The goal of the Olympus protocol is to create a decentralized, censorship resistant reserve currency for the emerging Web3 ecosystem. Developing a reserve currency is important because a fundamental goal of the Web3 financial movement is to foster an alternative economic ecosystem that serves the needs of its various stakeholders, which include:
- Having access to unique purpose-built assets that are widely and uniformly available across L1s and L2s
- Being able to transact/store value in highly decentralized and censorship-resistant assets that are not dependent on the traditional financial ecosystem for validation or survival
{% embed url="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QZOaZ9dd-ms" caption="Introductory video about Olympus" %}
Olympus’ goal is to create a credibly neutral currency for Web3 and to help onboard users into a decentralized, democratized economy, with the additional goal of becoming the reserve currency for DeFi.
What are reserve currencies designed to achieve?
- Preserving purchasing power: Over the medium- to long-term the asset grows to out-pace inflation, and becomes more stable over time
- Deep liquidity: Reserve currencies are highly liquid and can be easily exchanged for other assets, products and services
- Utilized as a unit of account: Other assets are denominated in the currency
- Reserve assets serve as trusted backing: The currency is viewed as reliable and relatively low risk, which encourages entities to hold large quantities of it in reserve
Currently, Olympus is early on its journey to secure OHM’s status as a decentralized reserve currency. The Olympus12 Action Plan outlines the concrete steps the DAO is taking to make this vision a reality in 2022, including making OHM as automated and governance-minimized as possible.
In contrast to the incumbent fiat system that’s declining in value due to inflation, our goal is to build and retain real purchasing power that withstands the test of time. Olympus DAO’s efforts in Treasury management, development of on-chain governance structures and prudent use of Olympus’ liquidity and Treasury assets will help to strengthen OHM’s stability.
Olympus is run by OlympusDAO.
OlympusDAO is a network of dedicated community members who execute on decisions & protocol mechanisms voted on through community governance.
Our eventual goal is to build an autonomous system at the protocol level, in which the behavior of OHM is largely influenced by decentralized smart contracts and with minimal human intervention.
The DAO is pursuing a strategy of “progressive decentralization.” Currently, major components of the protocol are controlled at a high-level by the DAO. Though, ultimately the focus is on creating a foundation at the Treasury, Policy and economic levels, and to enable the community to directly operate protocol mechanics – in a trust- and process-minimized fashion.
All proposals, whether being consistent with the general direction of the DAO, a change in policy, or a pivot to a certain strategy or framework are voted for by the community. Any member of the community can create a proposal on the forum for discussion before being posted to snapshot for a governance vote.
Olympus Governance Council (OGC) will be initially comprised of 7 veteran community members who are primarily responsible for facilitating off-chain processes. These can include, but are not limited to, establishing strategic vision, coordinating working groups to execute on community-approved initiatives, and proposing strategic initiatives to the community via OIP.
Key deliverables for the OGC include:
- Drive prioritization and alignment across the DAO departments and working groups
- Chart a path to further decentralized DAO governance and operations
- Oversee the broader econOHMy
The policy team is composed of about 20 members of the Olympus community who have displayed sufficient knowledge of the protocol and a curiosity to continue to learn as the protocol grows in size and complexity. Policy is largely guided by the policy framework.
Policy closely monitors the behavior of the protocol and utilizes the powers assigned to them in the policy framework to actively manage the protocol. Policy is committed to help bring inflows into the treasury, and continue to increase OHM's relative backing, and helping Olympus to continue developing products and services that grow the Olympus economy.
Olympus was ideated by Zeus and built by a distributed pseudo-anonymous team.