Olympus (OHM)
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Price of Olympus today in real time
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Historical price evolution of Olympus
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In February 2021, a pseudonymous developer known as "Zeus", with experience in arbitrage and equity trading, launched Olympus DAO on Ethereum alongside a completely anonymous team whose members adopted mythological pseudonyms such as Apollo and Hades. The project's fundamental proposition argued that stablecoins function as digital dollars that lose purchasing power, whilst OHM would position itself as a decentralised reserve currency capable of maintaining purchasing power without being pegged to any fiat currency.
On 23rd March 2021, OHM was launched on Ethereum's mainnet, without ICO or presale, distributed through bonding and a small initial airdrop to Discord members. The staking mechanism offered APYs of 7,000-8,000%, generating a viral phenomenon in DeFi under the slogan "(3,3)", based on a game theory that held that everyone benefits if everyone stakes. In April 2021, the bond mechanism was introduced, allowing users to purchase OHM at a discount by delivering assets such as DAI, FRAX or liquidity tokens to the treasury, whilst the protocol retained the liquidity (Protocol Owned Liquidity, POL), eliminating dependence on external liquidity providers. This model became a reference point for what would be called "DeFi 2.0".
In September 2021, Olympus Pro was launched, a bonding-as-a-service offering for other DeFi protocols, with initial partners including Frax Finance, Alchemix, Synapse and BarnBridge, capturing over 9.35 million USD in liquidity in its first two cohorts. In November 2021, OHM reached its all-time high of approximately 1,400 USD, whilst dozens of forks such as Wonderland and Klima DAO replicated the model on other blockchains, with the combined ecosystem reaching a capitalisation of thousands of millions USD.
During 2022, the model collapsed due to unsustainable APYs that forced emission reductions, causing OHM to fall more than 99% from its all-time high. The DeFi community debated whether Olympus had been a legitimate experiment or a Ponzi scheme. In October 2022, an exploit of the bond contract occurred where a hacker used a custom redemption function to drain funds, although losses were limited.
In 2023, Olympus pivoted towards a more sustainable model with the reduction of staking emissions towards 0%, the introduction of Cooler Loans (fixed-rate loans without price liquidation using gOHM as collateral), Yield Repurchase Facility (the protocol uses treasury yield to repurchase OHM) and Range Bound Stability. By 2025, Olympus maintains an active treasury demonstrating resilience during market downturns, with Cooler Loans recording zero liquidations, whilst the protocol continues developing decentralised monetary infrastructure.
Olympus functions as a decentralised monetary infrastructure protocol that operates on Ethereum with a distinctive model called Protocol Owned Liquidity (POL). Instead of relying on third parties to provide liquidity through traditional incentives, Olympus accumulates assets directly in its treasury through the bonding mechanism: users deliver stablecoins such as DAI, FRAX or USDC to the protocol and receive discounted OHM tokens in return, subject to a 5-day vesting period. This backed treasury establishes a minimum price below which OHM cannot fall without the protocol itself automatically repurchasing tokens from the market.
OHM tokens can be locked through staking to obtain sOHM (which applies automatic rebasing) or converted into gOHM (governance OHM, without rebasing, used in other DeFi protocols). The protocol incorporates the Yield Repurchase Facility, which uses yields generated by the treasury to systematically repurchase OHM from the secondary market. Additionally, Cooler Loans allows gOHM holders to request loans in DAI of up to 95% of the backing value of their OHM in the treasury, with a fixed rate of 0.5% and without liquidation risk due to price variations, as the collateral is based on treasury backing and not on the token's market price.
Data verified against external sources. Some values may have changed since the last update.