SIGN’s 100M ‘Orange Basic Income’ pushes DeFi toward self-custody

SIGN’s 100M “Orange Basic Income” locks rewards on-chain and pays higher yields to wallets that keep SIGN in self-custody instead of on centralized exchanges.

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 way to “reward real on-chain holders” and to “redefine value rewards for long-term holders” by tying payouts directly to wallet balances and how long tokens remain under self-custody.

SIGN is the native utility token of the Sign ecosystem, an omni-chain attestation and token-distribution infrastructure originally incubated by the EthSign team. The protocol underpins products like Sign Protocol, TokenTable and SignPass, which handle on-chain identity, credential verification, airdrops, vesting and unlocks across Ethereum and other major networks. SIGN launched its token in late April 2025 with a total supply of 10 billion, following several funding rounds backed by venture investors and a large community airdrop allocation. The project is now positioning SIGN as a long-term governance and incentive asset for builders, institutions and the “Orange Dynasty” community aligned around self-custody and transparent on-chain distribution rails.

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. “To participate, users must hold their SIGN in a self-custody wallet,” one explainer states, adding that “tokens held on exchanges or locked in third-party platforms do not qualify.” The token itself trades under the ticker SIGN, with live pricing and market data available on its dedicated page in the crypto.news market-cap section.

OBI is explicitly framed as a break with yield products that resemble traditional staking. Rather than promising a fixed percentage return, SIGN calculates rewards using a time-based formula that tracks on-chain balances over the course of a season, favoring wallets that commit to holding through volatility while avoiding exchange custody. The team argues this approach “abandons the traditional fixed staking model” in favor of a mechanism that more closely aligns incentives with decentralization and user control.

In its announcement thread on X, SIGN called the program “Holder Supremacy,” urging users to “secure your eligibility by moving your $SIGN to a self-custody wallet” before each snapshot. The launch comes as DeFi protocols from lending platforms to liquid-staking services race to distinguish themselves with more transparent reward structures, and mirrors a wider industry trend of traders shifting away from centralized venues toward self-custody and on-chain liquidity.

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. This, SIGN argues, 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 and DeFi yield promises.

Analysts are now watching how OBI affects metrics like token velocity, wallet counts and the proportion of SIGN held off exchanges, as these will reveal whether self-custody incentives meaningfully change investor behavior. At the same time, the move lands amid mounting policy debates over hardware wallets, DeFi oversight and self-custody rules, underscoring how programs that push assets off centralized platforms could become a focal point in the next phase of crypto regulation.