Orion Protocol x Hord Telegram AMA Summary

Join Orion's Business Development Director, Stephane Doueihi, and CMO, Andrew Kirk, featuring Hord Head of Marketing, Johan Zamora & team, in a live AMA covering everything from:

- What is Hord?
- Development at Hord
- Orion Swap Widget
- Security

Andrew | Orion Protocol: Hello, everyone, and welcome to our #DeeperLiquidity AMA with Hord! - The Hord team recently joined the Orion ecosystem and integrated Orion Swap Widget onto their website, which we announced recently. Here’s the link to look at after the AMA: https://t.me/orionprotocolnews/916

Andrew | Orion Protocol: Q1: Can you please let our viewers know about some of the background of your Hord project and what it involves?

Mier Rosenschein | Hord: Hord launched on April 23rd, 2021, as a DeFi project with a social aspect. The first project that Hord released was Champions Pools, which allowed users to create or follow tokenized investment strategies. These investment strategies are similar to an ETF as an entire portfolio, and its changes are broadcasted to followers. Later, the team began exploring different use cases for Hord’s unique smart contracts, and two new products were born. These new Hord products include Private Pools and Viking DAO.

Focusing on Viking DAO, this is a platform for investing in early-stage projects. The novelty or difference with respect to a launchpad is that, in this case, we invest in projects at a private sale price.

In short, most projects launch several rounds of financing before launching their token. Launchpads allow access to public sales, but before that, there are other rounds, such as seed sales and private sales. These rounds are usually under advantageous conditions and are only available to Venture Capitals or large players in the market, and the minimum investment is usually quite high.

Viking DAO makes it possible for retailers to participate in these types of deals and invest in private sales, and to do so with a much smaller investment. Viking DAO is organized in different pools with up to 20 projects, and in practice, each pool will function as a small VC in which a large part of the decisions will be in the hands of the pool's own investors, who will be able to exercise governance thanks to the $HORD token.

Andrew | Orion Protocol: That's excellent that you make it possible for everyone to get involved with this.

Stéphane | Orion Protocol: Decentralized ETFs are definitely the future! Always been a fan of HORD for pushing this idea.

Andrew | Orion Protocol: Q2: How does your token fuel your ecosystem, and why do you think a deeper aggregated liquidity through the new DEX integrations of Uniswap, PancakeSwap, QuickSwap, and SpookySwap into Orion Protocol will benefit your ecosystem?

Johan | Hord: Hord token is central to all of Hord’s products and is the core of the ecosystem. HORD tokens will be necessary for the future to take part in project investment pools like launchpad tokens. It will also be a crucial prerequisite for taking part in pool governance. In addition to purchasing Hord to join Viking DAO, users will be urged to keep those tokens to participate in pool decisions. We will explain the governance system in more detail soon.

In addition, we recently announced a new token burn mechanism, and part of the fees from Hord products will be used to make token repurchases and burn it. We believe this is a very useful token within our ecosystem.

About the Orion Protocol widget, it will make life much easier for Hord users looking to trade the token on-site and in the near future in-app.

Liquidity is one of the biggest problems for small projects, especially when the liquidity is distributed among different exchanges. Solutions like the one proposed by Orion Protocol bring real value to the ecosystem!

Stéphane | Orion Protocol: I like good tokenomics 🤌

Andrew | Orion Protocol: Having that utility to and incentive to hold the token and participate in those decisions is great for the whole community, I reckon - especially when done in the 'correct' way.

Andrew | Orion Protocol: Q3: Through Orion Protocol, your users can continue to access combined liquidity of your token as we add more and more aggregated CEX and DEX exchanges into one place. Why do you think having a globally accessible one-stop-shop location to aggregate your token’s liquidity through Orion is so important within the industry?

Johan | Hord: As I have mentioned before, liquidity is one of the challenges for young projects with low volume, especially in these market conditions. It’s great that users are able to buy tokens from projects in a simple, fast and secure way, benefiting from the fact that with Orion they are using the liquidity sources that offer the best trade, so they don’t have to worry about creating accounts on CEXs or operating with unknown DEXs.

