OMG Network — formerly known as OmiseGO — offers infrastructure that allows "extremely efficient applications" to be built on top of the Ethereum network. The project claims to allow transactions to take place with high throughput and in a peer-to-peer fashion while spanning applications, geographies and asset classes.
OMG Network serves as a Layer-2 scaling solution, meaning that its infrastructure sits on top of Ethereum. The architecture aims to combine transactions and to validate them through a smaller child-chain before returning them to the main Ethereum network for validation. This approach enables thousands of transactions to be processed per second — and OMG Network claims the costs associated with these payments end up being two-thirds cheaper than using the Ethereum blockchain outright. According to developers, this isn't at the expense of security either, since that's offered by the Ethereum network.
OMG, which is the token associated with the protocol, is used to pay for transaction fees.
OMG price and tokenomics
A token sale was held for OMG in 2017, raising $25 million. A total of 140,245,398 tokens were created — all of which are in circulation.
A high point for OMG's price came in January 2018, when a single token was worth $28.35. Although the cryptocurrency traded at a lower level in the years that followed, it has experienced spikes when the markets have turned bullish. The services provided by OMG Network also came into sharp focus in 2021, when transaction fees on the Ethereum blockchain hit record highs — prompting users to seek cheaper alternatives and more scalable solutions.
About the founders
OMG Network was the brainchild of Omise, a company that provides a payment gateway focused on markets in Thailand, Japan and Singapore. The blockchain protocol was founded by Jun Hasegawa and Donnie Harinsut.