You asked, we answered.

We’re here to tell you everything you need to know about Orion Protocol. The first of a six-part series, we’ll be covering everything from staking to security and partnerships to token utility.

Here, we’ll be answering your questions on Orion Protocol: what sets us apart from the competition, how our ecosystem works, how we’re solving critical issues in market, and how we plan on delivering our vision.

Answering your questions will be our CEO and Co-Founder, Alexey Koloskov; our COO and Co-Founder, Kal Ali; our CMO, Timothea Horwell; and our CSO, Yanush Ali.

Have a question? We’d love to hear it.

Can you briefly describe Orion Protocol in 3–5 sentences? What technology stands behind Orion Protocol, and why is it better than what’s currently in market? | CryptoDiffer

Alex: We’re an all-in-one DeFi platform providing a universal trading gateway to all crypto markets, with unlimited liquidity.

Powered by a unique liquidity aggregator, which connects to all major exchanges (both centralized or decentralized) we bring unrivaled liquidity from major centralized exchanges via our shared pool of brokers, and make it available for trading in a decentralized and non-custodial way.

Trading occurs directly from your wallet, and you never lose ownership of your assets. Simply connect your cold wallet (via MetaMask and other wallets) and execute your order among multiple connected exchanges - even exchanges you don’t have accounts with. The best price, every time, without ever giving up your assets.

Based on peer-to-peer trading technologies, we bring together traders (those who want to trade easily and efficiently on all crypto markets) with brokers (those who want to earn guaranteed trading fees for fulfilling orders on behalf of traders) in a truly decentralized way.

We’ve built a stack of industry-first DeFi solutions on our liquidity aggregator, with our proprietary staking mechanism and ORN token at its core.

How does the Orion Trading Terminal work? Does Orion require trading APIs from exchanges, or does it provide exchange services on its own platform by using big exchanges’ liquidity? | samcryptotrader

Kal: We see Orion as a powerful trading terminal that does not compete with other exchanges. Instead of competing, we unite their order books to solve the issue of liquidity in crypto. We’re the first liquidity aggregator in market pulling in liquidity from all major centralized exchanges and decentralized exchanges via API feeds.

As a result, we have the least slippage of any liquidity solution on the market (especially compared to swap protocols such as Uniswap and Thorchain). Trade with the liquidity of the entire crypto market at the best price, every time.

Can you list 5 killer features of Orion Protocol that makes it ahead of its competitors? | Joo

Alex: Fully decentralized and non-custodial. Lowest trading fees and best price guaranteed. Cross chain (over a thousand token pairs, not just ERC20). Most profitable staking in DeFi. Ten revenue streams, one token with strong utility.

What makes Orion better than other projects? Are there any unique mechanisms? | Gabriel Angle

Alex: Although it’s clear the future should be decentralized (after all, it’s what the industry is fundamentally built on), it’s impossible to ignore the fact that big traders, hedge funds, and markets markers are still trading on centralized exchanges.

We’re combining the best from the two worlds of crypto, centralized and decentralized: building on decentralized technologies in the most critical parts of the system like custody and final settlement, while pulling liquidity from the major players in market — centralized exchanges.

We haven’t just built a protocol, we’re building real-world DeFi products on top of it for businesses and retail customers alike.

Orion protocol is working on a trading platform. But the main problem with any new trading platform is liquidity! So, how will Orion Protocol generate liquidity for seamless trading? | Martin Douglas

Alex: To us, liquidity is the biggest issue in crypto. Orion encompasses the liquidity of all centralized and decentralized exchanges in one seamlessly aggregated order book, giving you access to the entire crypto market in one place.

This allows for easy arbitrage execution without funding accounts on multiple exchanges. Also embedded within the terminal are intuitive tools that provide you with all of the news, market analysis, and trading signals in real- time to conduct successful trades.

What is one of the most important factors that all sustainable blockchain projects should focus on to be more attractive in the participants’ eyes? What are the benefits of Orion Protocol in the future in the world of blockchain? | Gue Siapa

Alex: We’ve paid close attention to our predecessors, and one of the main causes of failure is the lack of substantial revenue streams. That’s why we’ve identified and are working on a number of products that will generate revenue in the near future. We’re bringing in ten B2B and B2C revenue streams from day one, across our entire platform:

ORION TRADING TERMINAL: Percentage of trading fees, signals feed and App Store fees, fees for arbitrage access and premium trading features.

