How Origin Uses Chainlink Oracles to Secure OUSD

Josh Fraser
Origin Protocol
Published in
5 min readMar 29, 2021

We’re excited to announce that Origin has integrated new Chainlink Oracles live on mainnet and that Chainlink is now the sole provider of real-time price data feeds for OUSD. This is a big deal for the growth and security of Origin Dollar (OUSD), the only stablecoin that earns a yield while it’s still in your wallet.

As part of the integration, Origin is integrating and sponsoring two new Chainlink Price Feeds, USDT-USD and USDC-USD, as well as leveraging Chainlink’s existing DAI-USD Price Feed. These decentralized price oracles ensure that Origin users are minting and/or redeeming OUSD at more accurate exchange rates and with cheaper gas costs. As long as USDT, USDC, and DAI maintain their peg to the dollar, anyone can upgrade any of these stablecoins to OUSD on a 1–1 basis.

Additionally, we’re thrilled to share that the first Chainlink Price Feed for Origin Tokens (OGN-ETH) is now live and available for use by other DeFi protocols wanting to quickly and safely launch support for OGN markets. The OGN-ETH Price Feed is already being used and supported by the C.R.E.A.M. lending platform.

Why Origin Selected Chainlink

We’ve been long-time admirers of the Chainlink community. For years, the Link marines have been renowned for their passion and dedication to making Chainlink successful. However, with the Cambrian explosion of interest and capital flowing into DeFi more recently, the wider blockchain industry has gained a much deeper appreciation for the importance of Chainlink’s technology.

Today, Chainlink oracles are one of the most important linchpins to the security of DeFi, securing billions of dollars in on-chain value. Nearly every significant DeFi protocol is secured by Chainlink oracles, and that demand is only growing as DeFi gains more widespread adoption and protocols opt for the highest standards of data quality and reliability. Like the Chainlink community, we share a passion and commitment for taking DeFi mainstream. At Origin, we’ve always focused on building software that can scale beyond hardcore crypto users to individuals and companies everywhere. Our team has a long history of building software that has been used by hundreds of millions of users, like our R&D engineer Yu Pan, who was one of the original founders of PayPal and the first employee of Youtube.

The critical role that Chainlink plays in the ecosystem became particularly evident for us when we launched Origin Dollar, which is designed to stay pegged to 1 USD through a 1:1 backing with underlying stablecoins. This is trickier than it sounds because these underlying stablecoins are constantly deviating from their own desired 1 USD pegs. While the majority of daily fluctuations are minor, there have been major swings in price that have occurred in the past and are likely to occur again in the future.

In order to mint and redeem the appropriate number of OUSD, our smart contracts need to accurately price the USDT, USDC, and DAI collateral that is entering and exiting the protocol. Since true global price feeds consist of a volume-adjusted aggregate from across all trading environments, Origin needs to make use of a blockchain oracle to obtain aggregated price data generated by premium off-chain data providers. Additionally, as a decentralized protocol, Origin needs to access a decentralized price feed derived from multiple sources, which is also delivered on-chain without any single point of failure.

Until recently, we were relying on a mixture of different oracle providers to provide this data. Since we didn’t have any direct USD price feeds for fetching the price of USDT or USDC, those prices had to be calculated by first fetching the price of ETH and then calculating the exchange rate using ETH oracles. This increased the chance of prices being outdated, causing users to receive less OUSD than they reasonably expected. It also increased the gas costs due to additional on-chain transactions.

We have since solved those problems by switching fully to Chainlink to determine the conversion rates between other stablecoins and OUSD. One benefit of having these direct price feeds is that it simplifies our smart contract code. As renowned security expert, Bruce Schneier is famous for saying, “complexity is the worst enemy of security.” We’re always thrilled when we find ways to simplify our codebase. In the Ethereum world, simpler code also means gas savings, which is now roughly 15% cheaper when minting or redeeming OUSD, thanks to this direct price feed integration.

Chainlink USDT-USD Price Feed Oracle Network

Each Chainlink Price Feed is secured by a decentralized oracle network made up of numerous security reviewed and Sybil-resistant node operators run by leading blockchain DevOps and security teams. These Chainlink nodes collectively source price data from numerous off-chain data aggregators like BraveNewCoin and Amberdata, ensuring each price point has volume-adjusted market coverage across all trading environments. By relying on numerous secure nodes and premium data sources, OUSD users receive highly accurate, available, and tamperproof price data, which is also inherently resistant to various data manipulation attacks such as those carried out via flash loans.

We’re proud to be sponsoring these new Chainlink Price Feeds and hope they will be useful not only to us but also to other DeFi projects that may have similar needs. These new stablecoin oracles will update anytime the price changes by more than 0.5%, or every 24 hours if no deviation event occurred within that timeframe.

We would also like to thank C.R.E.A.M. for sponsoring a new OGN-ETH oracle. C.R.E.A.M. uses Chainlink oracles to value the collateral that is being held for lending purposes, so this new feed was launched as a side-effect of listing OGN on their lending platform. This is the first time live prices for Origin Tokens (OGN) have been available on-chain, and we’re excited to see what new opportunities and future integrations OGN supports.

“By going all-in on Chainlink, we ensure that our users have the highest quality data and most secure oracle infrastructure every time they mint or redeem OUSD. Importantly, Chainlink has given Origin the flexibility to interact directly with oracles built specifically to price certain stablecoin trading pairs, leading to decreased on-chain costs and a more accurate minting/redeeming process,” said Origin Protocol Co-founder Matthew Liu.

About Chainlink

Chainlink is the most widely used and secure way to power universally connected smart contracts. With Chainlink, developers can connect any blockchain with high-quality data sources from other blockchains as well as real-world data. Managed by a global, decentralized community of hundreds of thousands of people, Chainlink is introducing a fairer model for contracts. Its network currently secures billions of dollars in value for smart contracts across the decentralized finance (DeFi), insurance and gaming ecosystems, among others.

Chainlink is trusted by hundreds of organizations to deliver definitive truth via secure, reliable data feeds. To learn more, visit chain.link, subscribe to the Chainlink newsletter, and follow @chainlink on Twitter.

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Published in Origin Protocol

Origin Protocol is bringing NFTs and DeFi to the masses. Origin’s flagship products are our NFT platform, which has supported numerous high-profile NFT drops, and Origin Dollar (OUSD), the first stablecoin that earns a yield automatically in user wallets.

Written by Josh Fraser

Co-founder at Origin. Previously founded EventVue, Torbit & Forage. Engineer & rock climber.

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