OmiseGo (OMG) has caught my attention because it is the first attempt made on the blockchain technology to deliver a real financial service in South East Asian countries. OmiseGo has offices in Thailand, Japan, Singapore and Indonesia. They have been working on this project from 2013 and only today June 25, finally had a crowdsale. Contrary to the current trend, they held a private crowdsale rather than greed and FOMO-driven ICO. OmiseGo redefine ICO as Initial Contribution Offering and shoved the commonplace definition which define ICO as Initial Coin Offering. A significant philosophical difference to me.
OmiseGo team has been developing a separate independent network which is based on Ethereum blockchain technology. The team has been involved in Ethereum community for a long time.
What excites me from OmiseGo is that it has a definitive target; South Asian population, which still has a lot of room to grow. One thing we’ll notice which might come up as particular is how OmiseGo has a daring catch-phrase “Unbank the Banked” and also “Disrupt the banking services”, perhaps they foresee that typical banking service someday will become obsolete.
Technical aspect preview:
They are developing OmiseGo on customized ethereum blockchain, Using Proof of Stake as Value Generation algorithm. Scalable off-chain channel, they are familiar with Lightning Network which also due to be implemented by Bitcoin. Joseph Poon , the creator of Lightning Network , is the principal author of OmiseGo White Paper will guide the team in architectural works. PoS is considered to have a characteristic that is more effective than PoW. Token holders have the right to participate in running PoS network, and to earn fees from validating transactions. The cost of protecting transaction value is externalized to other chains, in a way that promotes the value of those chains.They anticipate scalability issues which Bitcoin and Ethereum currently have. The team also collaborated with: Hydrachain, Golem, Tendermint, and Cosmos.
In a nutshell, OmiseGo is a financial and digital commerce tool for everyone without having a bank as intermediary. Using next generation financial platform (Ethereum based) enabling real-time, p2p or b2b value exchange and payment system agnostically across national jurisdictions across fiat money and decentralizes currency thus spells freedom from legacy banking limitations. OmiseGo allow people to effectively, and informatively manage wealth in and out of whatever asset-type or currencies. What is unique to OmiseGo is that they have a nationally licensed, full reserve-backed fiat tokens that users can custody themselves. OmiseGo is a decentralized exchange, liquidity provider mechanism, clearinghouse provider mechanism, asset backed blockchain gateway.
Omise Holdings Pte. Ltd., have and established record in building a fast growing fintech startup in the payments and value transfer landscape. The team has a thorough knowledge on the business. OmiseGo’s customers are well known Financial Institution in South East Asia; SBI holdings, Mizuho Bank, Bank of Ayudhya, Bank Sinar Mas, etc.
Other features:
• Decentralized exchange,
• Future Proof infrastructure for payments and other forms of value transfer.
• Single shared ledger or a network of provably coordinated ledgers.
• Interoperable with other applications
• Coordination amongst financial services
• White wallet enables direct exchange of fiat-backed tokens with decentralized currencies and protocol tokens. A combination of fiat and digital currency, prepaid, built in messaging service.
OmiseGo will allow a blockchain based financial solution to run on the background of financial activities in South East Asia without necessarily people realizing it, because it will run on the background tasks. This will lead to a wider adoption of Decentralized Economy. I’m looking forward to see this project succeed.