Why Investors Should Pay Attention to OmiseGO

Decentralization is a word that receives a ton of lip service in the blockchain community, but some companies are actually doing an amazing job getting their actions to back their words. OmiseGO is one such company.

Omise was founded in 2013 as a payment services company, and OmiseGO is an extension platform that operates separately. It is important you not confuse the two.

As an ERC-20 token that operates a smart contract platform, OMG is a high-performing proof-of-stake protocol with a massive mission to bring decentralization to trading.

What Need is OmiseGO Fulfilling
Ripple was originally seen to be the top solution in the payment providers sector, but its lack of decentralization has shown that there are significant downsides to their operating model. OmiseGO aims to become a decentralized Ripple, but operating a high-powered decentralized exchange (DEX), and has already become the top name in on-chain and cross-chain transactions.

With decentralization and the ability to connect fragmented payment processors, OmiseGO would also be able to help the unbanked gain access to the banking system.

There is currently a massive gap in the legacy financial network, since payment networks (such as SWIFT) have unilateral control over the flow of financial services on their network. Paypal and Venmo have proven to have similar centralization risks, even if they bring some competition to the table.

Not only would OmiseGO decentralize payment processing and create a DEX, but they have released a software development kit (SDK) to enable the creation of new applications and wallets on their system.

Meet the OmiseGO Team
OmiseGO is run by a well-reputed team (headed by Jun Hasegawa) who in the past have been referred to as “Fintech Rockstars” by Forbes. Their advisory board is packed with big names like Vitalin Buterin, Gavin Wood, and Joseph Poon, to name a few.

By contributing $100,000 to the Ethereum foundations DEVGRANTS program, they have indicated a strong commitment to the future of Ethereum and their investment within the community.

Every token needs to have its utility, and OMG is paid to holders in exchange for validating transactions. These holders have the right to confirm blocks, and effectively work as income producing assets in the course of the operation of the network.

The incentives here lie in the value of the network. The more transactions that need to be validated, the more token holders will need to confirm transactions, and therefore the more money is likely to be distributed to OMG holders in exchange for their confirmations.

OmiseGO’s Recent Performance
OmiseGO is now trading at around $3.30 USD, which is down an incredible amount from its high above $24 USD in January. This has been typical of many assets in the industry, but could be a sign that OMG is oversold.

There has also been a lot of news about OMG recently. In July a partnership with Status was announced that would result with the integration of the services of the two companies. Status is an open source dapp (decentralized app) for phones and browsers, and was one of the first clients to be developed on the Ethereum blockchain. Their core project is to link mobile chat and social media by using Ethereum tokenization.

With the goal of ultimate decentralization, OmiseGO has its work cut out for it. Although founded in 2013, they are still in the early stages of their expansions. More good news came in early June, when OMG was listed on Unocoin, one of the top asian exchanges located in India.

OmiseGO’s dream of connecting all the disparate financial systems and rails gives it the potential to become the DEX of the future. The question is whether they can displace the already dominant Ripple by going in a different strategic direction and sticking to their core tenets of decentralization and trustless networks.