PoolTogether Budget Requests
The PoolTogether Budget Request process helps coordinate funding for teams, developers, and anyone else who wishes to contribute to the PoolTogether protocol.
It’s a culture in the sense that this process is mostly social conventions: about establishing a common set of expectations and holding each other accountable.
Contributors funded through PTBRs are collectively called the “Council”. It’s a dynamic group of people that consists of the actively compensated contributors. The Council meets weekly to coordinate. If you wish to listen in on any of these calls, it’s open to anyone. Just ask for the @Council Auditor role on Discord.
If you want to contribute to PoolTogether and need funding, then this process is for you.
Quick links:
How it Works
The Budget Request process flows like so:
- Pitch your idea to the community
- Fill out the PTBR template
- Get funded
- Join the Council and coordinate with other contributors!
Pitch Your Idea
Start getting feedback and building consensus early! Make sure you can articulate:
- The value that your contribution will bring to the protocol. What is the key benefit?
- The contribution timeframe. Is this a one-time request? Is this recurring? How long will this contribution be for?
- The budget. What do you expect this contribution to cost?
There are lots of ways of getting feedback about your idea:
- Reach out to other contributors in our Discord #contribute channel
- Post your idea in the gov forum
- Join one of the weekly Council calls to pitch your idea.
Make the Budget Request
Once you’ve gotten a rough consensus around the pitch, go create a new topic under PoolTogether Budget Requests here on Discourse. The template provides a structure and makes it easy to submit all the details that the community will need to know when evaluating your request.
New Budget Requests should be prefixed with [RFC] so that the community knows that the request is evolving and to encourage engagement.
At this point, reach out to the @Council so that the budget request can be highlighted on the weekly Community Call. This call occurs every Thursday on Discord at 11:45am PT.
Get Funded
Once the Budget Request has received enough feedback and all changes are complete, its time to apply for funding:
- Lock the RFC thread
- Create a new PTBR post with the final RFC content
- Create a corresponding onchain proposal
If the request is small enough, the Pool Grants team may step up to fulfill the request. Otherwise, you’ll need to submit a onchain proposal.
Synchronized Proposals
We encourage applicants to coordinate with the Council to synchronize their Budget Requests. This helps with voter engagement significantly: proposals receive much more attention when there is more than one.
Applicants for recurring budgets typically make requests in quarterly increments, and submit the proposals in the month leading up to the quarter.
One-time requests can be much more flexible, but we encourage all applicants to coordinate through the Council.
See the Governance Calendar for when votes are scheduled.
Proposal Content
We recommend using Tally to create the onchain proposal.
The proposal should have:
- The same name as the PTBR forum topic
- The same content as the forum topic
- Actions that draw funds from the protocol treasury.
See the available funds using the Treasury Tool.
Join the Council
Once approved, the applicant or anyone from their team can join the Council. Generally the membership is for the duration of the budget.
To receive the Discord @Council tag, just request it from the community lead.
The Council meets weekly to give status updates and have general discussion. Meetings are held every Tuesday at 11:00am PT on Discord. Once you have the @Council role you’ll see the channels.
See the Governance Calendar to see when Council calls are held.
Anyone can listen in on Council calls by requesting the @CouncilAuditor role.
Summary
So if you have an idea to improve PoolTogether, please come into the Discord server and chat!
If you want to contribute to an existing team, you might be able to find a place with an existing applicant.