Shopify For NFTs
VeradiVerdict - Issue #234
Origin Protocol, one of Pantera’s portfolio companies, is building out a suite of crypto products including an NFT platform that gives creators products and tools to run their NFT ecosystems. I highlighted Origin’s DeFi products in a previous blog post that you can find here.
Origin’s NFT arm, Story, partners with top NFT creators, brands, and collections to provide user-friendly NFT products. Their recent product – white label marketplaces – has been especially notable in gaining traction. Often, on traditional NFT trading platforms, marketplaces are saturated and become overwhelming to navigate for collectors. By providing individually designed storefronts and secondary marketplaces, a collection becomes more uniquely branded, and teams are given autonomy to design the platform in a specific way that fits their collection. Think of Story like Shopify for NFTs, where any creator can access tools to run their own branded NFT storefronts and marketplaces. We believe Story is well-positioned as a ‘picks and shovels’ infrastructure business for the NFT industry.
Collections like Pudgy Penguins, Chubbiverse, OnChainMonkey, and Karafuru have all taken to Story to launch customized platforms that fit the aesthetic of their collections. Further, Origin allows users to create NFT drops, like Paris Hilton’s “Past Lives, New Beginnings” and 3LAU’s Ultraviolet. Story has a track record of powering groundbreaking NFT drops, including largest NFT music sale, largest whiskey cask sale, and tokenizing historic viral internet videos. With heightened NFT activity over the last few years, the space has become incredibly saturated. It’s more important than ever for NFT creators to have more control over their brands and the experience of buying and owning their NFTs. Story can do – and has done – this for many iconic collections.
Branded marketplaces using Origin Story. Source: Origin
One example of how NFT creators can offer branded experiences is through Story’s analytics dashboard. The dashboard is fully integrated into a collections’ branded marketplace and provides comprehensive analytics and insights on the collection at a glance. Insights about the number of unique holders, notable individuals holding the collection, and top collectors are among data points to help the community understand the strength of the collection. In the case of the Pudgy Penguins dashboard, a unique display of Soulbound Token holders highlights community members that earned these special tokens.
Analytics Dashboard using Origin Story. Source: Origin
Story also offers a suite of NFT tools and products that streamline tokenization of real world assets, digital goods, and services such as its partnership with Roofstock, the world’s first NFT-powered real estate marketplace. In 2022, Origin and Roofstock sold a home in South Carolina for $175K USDC. The transaction and legal ownership transfer happened instantly on-chain as an NFT purchase on Origin’s marketplace. In 2023, Origin and Roofstock expect to scale home sales on the NFT marketplace.
OGN
OGN is Origin’s token which can be staked by users to earn a percentage of Story’s platform fees. All platform fees are distributed to stakers, and full staking details can be found here. Currently, there are 30+ ETH and 214+ OGN in the rewards pool. The total token supply of OGN is one billion with a circulating supply of around five hundred million at the time of writing this. The decentralized and centralized exchanges that OGN is listed on can be found here, and price history can be found here.
Team
You can read about Origin’s founders and their experiences in my last blog post here. Origin’s broader Core Team has extensive experience building and scaling technology products used by hundreds of millions of people globally, as well as deep expertise as crypto natives. The Core Team includes early tech and business leaders from iconic companies such as PayPal, YouTube, Coinbase, Pinterest, Lyft, Dropbox, Google, Palo Alto Networks, Tesla, and 1inch.
Closing thoughts
Origin’s NFT product suite contains extremely helpful tools for NFT creators and collections to establish custom branding and enable better transaction clarity for users. Coupled with their tokens, Origin covers two of the most prominent areas of crypto – DeFi and NFTs – in a unique and value-add way. We at Pantera are excited to see Origin’s NFT arm grow as Story’s tech stack develops further.
Paul Veradittakit
DISCLAIMER
Pantera Capital Puerto Rico Management, LP and its affiliates (“Pantera”) makes investments in crypto assets and in blockchain-related companies. Pantera and/or its affiliates or personnel may be an investor in, or have relationships or other business arrangements related to, certain instruments, companies and/or projects discussed herein. This document does not contain any advertisement for Pantera’s investment advisory services, or any other services or products, whether provided by Pantera or otherwise. The information and opinions presented in this document are solely those of Paul Veradittakit; they do not represent, and should not be interpreted as representative of, the views of Pantera or any other individual working for Pantera, and do not represent investment, legal, tax, financial, or any other form of, advice or recommendations. Neither Pantera nor Mr. Veradittakit is acting, or purports to act, as an investment adviser or in a fiduciary capacity with respect to any recipient of this paper. Information contained in this document is believed to be reliable, but no representation is made regarding such information’s fairness, correctness, accuracy, reasonableness or completeness. There is no obligation to update this document or to otherwise notify a reader if any matter stated statement or information contained here changes or subsequently is shown to be inaccurate. Nothing contained herein constitutes any representation or warranty as to future performance of any financial instrument or company. Forward-looking statements should not be relied upon, and performance or outcomes may differ materially from what is contemplated herein. Opinions included here incorporate subjective judgments or may be based on incomplete information. This document does not constitute or contain an offer to sell or a solicitation to buy any securities or a recommendation to enter into any transaction, and no reliance should be placed on this document in making investment decisions.
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ABOUT ME
Hi, I’m Paul Veradittakit, a Managing Partner at Pantera Capital, one of the oldest and largest institutional investors focused on investing in blockchain companies and cryptocurrencies. I’ve been in the industry since 2014, and the firm invests in equity, early stage token projects, and liquid cryptocurrencies on exchanges. I focus on early-stage investments and share my thoughts on what’s going on in the industry in this weekly newsletter.
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