ORION BROKER POOL: Passive results on staked ORN tokens.

ORION DEX KIT: DEX kit licensing fee, percentage of trading fee from DEX.

ORION LIQUIDITY BOOST PLUGIN: OLBP licensing fee, percentage of trading fee from DEX.

ORION ENTERPRISE TRADE: OET licensing fee, percentage of transactions made through client.

What is Orion Protocol’s vision and mission? And how can Orion achieve that vision and mission? | Gawade Kumar

Yanush: Crypto is fundamentally decentralized, yet we’re at risk of centralization changing the very foundation of why crypto was born.

The industry is being forced to trust large monopolized exchanges / companies — entities that are prone to the very issues that crypto is supposed to eliminate. In recent months we’ve seen numerous centralized exchange hacks, while the existing decentralized services often provide users with subpar solutions and inefficient experiences — falling short of what the market needs.

The crypto industry needs us, regardless of the market conditions. We are the only DeFi platform creating a truly decentralized landscape for businesses and consumers alike.

Who are the team behind Orion? How can the community be sure they can deliver your vision? | Budfox

Timothea: Our team are incredibly capable of delivering on our vision.

Our CEO and Co-Founder Alexey Koloskov was the Chief Architect and creator of the Waves DEX, the platform’s flagship decentralized exchange (the most mature DEX in market with a daily volume up to $10 million). Prior, he was responsible for the creation of banking software for some of the world’s largest international banks. His work in blockchain development and exchange implementation has been integral to Orion’s development so far, and he will be a driving force behind our success.

Our COO and Co-Founder Kal Ali has a background in finance and a series of accolades from Rutgers’ Business School. He’s been heavily involved in the ICO scene since 2017, working with several blockchain projects both formally and informally — consulting and advising. He’s incredibly attuned to what token buyers want to see from business development, and is focused on ensuring they enjoy exponentially positive results on their contributions. Both his knowledge of the industry and network of contacts in the space are vast.

Our CSO Yanush Ali is the driving force for our strategic development across the board. His experience in fundraising for major projects in the crypto space over the last three years puts us in a great position to understand what token buyers are looking for — including the ten B2B and B2C revenue streams we’ve developed from our DeFi solutions.

Personally, I’ve worked with tech companies in the data, mobile, travel and fintech space over the last decade to develop commercially-driven strategies for growth. From building business strategies at a start-up incubator, through to founding and leading a commercially-successful research division within Telefonica, I’ve been focused on establishing the bridge between product, sales and clients, to drive business growth and revenue. Bridging the gap between crypto communities and the traditional finance space is at the core of our 2020 marketing strategy, and I’m honored to be leading this as CMO.

Our development team bring years of experience in coding from the likes of Waves and Holochain, while our advisors hail from the likes of Accenture, Microsoft, and the World Bank.

Inevitably Orion faces competition against Etoro, Troy, and other similar projects — what is you market-competitive advantages? What are the biggest problems Orion will solve that no other project is solving now? | Tony Montana

Kal: We’re solving some of the most critical and real-world problems in crypto: liquidity, custody, accessibility, and scalability.

To us, this is especially important after the recent attacks on the likes of bZx, blocked user accounts, and centralized exchange hacks. There have been a number of attempts at solving these issues, yet no platform has solved all four so far… Until now!

The decentralized liquidity aggregators in the market pull from decentralized exchanges only, leaving out a major source of liquidity from centralized exchanges. The liquidity aggregators that do pull from centralized exchanges are themselves centralized, custodial solutions — which we believe to be inherently anti-crypto.

Most decentralized aggregators carry ERC20 tokens only, while those that are multi-chain are custodial and not decentralized. Swapping protocols have become popular too, yet the pools are often not large enough to sustain increasing demand. Some token pools could be wiped out with as little as a single $5k order and leaves the token price susceptible to manipulation.

We allow you to trade with the liquidity of the entire crypto market in one place, without the need for accounts on any exchange, while still having custody of your assets.

Take a look at how we fare vs. others in the market:

How will ORION team attract users who are currently using the top exchanges? | Kri Pro

Alex: Top exchanges provide much of the liquidity in market — we’re aggregating the liquidity from all of them into one easy-to-use platform. We’re providing the best prices and lowest fees in market with almost zero spread, due to our aggregated order books from every major exchange. Embedded within the terminal are robust trading tools that provide you with all of the news, market analysis, and trading signals in real- time to conduct successful trades. On top of this, we’re providing arbitrage opportunities without the need to open and manage any accounts.