When we discovered Orion's functionality, it was an instant yes for us.

Andrew | Orion Protocol: The options that it provides really do change things for projects using Orion, plus the team is continually adding more and more sources - this is the exciting part. Just when you thought it does a great job, in comes more liquidity, more tokens.

Andrew | Orion Protocol: Q4: Since adding Orion Swap Widget to your website, your visitors now have access to the largest CEXs and DEXs (including Binance, OKX, KuCoin, Uniswap, PancakeSwap, AscendEX, QuickSwap, and Spookyswap) in one place, using only their own personal wallet to connect from anywhere in the world. How does this benefit your users, and why do you think owning your own private keys is so critical in general?

Mier Rosenschein | Hord: Today, more than ever makes sense to say that not your keys, not your crypto. This year we’ve seen many not-so-decentralized entities collapsing and the market with them. And right now, we’re seeing FTX stumbling hard. Also, it’s been too common to see hacks on DAPPS, so even if you’re keeping your keys, it’s dangerous to connect with certain DAPPs. Considering all this, it’s great that users can access the liquidity from any CEXs and DEXs in one place just by interacting with Orion Protocol and owning their private keys.

Andrew | Orion Protocol: It removes a lot of that fear of X centralized entity holding your funds. Even the thought of it is scary to think of. Having that ability to just connect to Orion with a MetaMask, Ledger, or Trezor is huge, we think, plus all of the other benefits of opening up a true global access scenario.

Mier Rosenschein | Hord: 100%

Andrew | Orion Protocol: Q5: Orion Protocol being a liquidity aggregator of exchanges solves several industry-critical solutions such as fragmentation, accessibility, custody and scalability. Can you tell us about how Hord solves industry problems specific to your field?

Johan | Hord: Hord and especially Viking DAO vastly improve the accessibility of early-stage investments in crypto projects. Usually, an early-stage crypto project first conducts a private sale, which is restricted to venture capitalists or friends and family. After the private round, the project conducts a public sale, typically via an IDO or launchpad offering. This is when retail has access to invest in projects. We make it possible for retail to enter the previous phase.

The pricing of tokens during the private round is much lower than during the public sale round. The difference in token pricing can be as much as 50% or more, and private rounds are closed to the public.

Viking DAO democratizes the process and opens early-stage investing open to the public.

Beyond that, our tools for the creation of private pools will make available to DAOs, VCs, and other organizations the possibility to create pools and take advantage of managing the pool's investments, establishing whitelisting, fee mechanisms, etc, bringing the creation of this type of investment vehicles closer to other companies and organizations.

Soon we expect to re-launch also services such as Champions, more based on copy-trading of relevant people in the sector.

Andrew | Orion Protocol: A really great initiative, I reckon.

Johan | Hord: Yes, it is clearly a product that is being well received, and people have very high expectations. The launch is getting closer. By the way, we have a whitelist and referral program for the first Viking DAO pool, the Genesis Pool. People can join here! https://app.hord.fi/referrals.

Andrew | Orion Protocol: Q6: Orion Swap Widget, Orion’s first B2B Enterprise Solution, can be installed on any website with seamless global access to the token that fuels their ecosystem and deep aggregated trading liquidity, along with new chains, exchanges, and tokens and a lot more coming up. What is next for your project, and what can the community look forward to?

Mier Rosenschein | Hord: The Hord community should be looking forward to the launch of Viking DAO’s first pool, the Genesis Pool. The Genesis Pool will include 20 of the most promising early-stage crypto projects. The pool will be diverse and offer different types of crypto projects, including gaming, Metaverse, DeFi, and other growing niches in the blockchain world. Also, look out for the Orion widget in our app in the near future.

Andrew | Orion Protocol: Thanks for taking part in the AMA, everyone!