FAQ
Oxygen is a decentralized platform for peer-to-peer lending and repo based on Ethereum blockchain. It provides an opportunity for a range of market participants to generate income, liquidity, or hedge, and take varied investment views on the cryptocurrency market.
Oxygen platform offers matching of two counterparty orders and provides user friendly interface for creating repo deals within Ethereum blockchain. Oxygen retains best practices from tried and tested solutions for traditional lending and repo market such as the Global Master Repurchase Agreement (GMRA) protocol.
For more information please take a look at our website or read our White paper.
A repo is an agreement to sell securities and repurchase them at a specified future date (“maturity”) at an agreed-upon price. Economically repo can be thought of as a loan secured against collateral, except the collateral is not pledged, it is sold and repurchased at maturity. Ownership gives the Lender greater control over the collateral.
In a Crypto Repo transaction one party borrows crypto assets from another party and commits to return these assets with interest at a future date. The Borrower provides crypto assets to the Lender as collateral, creating a secured digital transaction.
We are a team of financial and software engineers who are passionate about building better, more complete crypto markets the right way.
We bring together experience of building scalable crypto-trading platforms (Changelly with over 1.6 million users) and expertise in real financial markets (Our CEO has 16 years of experience working in top investment banks like Goldman Sachs and Merrill Lynch as a managing director).
In addition to our own experience, Oxygen has partnered with repo academics and practitioners who have influenced development of the “real” financial assets lending and borrowing. repo markets (e.g. Richard Comotto, the author of the ICMA’s “Guide to Best Practice in the European Repo market”). This will help ensure that Oxygen platform combines the best of both worlds - real financial markets and crypto asset markets.
Oxygen is in the application process for being regulated under the Gibraltar DLT Regulation.
Compliance with Regulatory principles and requirements of Gibraltar Financial Services Commission will give Oxygen's clients confidence that they are protected. Oxygen always keeps interests and needs of its clients in mind.
The Oxygen system development and Gibraltar regulatory registration have been fully funded by the owners using seed capital. We are confident in the need of Oxygen Crypto Repo solution for the broad cryptocurrency market and hence have invested significant funds to gather a team of world class professionals who have progressed substantially in the development of high quality product.
Oxygen tokens (OXG) will be issued during Pre Sale and Token Sale only.
OXG tokens will be used as utility tokens to pay platform membership and transaction fees. Redeemed tokens could be sold to other people on the crypto exchanges.
Initially Oxygen platform will allow lending and borrowing ERC20 crypto assets which amount to approximately 33% of the overall crypto assets market capitalization (crypto assets market capitalization as of July 1, 2018 is ~$236B).
To accept non-Ethereum based assets Oxygen will require solutions that will work across different blockchain technologies; currently there are no widespread solutions on the market which provide cross-chain functionality.
Oxygen monitors ongoing projects and will eventually work closely with them to deliver even broader assets universe to our users.We have already received approval of the financial industry as well as crypto enthusiasts, with media talking about us (Wall Street Journal, Bloomberg, Forbes, Business Insider). We have participated in the industry events such as one organised by Markit with our CEO being on the panel alongside Jupiter Asset Management, State Street, and other industry leaders.
We believe that Oxygen will benefit most of the crypto community, providing value for active trades, miners, large cryptocurrency holders, and funds, among others.
At the most basic level, the Oxygen platform is a place where borrowers and lenders of crypto assets meet. Users place borrow or lend orders to the platform, other users match these orders, making repo transactions. All order and transaction information resides at the Ethereum blockchain.
Your collateral is stored within a multi-signature smart contract, which means we never own your funds. Furthermore we do not have access to your private keys, as their management is governed by 3rd party cryptographic wallet software metamask. You can always interact with the smart contracts directly without using our front-end web application or API.
The technology used to build Ethereum is secured by the laws of mathematics, and is constantly being improved upon by the open-source community. Our contract is regularly audited internally and by third parties.
You can already experience our Alpha version.
