Origin Protocol is building protocols for the decentralized marketplaces of the future. We are doing this to create a fairer world and to take power away from centralized monopolies. We want marketplace participants to be able to self organize and have the liberty to transact with whoever they want without a middleman capturing an outsized commission. Much of the focus on cryptocurrencies and blockchain technology has been on price action, which isn’t entirely a bad thing, but we must not lose sight of the social good that these technologies can create. Decentralized systems may offer benefits for gig economy workers, the unbanked, and people all around the world.

The Origin team and its global community of developers and partners are working hard on a JavaScript library and a smart contract library. All of this development is open source and done completely in the open. We encourage you to join our Discord to get more involved. Our goal is to enable individuals and organizations to easily build decentralized marketplace applications. We have a live demo up on testnet right now. It is fully decentralized and it serves as a proof of concept and a starting point for other projects to build on.

So far, over thirty projects have committed to building on our technology. We are pleased to announce that ServisHero will be building their DApp on Origin Protocol. ServisHero is a “gig economy” marketplace committed to providing economic opportunities to the hundreds of millions of independent workers, many of whom are unbanked, in developing nations. ServisHero is an existing business with hundreds of thousands of users in Southeast Asia. They are backed by some of Southeast Asia’s leading venture capital funds (including Golden Gate Ventures, an early investor in Omise, the company behind OmiseGo) and conglomerates. ServisHero has partnered with leading companies like Grab, Yes Mobile, Allianz, and more. They’ve also worked with the Malaysian government through the eRezeki program to provide job opportunities to low income households through their sharing economy platform. Their goal is to use blockchain technology and decentralization to improve and expand their business. We are very excited that Southeast Asia’s leading mobile services marketplace has decided to build on our technologies.

It is our belief that Southeast Asia and Asia at-large will be ground zero for cryptocurrency adoption. Users in these regions have leapfrogged credit card systems and gone straight to mobile payments as the dominant alternative to cash. Paying with an ERC-20 token via an app on a smartphone will not require as much as a shift in mindset in these countries. Outside of Asia, in Kenya, half of all economic activity is conducted with M-Pesa, an SMS payment protocol. Mobile payments have impressive market penetration in many emerging markets around the world. Cryptocurrencies have an opportunity to serve the billions of people who don’t have access to traditional banking services and who may not even have personal identification papers.

With the emergence of blockchain we couldn’t ignore the transformative impact this technology could have to our network of service providers and consumers. Nowhere else can blockchain have such dramatic impact on the lives of people than in the developing regions of the world, like Southeast Asia. Given Origin’s similar social impact goals, it made sense for us to work closely together with them on our ambitious goal to become a decentralised and automated services marketplace.

— Karl Loo, founder of ServisHero

ServisHero is one of the first great examples of an established, highly successful marketplace migrating to the blockchain. We’re excited to partner with Karl, Josh, and their forward-thinking team to take their business to the next level. More importantly, we look forward to our partnership positively impacting the hundreds of thousands of users and service workers in the Southeast Asia region that will be served by the new decentralized version of their marketplace.

— Matthew Liu, co-founder of Origin

We were introduced to ServisHero from our friend Joshua Teng, VP of Engineering at ServisHero. The Origin team immediately saw a potential for collaboration — it was clear our interests and values were aligned. We have enjoyed collaborating with them so far and this is only the beginning of the journey for us!

Stay tuned for more news from Origin Protocol!

Learn more about Origin:

Buy Origin Tokens (OGN): binance.com

Buy and sell on mobile: originprotocol.com/mobile

And on the web: shoporigin.com

Learn more on our website: originprotocol.com

Learn more about ServisHero & ServisHero Coin:

If you are looking to build a decentralized marketplace or a traditional business that wants to migrate to the blockchain, get in touch here. We are hiring developers, please see our GitHub and contact us if you have Solidity experience or a desire to learn!