OmiseGO

OmiseGO, which was rebranded to OMG Network in June 2020, originated as a subsidiary of Omise, a Thailand-based payment gateway provider founded in 2013 by Jun Hasegawa and Ezra Don Harinsut. Hasegawa and Harinsut started Omise after facing difficulties finding an effective payment gateway for their initial e-commerce venture. Recognizing the potential of blockchain, they launched OmiseGO in 2017, raising $25 million through an Initial Coin Offering (ICO) to develop a decentralized payment network and digital wallet.

The project's primary objective was to address the scalability issues of the Ethereum network, such as high transaction fees and slow processing times. It operates as a Layer 2 scaling solution, which is built on top of the Ethereum blockchain to process transactions more efficiently. The technology, based on a framework called More Viable Plasma (MoreVP), bundles multiple transactions off-chain and submits them as a single transaction to the Ethereum mainnet, which significantly increases throughput and reduces costs. The native utility token of the network, OMG, is used for paying transaction fees.

Vansa Chatikavanij, who joined as Managing Director in 2017, was later promoted to CEO of OmiseGO (now OMG Network). Her background includes work at the World Bank on financial inclusion programs and co-founding a drone imagery company for agriculture. This experience aligned with OmiseGO's mission to provide open financial services. The company's advisory board included notable figures from the blockchain space, such as Vitalik Buterin and Gavin Wood.

In December 2020, Genesis Block Ventures (GBV), a Hong Kong-based venture capital firm, acquired OMG Network from its parent company, SYNQA. Following the acquisition, OMG Network partnered with Enya, a secure multiparty computation provider, to enhance privacy and scalability. This collaboration led to the development of the Boba Network, an Optimistic Rollup scaling solution, and in 2021, it was announced that the OMG Network would effectively be succeeded by the Boba Network, with OMG token holders receiving a new token, BOBA, on a 1:1 basis. This move aimed to revitalize the project's community and utility within the evolving landscape of Ethereum scaling solutions.

Keywords: OmiseGO, OMG Network, Layer 2 scaling, Ethereum, Plasma, MoreVP, Jun Hasegawa, Ezra Don Harinsut, Vansa Chatikavanij, SYNQA, Genesis Block Ventures, Boba Network, cryptocurrency, blockchain, payment gateway, value transfer, ERC-20, ICO, decentralized exchange, financial inclusion, fintech, off-chain transactions, transaction fees, scalability solution, digital wallet, crypto payments, blockchain infrastructure, asset tokenization