Olympus

In March 2021, Olympus announced an initial 68,260 OHM: 50,000 for eligible Discord participants and 18,260 for starting liquidity. The launch post described a soft alpha built around bonds and staking, with manual components and extraordinary projected APYs driven by staged liquidity deposits.

Bonding changed who owned liquidity. Instead of paying outside LPs forever, Olympus accepted DAI, ETH or LP positions into its treasury and issued discounted OHM over time. The protocol retained those assets and the liquidity positions they represented, creating the idea later called protocol-owned liquidity.

`(3,3)` compressed this system into a meme: if participants staked or bonded rather than sold, the game’s combined payoff appeared higher. But rebases increased OHM units through minting. A larger balance was not the same thing as more treasury assets per holder or guaranteed purchasing power.

The late-2021 V2 migration replaced wsOHM’s role with gOHM and prepared an on-chain governance route. gOHM does not rebase its displayed balance; it wraps an amount of OHM that changes with the protocol’s staking index. Migration documentation separated legacy OHM and sOHM contracts from the new token addresses.

Current legacy documentation now states that rebasing staking is no longer active. A 2026 governance process also moved to disable the old V1 migration route and burn gOHM left in that contract. The modern gOHM story is governance and collateral, not an endlessly compounding APY screen.

Olympus owns and controls its treasury reserves and liquidity positions. Current documentation describes a streamlined reserve base held mainly as sDAI/USDS-related assets for market operations and Cooler lending. That balance sheet belongs to the protocol; an OHM holder has no documented unilateral right to withdraw a proportional basket.

Cooler V2 turns backing into credit instead. A borrower escrows gOHM and receives USDS from the treasury. The documented loan is perpetual at 0.5% APR, has no price-based liquidation and requires at least 1,000 USDS debt. Origination LTV, interest and default thresholds are governance parameters, not permanent token rights.

No oracle liquidation does not mean no default. Interest accrues continuously; when unpaid interest exceeds a set threshold, the position can default and its gOHM is burned. Looping borrowed USDS back into gOHM can amplify exposure, while delegation rules decide whether escrowed collateral carries voting power.

OHM has no fixed maximum. In v3, the MINTR module wraps mint and burn authority and policies receive bounded permissions through the Kernel. Cross-chain bridges burn or lock on one side and mint or release on the other; Ethereum remains canonical for net-new protocol supply.

The Emissions Manager can open Convertible Deposit auctions when OHM trades above a governance-set minimum premium to treasury backing. Conversion mints the offered OHM, while undersold capacity may move to a bond market. This is a controlled sale for reserves, distinct from the old rebase promise and from Cooler lending.

gOHM holders can delegate votes, propose actions above a percentage threshold and send approved bundles through Governor Bravo and Timelock. Yet the role map still assigns admin, custodian, bridge, operator and emergency powers across DAO and Emergency multisigs. The emergency address can veto proposals and shut down designated systems.

The documentation itself exposes transition scars. Its RBS-specific page says RBS is disabled and replaced by YRF purchases and Emissions Manager sales, while broader token and contract pages still speak as if RBS currently enforces a range. Reading the narrow operational page prevents an obsolete mechanism from becoming an imagined redemption floor.