How Olympus works

Olympus DAO popularized the concept of "protocol-owned liquidity" (POL). The protocol achieves this through its bonding mechanism and staking rewards to control supply expansion. Olympus controls the OHM supply by growing its treasury through bond sales and liquidity provider (LP) fees. The treasury will grow when users buy the bonds or LP tokens available on the platform. Bonding is the process of users buying discounted OHM offered by Olympus in exchange for reserve assets such as DAI, FRAX, LUSD, as well as LP tokens (i.e. OHM-DAI). The purpose of the bonding mechanism is to reduce the liquidity of OHM in other exchanges by limiting the bonding user with a lock-up period of five days, which prevents users from instantly selling the discounted OHM for a risk-free arbitrage. Staking involves users staking OHM into the Olympus treasury to receive rebasing rewards. As OHM's floor price is pegged to DAI, Olympus will mint or burn OHM based on its value relative to DAI. When OHM's value is above 1 DAI, the protocol views that as demand for OHM and will continuously mint OHM as staking rewards and sell them through the bonding process. If OHM is below 1 DAI, the protocol will continuously buy OHM and burn it until all sellers are depleted.

How Olympus makes money

Olympus issues bonds to raise money and earns trading fees from its POL. Since Olympus owns the majority of its liquidity, all trading fees are earned by the protocol itself to improve its treasury reserve. The protocol also generates additional yield with its treasury assets by deploying it to support partner projects and various farming strategies.

How you make money on Olympus

You can generate yield by staking OHM on the platform to earn rebase rewards over time. You can also leverage the bonding mechanism to buy OHM at a discount in exchange for its treasury assets.