First you will need to register on the platform using your email or through a social network plugin. We will ask you to confirm your email by sending you a welcoming confirmation notification.
When we go live, you will need to go through a KYC procedure. We will ask you to provide a photocopy of your valid passport, driver license, or another government issued ID. We will also ask you to verify your address by providing documents that show it clearly, like a bank statement or a utility bill.
Additionally, we will perform a background check on your Ethereum address for Anti-Money Laundering and Counter-Terrorism Funding (AML/CFT) purposes and to verify sources of your funds.
For the time being we are working with metamask browser wallet; you can look through your active addresses on your profile page under the “your ethereum address” tab. To add a new address, simply make it active in your metamask. We will send a confirmation message to your metamask to confirm your ethereum address.
Currently you can borrow or lend Ethereum and ERC20-based cryptocurrencies using the Oxygen platform. You can either scan through current active orders within the order book or submit your own order with desired parameters.
In addition to order placement and order matching, you can browse through live trades to analyze current market conditions. You can also manage your orders and trades, make repayments, and provide additional collateral if needed.
You can borrow assets for funding and liquidity purposes or to go short if you believe an asset will depreciate in price, or you could borrow some Ether for participating in a token sale. Basically you can use a loan for any personal or business purpose.
It’s easy! You just go to “Create new order”, select a side (do you want to lend or borrow?), fill out order parameters, and submit an order to the funding book.
You can set any payment rate you like for your order (which is stated in annual terms), however, be aware of the market model and supply/demand forces at work. This means that you probably won’t find any counterparty to accept your terms and match your order if you set a high enough payment rate. Just look through active orders of other participants and decide for yourself.
The fee has a variable (percentage) and a fixed component. The fixed part of each fee is nominated in Ether and is converted to given assets.
Currently there are four basic service fees:It depends on the parameters of your order. In general, orders with higher payment rates and higher haircut values will tend to execute slower. Market forces are at play here. In later releases we will add a fully automated matching engine with an auction mechanism, which will reduce the time needed for your order to match significantly. Anyways you can always hit an existing order from the market.
A haircut is the difference between the market value of a collateral asset and the purchase price paid at the start of a repo deal. This is a mean by which repo markets set margin on repo deals to protect lender from possible borrower default. Consider the following example: Haircut of 20% implies that for $100 of provided collateral the borrower will receive only $80 worth of the loan.
Critical haircut defines the minimum market value the collateral can reach before the closeout procedure will be executed and your trade will be terminated.
There are several ways your trade may be closed out:
If you are a borrower, you should monitor your transactions closely to make sure that the current haircut on your collateral never falls below the critical haircut value. We have a system of checks and balances in place to help you avoid trade termination called maintenance haircut (analogous to maintenance margin in classical margin financing) . This means that whenever the value of your collateral falls below maintenance haircut value the platform will notify you and will ask to provide additional collateral to raise the current haircut value above the initial haircut.
All loans on the Oxygen platform are secured. This means that the borrower provides collateral for the loan.
You can specify any maturity you want depending on your needs. We have a set of predefined values to simplify order matching. However, be vary of the fact that this is an approximate value since we calculate all maturities within the blockchain in Ethereum blocks. Current Kovan Testnet block length averages to about 8 seconds, and Ethereum mainnet block length is about 14.5 seconds.
Currently there are no minimums or maximums. However, when going live, we will set a minimum order amount to make placing an order economically viable.
It's simple, just log on to the Oxygen platform and make repayment of your loan from your metamask wallet.
When you borrow funds you provide collateral which is securely stored within the Ethereum smart contract until the end of the repo term. When you pay out the loan and the end of the deal, the contract automatically returns the collateral to your wallet.
In this case smart contract will trigger a default event. Your collateral will be transferred to the counterparty to cover the loan amount and you will receive any excess collateral after the deduction of loan amount and any applicable fees.
No, as soon as the trade is active there is no way to cancel the transaction. However, If you are a borrower you can repay the loan prior to its maturity and receive your collateral back.