In V4 prizes do not adjust dynamically. Dynamic prize adjustments are important because they create a growth feedback loop and variance (this has been discussed more in scaling prizes).
Figuring out the ideal prize distribution to foster growth is going to be very important and early on, we should be experimenting!
Given this, I’d like to propose an update to the prize distribution. Our current prize distribution is below:
Current
Prize Amount
Exepected
Totals
$2,500
1
$2,500
3
0
11
0
$100
43
$4,300
171
$0
$10
683
$6,830
2731
$0
10923
0
Daily Total
$13,630
New Proposed Prize Distribution
New
Prize Amount
Exepected
Totals
$2,500
1
$2,500
3
0
11
0
$100
43
$4,300
171
$0
$10
683
$6,830
$1
2731
$2,731
10923
0
Daily Total
$16,361
The sole difference is adding 2,731, $1 prizes. Obviously these prizes are very small but it means many people would win at least something every day. This type of distribution structure is common in prize savings accounts.
Since prize distributions are going to be changed frequently. It won’t make sense for us to have on-chain governance votes to approve each change. Instead I would propose we use:
Use 2 day snapshot votes to signal on changes
Assume any snapshot vote with a simple majority passes
Ultimately, it would be great to have a person / team dedicated JUST to designing the most effective prize distribution strategies.
Right now, I’d love feedback on this change. If there seems to be general support I’ll create the snapshot!
I very much like the idea. Would it make sense to exclude deposits on Ethereum, as they will most likely not claim $1 prizes? I believe I’ve read about this being possible before. A prize you can’t really claim could be annoying to some people.
For Polygon depositors, especially DeFi & PoolTogether first timers this is potentially great marketing.
The prizes of $1, are a very good idea, continue to bring the possibility of winning to the small fish, and reward the participation however small it is. In addition to allowing you to experience the feeling of winning .
I like the idea of a $1 prize as well. I think winning something even if it’s a small amount gives a person hope of some day winning a bigger prize someday.
The expected numbers are a little off. See image above. It’d be adding $3072 for prize allocation. Image shows a user with $900 deposit to get about 25% chance of winning $1 prize.
I disagree. It is too low and not interesting enough. $10 is at least something. I think the magic of PoolTogether is the possibilty of winning a great prize and if not, a reasonable sized prize. It is not in having to win a prize even if it is small. Not enough value and not sure it is worth even claiming $1.
I do not want to further alienate Ethereum users. The prize distribution is too heavy on the small side.
Your numbers are wrong! I think you’re using the counts from the old calculation
Evenly Distributed Tiers
Prizes should not be bottom or top heavy; each tier should be weight equally. Since the grand prize is $2500, how about we make each prize tier approximately $2500?
Each tier prize => $2500 = tier count * prize
Like so:
Prize
Est. Num
Tier Total
$2500
1
$2500
$800
3
$2400
$200
12
$2400
$50
48
$2400
$10
192
$1920
$3
768
$2100
$1
3072
$3072
Grand total: $16720
In this way we tune each tier so that it’s approximately $2400. Prizes are non-uniform, but uniform across the tiers.
Do we not want the top tier to be more valuable than the other tiers?
In the same way people enter a traditional lottery focused on the very high dollar jackpot amount rather than the chance to win one of many smaller prizes. (And yes, I know, PoolTogether is not a lottery).
Yes, we do want the prizes to be lopsided! Granted $2500 is not an insane amount of money, but as the TVL grows we’ll be able to make it larger.
The above distribution is quite lopsided. Imagine if we instead took the $16720 grand total and split it into 167 prizes each worth $100. That’s really not very interesting. Having 3072 prizes worth $1 and 1 prize worth $2500 is much more interesting.
The reason we need many prizes is because we’ve found that it works the best. I explain more here
It would surprise you the lengths to which some people go for this “small” amount, i’ve seen guides of how-to level up in RAID Shadow Legends (20-40min) just to claim a $5 prize, i believe such amounts contribute to the “gamifyng” of PT because winning is just fun! Also, the minimun salary in ARG is ~$90 USD, so $1 it’s not always so insignificant, especially if you deposited less than $100, 3 of those prizes and you already got better APR than what the bank gives you!
Thanks for this. It looks like you as a team have tried many different approaches and it is important for people to win something so they don’t get discouraged whilst still having the high headline prize.
I would like to suggest perhaps then at $5 rather than $1. It is slightly more substantial than $1 but would still have a lot of winners each week.
Based on the fantastic discussion we had in today’s Community Call I think we should look seriously into the potential for very high headline prizes done in monthly or weekly intervals alongside configuring the structure of these smaller prizes to help give depositors encouragement to keep investing.
I agree, if what we are looking for is to have more participants, these will be mostly small, and winning even $ 1, renews the desire to play, and the hope of winning other bigger prizes.
