The deposit in your Orchid account is required to accept service and is verified by providers. The deposit prevents double spending and, in general, the deposit maintains good standing on the network.
The size of the deposit determines the face value of the tickets sent from the user to the provider. The face value refers to the amount of OXT that a provider claims when they receive a winning off-chain nanopayment. Currently the face value is set to equal half of the deposit.
When an Orchid account is created, the deposit is locked and cannot be withdrawn from the account until it is unlocked and a 24 hour cooling period has passed.
Deposit Size
Market conditions are constantly changing. This includes fluctuations in network fees (Ethereum gas amounts) and changes in the conversion rate from the currency held in the account to the currency to pay network fees (OXT -> ETH). When the account efficiency gets low, it is a good idea to add additional OXT to the deposit of the account to increase the efficiency.
The dApp has an efficiency slider that displays the amount of deposit necessary to achieve that efficiency.
Increasing the size of the deposit increases the efficiency of the account by increasing the face value of the tickets.