OmiseGO had flown under my radar up until this past month so I thought I would share my compiled research. The goal of this article is not to give investment advice but rather to educate those interested about the project.
Before I get to the top ten things you may not know about OmiseGO let me give an introduction to the project and their vision for those who may not be familiar as it is often misunderstood.
From their website: OmiseGO's vision is to Unbank the Banked. OmiseGO is a public Ethereum-based financial technology for use in mainstream digital wallets, that enables real-time, peer-to-peer value exchange and payment services agnostically across jurisdictions and organizational silos, and across both fiat money and decentralized currencies. Designed to enable financial inclusion and disrupt existing institutions, access will be made available to everyone via the OmiseGO network and digital wallet framework, starting in Q4 2017. https://omg.omise.co/
With that explanation, here are the top ten things you may not know about OmiseGO:
OmiseGO is not in direct competition with current e-wallets or cryptocurrency credit cards such as TenX but rather provides a means for them to overcome the limitation of their closed platforms. In addition, it provides a means for us to pay with any digital asset we would like to use (for example, you could pay using Bitcoin, AirMiles, or your own countries fiat currency to buy groceries while abroad).
The project is part of an already existing and successful fintech company Omise that was founded in 2013 and is serving Thailand, Japan, Indonesia and Singapore. This is a cover story from Forbes Thailand back in October 2016: "FINTECH ROCKSTARS shakes the Thai finance industry in Thailand 4.0" http://www.forbesthailand.com/cover-detail.php?did=49 Here is a link to their website if you want to check out the existing company and product. https://www.omise.co/
Omise provided a $100,000 grant to the Ethereum Foundation's Devgrants program in 2015. https://blog.ethereum.org/2016/01/08/d%CE%BEvgrants-update-new-funding/
OmiseGO had a very reasonable ICO. They are reported to have had >100 million from pre-sale interest alone but capped their ICO at 25 million. Further to ensure distribution they required participants to register and the max contribution was 1 ETH. https://techcrunch.com/2017/07/05/omise-go-ico-25-million-omg/
To further distribution OmiseGo planned for 5% of their token to be airdropped to ETH holders based on the amount of ETH they are holding. The date they are using to calculate the distribution has passed but the airdrop itself is still upcoming. The reason was that they wanted to contribute back to the Ethereum ecosystem and distribute their tokens as widely as possible. https://www.omise.co/omisego-airdrop-update
OmiseGO has made an informal announcement that they are already working with McDonald's in Thailand and have plans for expansion: "But from a business angle, we're launching OmiseGO to support Omise Payments and all existing stakeholders, including our existing and future merchants, such as McDonald's in other countries in Asia - McDonald's Thailand is just the start. Through OmiseGO, all Omise merchants will be able to seamlessly accept payments in multiple currencies, including ETH or BTC or other cryptos, without needing to know what their client is paying in." https://www.reddit.com/r/ethtrader/comments/6n7sl2/mcdonalds_to_start_using_omisego_as_a_payment/
OmiseGO is the first plasma.io project. Plasma.io is an Ethereum based project that dramatically increases the scalability. http://plasma.io/
OmiseGO is one of only two projects that Vitalik Buterin is officially an advising.
https://twitter.com/VitalikButerin/status/874522987885670400
- VitalikButerin
The team (with Vitalik) met with the Central Bank of Thailand today (picture).
https://twitter.com/omise_go/status/897472052457684993
- omise_go
OmiseGO has stated publicly that further news will be announced soon. While I do not like teasers for announcements, this may mean that I will have to update this post.
https://twitter.com/omise_go/status/897089480128999424
- omise_go
Thank you for your time. I hope you found the information helpful.
Addendum:
Common questions
How does one receive value from the OMG token?
OmiseGO is using proof of stake. Tokens confirm the transactions that take place and you receive a transaction fee (similar to a miner) just for staking your token. These transactions include (but are not limited to) payment, interchange, trading, and clearinghouse use. I believe the exact details (such as percentage/fee) are purposely vague because if they weren't then OmiseGO could never change the fee structure they present to users.