Hi Leighton! Don’t agree that tho. To open up a new $1 tier prize. I would prefer happily seeing that to accrue to top tier $2500 to make it $2500+$2731 for the most lucky POOL player of the day. Or nicely spread out altogether to all existing tiers. Kind of topping up. Extra cheese, extra excitement, happier.
One thing is I’m personally an eth chain depositer. Still. Maybe off to polygon chain soon. Even so for the latter, winning $1 prize so every often just doesn’t or won’t make cut out for me. Why not we do $5? Better, substantial.
Not a fan of $1 prize (even though i really like from the idea of more prizes)
One of the main reasons people come to pooltogether is because they are bored of getting a small APR (say a few dollars) from other protocols, and want to have a shot at winning large or life-changing money everyday. These individuals are giving up guaranteed small amounts for a chance to win big amounts. Now if we have lots of individuals consistently win the $1 prize, that takes the fun away.
I do have an idea to make it work, if the majority are in alignment with this idea. Maybe we can do the $1 prize as a novelty only on certain days in a week…such as just over the weekend (saturday and sunday). This is similar to having a $1million prize once a month etc. That creates interest and small fish may look forward to something over the weekend, but it does not get boring enough every single day
Small fish here! I am all in favour of the $1 dollar prizes, for two reasons:
I’ve deposited pretty much all I can afford, and have only won a single ($10) prize. Even if $1 dollar prizes are comparatively small, they are psychologically enticing. Without winning, I lose my incentive to save, which is bad for the protocol in the long run.
In many countries, $1 actually is quite a bit of money. If Defi’s potential is its relation to social mobility, then this proposal would go a long way to achieving that.
First of all, I have to say that I was against $1 prizes because you’re losing efficiency due to gas costs, however, I will try to explain why I changed my mind.
I have brought to PoolTogether around 10 of my friends after talking to them over and over about the benefits and how awesome the project is. However, my friends are completely new to crypto and DeFi, so they have just put around $100 to $500 each. The truth is that they are winning a good APR, but each of them has gotten 1 prize in average in 20 days (some have gotten 0 and others 2). The thing is that when I talk to them I can see that they are not engaged. Even if the numbers are great (because they are), they just see that they are not winning really often. I know that they are small depositors and they do not contribute a lot to the prize in the pool, but these small depositors can attract other like them and and even increase their position in the future. To do that though, we need them to be more engaged. $1 prizes is definitely the way to do that. Just seeing the chest get a prize more often will keep the illusion of coming back everyday to check if today is the lucky day.
I also think that a big headline prize is required to attract whales, which are highly needed. However, I do not think that this prize should come in daily basis, because that would imply that there is no money for the rest of the prizes. I am not 100% aware of technical limitations, but it seems much reasonable to have a weekly prize for that with low chance for anybody to win it.
Currently we have 817 prize which are $10 or greater
With this proposal we will only have 256 prizes that are $10 or great. So this is a dramatic reduction in $10 or greater prizes and only adds 15 prizes in the $11+ range
Even at the $50 level, gas fees on Ethereum won’t make sense. I actually think, this is worse for people on Ethereum because instead of having 48 $100 prizes we now have 48 $50 prizes. A couple $100 prizes make more sense to claim than the $50 ones.
Given the above, most people would probably experience this distribution has a decrease in size of prizes. Instead of winning $10 prizes they are now mostly likely to win $1 and $3 prizes. The larger prizes are going to the larger depositors mostly. Keep in mind, we only have 100 unique depositors on Ethereum vs. 3,600 on Polygon so it doesn’t really make sense to optimize for the smaller subset of users.
So I actually think the original proposal is still better. It’s “up only” in the sense that it takes nothing away from current winnings but only adds to them.
I would love to have a higher headline prize that is not daily but I think we need to figure that out separately.
The distribution enables greater higher value prizes aka Day Makers while satisfying the lots of smaller prizes to make it feel like you’re not losing too much of an opportunity cost of putting your tokens in pool together versus earning interest on the tokens via Aave ect.
For me at least The Day Maker amount starts at $50 - You could have a decent restaurant meal/ or bottle of Whisky thanks to Pool Together. That moment is a postable/ shareable moment on social media and hence it could get more people interested in Pool Together. So @Brendans 63 prizes of that value or more versus 44 is beneficial.
To me, a $10 win has the same value as a $1 win, in the terms of I won’t be ringing up all my friends about it and I won’t be removing it from poolTogether, I will just let it accumulate. However a win is still a win no matter how small as it still gives that sweet dopamine hit, so the more $10, $3 and $1 prizes the better.
I understand @Leightons points about the Eth L1 users being hit but surely we should dissuade Eth layer 1 users, I suppose that will be easier when a proper L2 Pool Together solution is available (I’m optimistic )
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