SIGN has unveiled its “Orange Basic Income” (OBI) initiative, a 100 million token incentive program designed to pay users for holding SIGN in self-custody wallets rather than on centralized exchanges. The project describes OBI as a mechanism to reward real on-chain holders and to redefine value rewards for long-term participants by tying payouts directly to wallet balances and duration of custody.
SIGN is the native utility token of the Sign ecosystem, an omnichain attestation and token-distribution infrastructure originally incubated by the EthSign team.
The protocol underpins products including Sign Protocol, TokenTable, and SignPass, which handle on-chain identity, credential verification, airdrops, vesting, and unlocks across Ethereum and other major networks. The token launched in late April 2025 with a total supply of 10 billion, following funding rounds backed by Sequoia Capital and YZi Labs totaling $32 million.
Season 1 Rolls Out With 25 Million SIGN in Rewards
According to the launch materials, Season 1 of OBI will distribute up to 25 million SIGN, with 9 million tokens reserved purely for holding rewards. Participation requires holding SIGN in a self-custody wallet, with tokens held on exchanges or locked in third-party platforms explicitly excluded from eligibility.
Rather than offering a fixed percentage return, SIGN calculates rewards using a time-based formula that tracks on-chain balances over the course of a season.
The team argues this approach abandons the traditional fixed staking model in favour of a mechanism that more closely aligns incentives with decentralization and user control. In its announcement on X, SIGN called the program “Holder Supremacy” and urged users to move tokens to self-custody wallets before each snapshot.
Fully Collateralized and Transparent
To back the scheme, the foundation says all 100 million OBI tokens are locked in a public on-chain custody address, with funds sourced from a prior strategic buyback. SIGN argues this ensures that each quarterly reward is fully collateralized and publicly transparent, a structure aimed at institutional users and regulators wary of opaque token incentive programs.
The initiative arrives amid a broader industry trend of traders shifting away from centralized venues toward self-custody and on-chain liquidity. Analysts are watching how OBI affects metrics such as token velocity, wallet counts, and the proportion of SIGN held off-exchange, as these will reveal whether self-custody incentives meaningfully change investor behavior within DeFi.
The move also lands amid mounting policy debates over hardware wallets, DeFi oversight, and self-custody rights, underscoring how programs that push assets off centralized platforms could become a focal point in the next phase of crypto regulation.
