Celsius is a custodial wallet which provides users a way to earn yield on their crypto. The company behind the wallet was formed in 2017 during the ICO boom where they raised approximately $50 million USD. Since launching in 2017 Celsius has grown to have ~$17 billion USD in assets under management (AUM), 1.5 million registered users, 500k active users, thousands of corporate accounts and has paid a billion dollars in yield to their community. Celsius has also launched CelsiusX which is a strategic DeFi play by the company.

Olympus is a new Decentralized Finance protocol running on Ethereum. It’s goal is to create a free-floating global reserve currency backed by a basket of assets. The native token, OHM, will always be backed by at least 1 DAI (a USD stablecoin). OHM aims to one day be a stable currency relative to a basket of goods which is a significant departure from the current stablecoins which are stable relative to a fiat currency. This "basket of goods" comes from the assets owned by the Olympus DAO in it's treasury which set a floor price on the value of each OHM token. Note that OHM is backed, not pegged - the price of OHM ≥ 1, not == 1. This means the price of OHM can rise arbitrarily but cannot fall to 0 assuming there are no fatal flaws in the conception of the protocol or the implementation of it. Pegged currencies maintain their value according to an external benchmark, like the US dollar, which means they inherit all of the problems of that external benchmark. Backed currencies do not rely on an external benchmark but have an internal treasury which guarantees the value of the currency.

Impermanent loss is a new concept born in the world of DeFi. Impermanent loss is the idea that liquidity providers can end up with less wealth (measured in US dollar terms) providing liquidity compared to holding assets. This happens because of the mechanics of liquidity pools which will be explained below.

Liquidity in the crypto ecosystem is currently fractured across layer 1s, layer 2s and dexes. This fracture is growing exponentially as more and more projects come online. For example, Uniswap exists on Ethereum mainnet and Polygon. Uniswap is currently running versions 2 and 3. Sushiswap runs on mainnet, BSC, Arbitrum and more. Avalanche and Fantom have Ethereum compatibility which means they compete for the same pool of liquidity as well. More and more L2s and alternative L1s are coming online in search of liquidity and this is causing liquidity to fracture. As this combinatorial explosion happens, liquidity becomes harder and more expensive to source which creates a worse experience for liquidity providers (LPs) and end users.