What is Origin Protocol?
Origin is building a platform that enables the creation of many decentralized marketplaces, allowing buyers and sellers to connect and transact directly on the blockchain. The company is building a set of protocols, developer libraries, and a decentralized application using the Ethereum blockchain and IPFS, with an initial focus on disrupting sharing economy marketplaces.
Origin’s mission is to reduce or remove transaction fees, promote open and transparent commerce, redistribute value more fairly to buyers and sellers, and empower the 2 billion currently unbanked individuals around the world to participate in digital marketplaces.
The Origin founders have experience running VC-backed companies and shipping consumer products at massive scale:
- Matt Liu was the 3rd PM at YouTube (acquired by Google) and VP PM at Qwiki (acquired by Yahoo) and Bonobos (acquired by Walmart). He has an MS and BS from Stanford.
- Josh Fraser started coding at the age of 10. Prior to Origin, he co-founded three other venture-backed companies: EventVue, Torbit (acquired by Walmart Labs) & Forage.
Origin has raised over $35 million (USD) from many prominent investors, including:
- Crypto funds like Pantera Capital, FBG, BlockTower, Smart Contract Japan and Hashed
- Traditional VCs like Foundation Capital and KBW Ventures
Origin has also built an extremely talented team of world-class engineers, including:
- Cuong Do: early PayPal and YouTube engineer who went on to lead Dropbox’s engineering team in NYC
- Franck Chastignol: early PayPal and YouTube engineer who went on to work at a startup that was acquired by Dropbox
- Origin is an open-source project and does all of its development and communication out in the open as well as a public engineering meeting each week.
Origin has signed over 40 partners to biuld on top of its platform.