Well that’s it kids, the DAO is dead. It was taken out back and given the Kristi Noem, the Old Yeller, it’s over.
So instead of playing games and making more PTBR’s (PoolTogether Budget Requests) let’s just call them PTBBR’s (PoolTogether By Brendan’s Rule).
I imagine my role as a Community Advocate has come to an end, bye bye slick green font 
– you were so cool. But while the DAO is dead and the community will follow now that it has no power, let’s look back on all the great things the PoolTogether community accomplished.
It’s 2021, the $POOL airdrop changed peoples lives and the community became a flurry around the only true Savings game in DeFi. But Gas was bonkers and voting in governance was prohibitive.
The PoolTogether Inc. Team and the community worked together to create a gas friendly option when voting on Ethereum cost an arm and a leg to cast that vote. Sometimes it was more than $100 to cast a governance vote. This was the creation of staking $POOL pool and this gave more $POOL to those who believed in governance.
The Community wasn’t afraid to experiment, early on by introducing a $BADGER pool that got some $POOL drip. This was well before any fallout Badger encountered and presented a unique opportunity and engagement across 2 communities. This laid ground work to engage the PoolTogether Community, we had power, we were going to make this our protocol with the help and gentle direction from the Devs.
We were engaged, and some of the community noticed an issue with the initial airdrop. The community united and worked out who was shorted. And the community built a merkle claim distribution to right any wrongs felt by those that were slighted in the initial airdrop.
The Community was also willing to get experimental and jump into the NFT hype train. Through soliciting various Artists, the community put together a NFT prize pool for some select NFTs and some IRL pieces.
Exercising that gentle direction, PoolTogether Inc. came to the community with the idea to diversify the treasury through Venture Capital. The Community liked the idea but not all the VC players. Ultimately the Community exercised it’s voice and brought in a VC of their choosing to be included in the diversification.
We were heard, the protocol was becoming a community team and PoolTogether Inc., it was time for a Grants Committee. And this grants committee would be unlike any other in the space, a budget determined by the community and a committee wholly run by the community. PoolTogether was DAO-ifying fast and loose.
With the Community fully enamored, PoolTogether Inc. saw an opportunity to create a partnership in the name of security with code4rena. The community felt this was a very straight forward yes, and the partnership continues to this day, with PoolTogether having a spotless record.
Starting to speed run now as we’re moving closer to this millennia in onchain terms.
Other communities were starting to engage with PoolTogether, like Llama doing some early analytics. The community also had some crazy idea’s that never quite made it to prime time, like $POOL buybacks which came up a number of times and even had a brief spotlight in V5.
Somewhere in the flurry, PoolTogether was expanded to Polygon and the Community rallied forming a team to ensure Polygon operated smoothly and all depositors were given their fair drip. But being multi-chain brought new hurdles and the Community was ready to discuss multi-chain governance before it was cool and deep conversations with the PoolTogether Inc. team about their roadmap and where the community feels it should go.
All the while the Community is still running the Grants Committee, has a Polygon Team, is working with PoolTogether Inc. to keep cross-chain running smoothly and incentives going, and the community is fleshing out more teams. With more team comes more ways to incentivize community engagement. We were already experimenting with Coordinape so we built that into it and the Community again got experimental and started leveraging UMA’s KPI options. The PoolTogether Grant Committee was already experimenting with KPI options, so it seemed natural and PoolTogether always seemed to be ahead of the curve.
Somewhere in this mix during 2022 our community members began getting sniped for other onchain organizations. The Community rejoiced, every community member that was hired outside the community was a big win. We were creating the skills for a lasting impact across communities; Zerion, Zapper, Defiant, Galxe, and many others all brought some of the PoolTogether Community into their ranks.
But that’s not all. PoolTogether kept expanding chains, to Celo, Avalanche, Optimism, Arbitrum, and Base. It kept expanding versions from V3 to V4 to V5.0 to V5.1 to V5.2. More teams were developed to handle all the moving pieces like the Executive Team. Deep dives were being had to determine the direction and utilization of the treasury how and where to LP, and experiments with Ondo or Bancor. And many of this teams were all community members, and those that weren’t were majority community members.
The Community was doing it, we were driving the protocol. And the Devs were working with us, we were partners, we’re driving and they’re the driving instructor.
The Community was always having crazy ideas, and some never got daylight. But PoolTogether was always ahead of it’s time. The PoolTogether Community was thinking about points before $POINTS in 2021 and again in 2023. We even continued to get crazy with NFTs that could change over time depending on certain onchain interactions. We had a dedicated YouTuber showing off PoolTogether in 2022-23, we had an ad spot on Bankless in 2023 (I think), and we even had crypto Christmas cards to get onboard newbies to the onchain lifestyle.
All in all the Community was pretty great. And out votes had meaning. Our voices were heard and our feedback was taken seriously. We’d (PoolTogether Inc. and/or G9 and various community members) all go back to the drawing board many times until we get it right.
But not anymore, 340k big 
to community. It was fun, we were doing it, but a small subset of the G9 team had other plans. gg
Aged like milk…