What does Orion Terminal offer? Is it similar with Troy Trade? | NO4M3

Yanush: Troy Trade requires you to give up custody of your assets, making them a centralized platform. The Orion Terminal is completely decentralized, never holding custody of your assets.

Liquidity aggregator: can you redefine the term in simple words to common users? | Ross

Alex: Put simply, a trading platform connecting all major centralized and decentralized exchanges into one place, giving access to all available liquidity on the crypto markets.

There are 4 top priority issues that are the combination of slow transaction speed, high cost, hacking and insufficient liquidity. How does ORION solve these problems? | Srintiel

Timothea: As we’ve mentioned, we’re solving liquidity with Orion Trading Terminal, seamlessly aggregates endless liquidity across all major exchanges, centralized + decentralized, allowing you to buy or sell your assets at the best price, every time.

Custody has always been an issue in crypto, but with Orion Trading Terminal you can trade with the liquidity of the entire crypto market while still having custody of your assets, eliminating the risks from hacking. We’re the first to provide access to liquidity from all major centralized (and decentralized) exchanges, in a decentralized (and trustless) manner.

Slow transaction speed is an ever-growing problem for the industry, and our platform will need fast infrastructure and interoperability to succeed. By integrating Orion’s trading capabilities with Elrond’s high throughput and fast finality infrastructure, users can easily access different crypto assets with access to the combined liquidity of traditional centralized crypto exchanges and decentralized exchanges.

We appreciate high trading costs can be a challenge to small-volume traders, but we’re solving this with our proprietary staking mechanism Delegated Proof of Broker (or DPoB). Brokers will have high volume trading accounts on exchanges and will benefit from much lower fees than the average trader, and we’re passing these savings down to our traders — giving them access to high-volume trading rates without being a high-volume trader.

If you were to trade on a major centralized exchange directly, you would pay more fees than if you were to trade using the same exchange’s liquidity on Orion. Furthermore, you can trade using the liquidity of these centralized exchanges without having any assets on their exchange, or even an account with them.

Most of the time, new projects have only brought some efficiency to reality. So, what did Orion achieve and how did you bring about the results? | Bladezee

Alex: We’ve already implemented core components of our protocol, and we’re underway with comprehensive testing of our updated Trading Terminal on Ethereum TestNet now. It will soon be available to our early adopter and evangelists to test, followed by pilot on MainNet.

What was your journey starting Orion Protocol? Can you share your initial thoughts which lead to starting this project? | Prakash

Kal: In 2018 when Alexey was CTO at Holdvest, a multi asset wallet and portfolio management tool, I came across the project and was immediately enthused by the talent and vision of Alexey.

From there, we went on to form Orion to develop solutions to some of the most prominent problems in DeFi. Orion was born as an endeavour to improve the existing crypto trading, with the full understanding of the need for an intermediate solution that fills the gap between centralized and decentralized worlds.

What has been the most challenging part of developing the Orion Protocol? What’s the biggest challenge you currently face in order to get this project finalized? | TL

Timothea: The biggest challenge has been providing the liquidity of centralized exchanges in a decentralized, non-custodial manner. We’ve managed to achieve this through our development of our proprietary staking mechanism, Delegated Proof of Broker. Designed using features and advantages of Proof of Stake (PoS), DPoB achieves governance on the platform in the most efficient and profitable way.

This works via a network of brokers and stakers who are critical to the liquidity aggregator’s function — making our platform truly decentralized. Brokers (with accounts on major exchanges) are chosen to execute trades based on how much ORN they stake in the Broker Pool. The more Orion tokens that a broker stakes, the higher the chances of the broker being chosen to execute the trade and receive the benefits.

Not everyone has to be a broker to enjoy staking results on Orion, though. Non-brokers stake ORN tokens to vote for their choice of broker based on the variable reward share that the broker decides to give back to their voters — avoiding a monopoly of brokers. If a broker is being chosen frequently, other brokers are given the opportunity to increase the dynamic reward share given back to their voters, increasing their votes to become a broker and leveling the playing field so broker monopolies do not form.

The development of this industry-first consensus mechanism has been the most challenging, yet rewarding, part of our development! And it’s rewarding for stakers too, forming the most profitable staking mechanism in DeFi.

Next up in the series: TOKEN UTILITY.