Sovryn Origins — a Bitcoin native launchpad

Sovryn is DeFi for Bitcoin

While bitcoin was the first cryptocurrency and is still the most successful today in terms of market cap, Decentralized Finance (DeFi) is only just taking off on the Bitcoin network. Because of its smart contracting capabilities, until now Ethereum has been the blockchain of choice for DeFi protocol developers.

But things are about to change, and “DeFi is coming home”, as some would say, thanks to Rootstock (RSK), a Bitcoin sidechain that deems itself:

the most secure smart contract network in the world and enables decentralized applications secured by the Bitcoin Network.

Sovryn is the first project to leverage the smart contracting capabilities of RSK and offers the first DeFi protocol on the Bitcoin network. Sovryn allows decentralized lending, farming, spot and margin trading. The platform has its own governance token, SOV, and a launchpad named Origins that has already seen several successful launches: two SOV rounds, FISH token sale and MYNT liquidity bootstrapping.

Previous sales on the Origins Launchpad — © Sovryn

Today, we’re going to look in detail at the rebirth of Sovryn Origins as a sub-DAO and a product in its own right. We will look at the fundraising solutions it offers for blockchain projects being developed on Bitcoin.

Why a new protocol for the launchpad?

Launchpads are platforms that let people invest in projects at various fundraising stages. They have become a mandatory step in any project launch as they increase brand awareness and allow projects to build strong communities.

The main centralized exchanges like Binance have their in-house launchpads and nearly all blockchains — Ethereum, Polkadot, Solana, Polygon… — have decentralized launchpads, sometimes dozens of them! The Sovryn team initially built Origins to launch its own ecosystem. Following this successful launch, Babelfish — a cross-chain stablecoin aggregator — chose to launch its native token, FISH, through Origins. This led the team to think about what Origins could bring to the ecosystem:

The launchpad used for the BabelFish sale was a successful proof of concept. There is open interest from other projects interested in the growing Bitcoin DeFi ecosystem, and we can offer them many mechanisms to launch with (pool based sales, queued sales, etc.). Many improvements will be introduced to provide for an optimal user experience. [Ref]

With such an ambition, it became clear that Origins needed to become a project with its own development team. In true decentralized fashion, a Sovryn Improvement Proposal (SIP) was proposed to the SOV holders/stakers, and in early November, they voted to pass SIP-0035. Origins is set to become its own subprotocol with a governance model separate from Sovryn’s and based on its native token OG.

$OG token usage

Sovryn Origins will issue a token, ticker OG. It will be the platform’s native governance and utility token. It will be used to:

Vet projects: OG holders will vote to allow projects to launch through Origins.
Governance: OG holders will have a say on how treasury funds will be used.
Fair sale participation: OG holders will get fair access to pre-sales with preferential pricing.
Staking: OG stakers will share rewards from the sale revenue.

The originality of Origins is its strong interconnection with Sovryn: the team chose to bond the OG token to SOV in a permanent way.

The strong bond between OG and SOV

The Sovryn and Origins teams have decided to link OG’s price to SOV’s via a bonding curve. Let’s recap what a bonding curve is before explaining what this means to both OG and SOV holders.

In the words of the Origins team:

A bonding curve is a mathematical formula imprinted into a smart contract that describes the relationship between the price and supply of a token.
Implementing it will cause the price of a token to increase slightly for every successive buyer with each purchase.
The basic idea behind a bonding curve is that the supply of a token determines its price. If the supply of a token goes up, the price goes up and vice versa. This benefits early investors. [Ref]

Since OG is bonded to SOV, if the demand for OG goes up, the demand for SOV also goes up. This way, the large community of SOV holders is incentivized to support the Origins platform. Origins is not Sovryn’s main feature but is a subprotocol that can still bring revenue to SOV holders. Let’s examine how in detail.

Origins business model

Origins will make revenue through charging projects wishing to use the platform for their launch. To list on Origins, each project will have to:

Pay a fixed fee.
Pay a percentage of the supply of their listed token.
Pay a percentage of the amount raised.

This earned revenue will be shared among the different actors of the Sovryn protocol and the Origins subprotocol the following way:

OG Stakers: 50% of the revenue.
Origins Treasury: 20% of the revenue.
SOV Stakers: 20% of the revenue.
Bonding Curve: 10% of the revenue goes to buy OG from the bonding curve and then burn the OG tokens.

We can see that 30% of the revenue directly benefits SOV holders, either through direct redistribution or through the bonding curve, the OG buyback increasing the SOV demand and hence its price.