IotaOrigin Joins Touchpoint Open Builders Program

Tokenized Commodities as a New Asset Class in DeFi

IotaOrigin is both a traceability system that uses IOTA to ensure compliance with international minerals laws and a DeFi platform for trade in critical commodities for the energy transition built on Shimmer.

A recent article on the IOTA Foundation blog explored IotaOrigin’s traceability system and its benefits for trading conflict-free raw materials; now, as IotaOrigin is officially welcomed into the Touchpoint Open Builders Program, we’d like to share some insights into its DeFi platform on Shimmer.

IotaOrigin’s DeFi platform uses fractionalizable financial NFTs to represent real-world assets (RWAs) which are tradeable in NFTpools to ensure sufficient liquidity for real-world assets and commodities on-chain. We’ll let them explain more in their own words.

IotaOrigin introduces itself

DeFi is increasingly encroaching on all aspects of the economy, leading to the tokenization of everything. To transform the “real” economy, it’s important to bring real-world assets on-chain and build sustainably-growing ecosystems based on real yield opportunities. We take the infrastructure of fractionalized NFTs and liquidity mining currently used for NFT art collections and adapt it for distributing yield from RWAs. The tokenization of RWAs will multiply the overall market cap of cryptocurrencies but will also lead to a fractionalization of market shares in increasingly specific sectors.

IotaOrigin's mission is to be a frontrunner in the tokenized commodities space and connect two upcoming megatrends: real-world assets adoption and critical commodity sourcing. We are therefore positioning ourselves as a first mover in the specialized field of commodity procurement and its settlement via a DeFi platform. This will impact not only the commodity sector (by opening up a new asset class for liquidity providers) but also the future development of the crypto ecosystem in the area of handling collateral and treasuries based on tokenized commodities and yield-bearing RWAs for DAOs and protocols. In this context, not only does our tracking system serve the purpose of meeting international regulatory requirements, but it also serves as an Oracle to provide the bridge for transparent and trustworthy RWAs. This will unleash the on-chain commodity sector, embodied in our DeFi commodity exchange platform.

Our IotaOrigin platform is designed to be modularly adaptable. Thus, through our financial NFT factory, we enable users to build their own financial products, such as fractionalizable NFT ETFs backed by various tokenized commodities, DAO2DAO contracts, and interest rate swaps to help DAOs manage their collateral in treasury.

Furthermore, it is possible to set up NFT pools, enabling higher liquidity for new financial NFT asset classes as well as new business models for utility art NFTs. For example, it is possible to launch new business models for collections, such as creator-owned liquidity collections where the artist locks the tokens from the mint in an NFT pool. This way, the creator receives the swapping fees while the community can use a liquid collection with a strong floor. In combination with financial NFTs, the utilities and business models are limitless. In this way, IotaOrigin not only provides an innovative platform but also stays innovative over time.

Shimmer provides the perfect infrastructure for this use case. The performance of the Tangle and feeless transactions enable us to gain a competitive advantage in the new asset class of fractionalized financial NFTs and NFTpools.

IotaOrigin was founded at RWTH Aachen University and continues to work within its innovation-promoting environment. The company is headquartered in North Rhine-Westphalia, Germany, though the team and its partners are represented on four continents. Find out more about our project on the IotaOrigin website.

We’re currently preparing for the start of the platform, which will launch exclusively on Shimmer, as well as for the first RWAs and digital products. We are also launching $AUREUS and converting the platform into a DAO. We welcome developers and community members who want to join us in turning the commodities industry upside down while exposing DeFi to it!”

From working on a trusted supply chain for conflict-free resources to creating a DeFi platform for tokenized commodities is quite a journey, and we’re excited to host this evolution on Shimmer. To explore this fascinating project in more depth, alongside the blog post linked at the beginning of this article, why not check out the IotaOrigin Twitter channel and Discord.

About Touchpoint

IotaOrigin joins the Touchpoint Open Builders Program, offering participants a community of like-minded builders, direct access to experts, knowledge, and general support to launch and scale the next generation of decentralized applications and infrastructure on the Shimmer network. You can learn more about how Touchpoint works and how to become a part of it here.

About Shimmer

Shimmer is an L1 innovation network providing the core building blocks for a scalable, modular multi-chain architecture. Similar to the IOTA network, Shimmer is built on a UTXO-based parallelized, directed acyclic graph (DAG), guaranteeing higher scalability than conventional Blockchains. At the same time, Shimmer ensures interoperability and composability of L2 smart contract chains, capable of connecting any type of L2 smart contract chain anchored to it. With its unique tokenization framework, Shimmer will become a multi-asset ledger for feeless minting and transfer of native assets without middlemen or crippling gas fees.

The native token of Shimmer is SMR, which serves as the network’s economic backbone, facilitating value transactions and interactions within the Shimmer ecosystem. Shimmer users use the SMR token to launch new DeFi applications, DEXs, NFTs, DAOs, and other dApps.

Disclaimer

Every project that participates in Touchpoint is given the opportunity to introduce itself in its own words. Statements made by projects are not verified by Touchpoint, Shimmer, or the IOTA Foundation and should not be taken as an endorsement. Individuals are advised to always conduct their own due diligence when engaging with any crypto projects.