staking: Our staking comprises of two core components: Brokers and Non-Broker Stakers (NBS). Brokers with exchange accounts (or exchanges themselves such as BitMax, KuCoin, MXC and Injective) run Orion Broker Software, automatically executing trades based on how much ORN they stake, and receive a portion of fees from each transaction they execute. NBS stake ORN to ‘vote’ for their choice of Broker based on the variable reward share offered of the transactional fee.

You can find even more holder benefits here: blog.orionprotocol.io/holdorn

CryptoRank community questions

#1. Do you have any Coin Burn / BuyBack systems or any Token Burn plans to increase the value of Token & attract Investors to invest?

Timothea: – ORN is supply capped (meaning tokens are never minted beyond the TGE), and we’re actively removing tokens from circulation through a number of methods:

Staking: our non-inflationary staking mechanism encourages parties to stake and remove their ORN tokens from circulating supply in return for maximum results. Rewards generated are then compounded into their stake, further reducing supply. DPoB stakers receive rewards generated via Orion’s various revenue streams, preserving the underlying ORN token.

Licensing fees: 100% of licensing fees generated from our stack of DeFi solutions will be used to buy ORN tokens off the market and remove them from circulation.

Refunds: Every ORN token that is refunded (via our DYCO token sale) will be destroyed, removing up to 100% of circulating supply.

#2. What differentiates the Orion project from its similar competitors? Can you tell us more about what security mechanisms we will have to operate on the new platform?

Timothea: – Asset owners should always approach the storage of their assets with skepticism and vigilance, given the unfortunate prevalence of hacks, data breaches, and malpractice across the industry.

We believe traders shouldn’t have to part with, and therefore risk, their assets in order to trade. On Orion Terminal, traders can execute trades directly from their wallet, across any exchange, without the need to open any exchange accounts.

This is all made possible through our governance mechanism, Delegated Proof of Broker. Brokers with exchange accounts (or exchanges themselves) who carry out KYC on traders behalf, execute trades routed via Orion’s liquidity aggregator.

Before the execution of any trades on Orion Terminal, orders are stored privately in Orion’s Matching Engine. When a trader signs an order, it’s a commitment to exchange assets at the specific terms included in the order – these parameters are signed in the order message and cannot be changed by any parties. Brokers never have access to these funds.

Additionally, our smart contracts are continually audited by leading blockchain security firm Certik. The audit includes VAPT of the smart contracts and Substrate modules involved in the development and launch of Orion Terminal.

#3. How we can sign up for Orion Terminal’s Main Net?

Timothea: – Phase One of Orion Terminal’s public main net will be live in just thirteen days. I’ve probably said that a fair amount today, but we’re pretty excited about it .

Access to the terminal will be prioritized based on share ranking through a referral scheme:

1. Sign up to generate your referral link
2. Share your referral link across social media
3. Every new sign up through your referral link will increase your ranking
4. Access will be awarded to those with the highest ranking on 12/15
5. New users will be added each week

Access and platform updates will be continually rolled out over the month following the launch of Orion Terminal.

orionprotocol.io/launch