An Official ETH Pool: We Really Need One

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Hi everyone,

I think our focus on stablecoins (especially USDC) is a smart strategy. However, I think we should also keep in mind the current market conditions which we could use to our advantage to increase TVL.

I’m of the opinion that the market is still bullish and ETH has much room to grow. In the long-term, I am absolutely sure of this. Now, we should really think about the fact that many large entities see holding stablecoin in PoolTogether during a bull market as a serious opportunity cost. Frankly, I’ve heard this a lot from people and one of the major reasons they don’t deposit into PoolTogether.

I suggest we have an official ETH pool with AAVE as a yield source. I know we have had one in the past (maybe it’s still there as a community pool?), but it’s always been very small. An ETH pool would be incredibly popular if the market continues to be bullish, because large entities would benefit both from the upside of ETH and they would have a chance to win.

I would also suggest not only having an ETH pool, but also an official WBTC pool.

The stablecoin pools are, of course, still central to the PoolTogether strategy and we should keep growing them. They are the long-term vision. But because we are in a bullish market and there is opportunity costs abound, having an ETH (or even WBTC) pool would attract larger depositors who want to capture the upside of these assets & also win prizes.

I think this is a win-win to use and we should really use the market conditions to our advantage and grow the TVL this way. The stablecoin-only strategy is best for sideways or bearish markets when people are not risk-on.

Thoughts?

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I’m not opposed. I’d love to have an ETH and wBTC prize pools with big prizes.

The issues are two fold:

  1. Getting high yield to have a large prize (ETH yield on Aave right now is 0.29% and on wBTC it’s 0.97%). We could do something borrowed by Yearn or Rari and hopefully get a decent yield though.

  2. Gas fees – this is the biggest and hardest to solve. The gas fees on Ethereum are so high it makes depositing not make sense for a large number of people.

So in short, I definitely would love to see this but not sure if it makes sense on Ethereum. It likely would make a lot more sense with V4 design.

Maybe as a next step check out other yield sources where we might be able to get a yield??

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Agree with Leighton, we have wanted to have an ETH pool for a long time and have been waiting on the Yearn yield source to be available. I don’t think people lend ETH on Aave for the simple return of less than 1%, they do it to borrow against. Prizes with such a low underlying yield will likely not attract depositors.

Now the question is, what does it look like to add new assets in V4… i’m excited to find out.

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This may not be a good idea unless we have a pETH as a collateral in AAVE. No one will deposit precious Eth for less yield. People will lend and borrow high yield assets.

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To win a big prize, they might. But we need a strong yield source of 3-5% minimum.