PoolTogether has one of the most active communities in DeFi. We have a bunch of people who contribute to the protocol on a daily basis. A lot of these contributions go unpaid. More in depth contributions may be paid through a grant or the passing of a governance proposal, but smaller contributions currently are not rewarded. Things like answering questions in discord, providing insights on community calls, participating in governance forums, etc could be considered small contributions. These contributions though small still provide value to the protocol. Coordinape offers a simple way to reward people. Coordinape provides a way to create our earlier discussed āCore Contributors Groupā
Coordinape allows people to give tokens to whoever they think is providing value. At the beginning of each epoch people in the PoolTogether circle are given an allocation of tokens. throughout the epoch you are able to give out the tokens that are allocated to you. these funds would come from a grant through the grants committee. Coordinape currently operates off chain. at the end of an epoch a spreadsheet is generated that enumerates the token distribution.
It is also possible to opt out of receiving tokens during the epoch. For example, a PT Inc employee could decide they want to be able to give tokens where they see fit without being eligible to receive tokens as they are already compensated.
My plan is to apply for a grant soon and give this a trial run for a period of three months. Each epoch would be one month. The collab land bot would be used to handle the actual distribution of tokens. this bot already provides a way to distribute tokens without gas costs to the program. each user would be able to pay their own gas fees to claim their tokens. this process eliminates the need to build something new to handle distribution.
Anyone would be able to join the circle and receive tokens throughout the epoch. However, allocations to give would be reserved for currently active members. One may receive an allocation to give in the following epoch if it is determined by the group that said member is deserving. This is to prevent collusion and a sybil attack.
Several people have already joined the PoolTogether circle and have been distributing fake tokens to try out the service. However, participation has been low. I think with actual money available people would participate.
My orignal thought is 5-10K$/epoch. I would like feedback on this idea and the proposed amount.
see below for a link to a medium article from Coordinape for more information.
I like the idea! Thereās a ton of individuals who contribute, whether itās in the Discord or the forum. Anybody who participates in the calls is greatly appreciated since that is way more of a commitment than Discord or the forum (ALL are appreciated though).
I can see it get kind of dicey when people start contributing more just to get these rewards? I mean is more activity a bad thing? Probably not. Can this be gamed or spark some favoritism, also not sure. I am all for rewarding active participants, but Iām aware that it might get hairy. I mean what happens when someone actively contributes, doesnāt get rewarded and feels slighted? We might lose that contributor going forward. Just putting some thoughts out there.
ya there are a ton of ways that this kind of system could be manipulated, but in the example you gave about a contributor maybe feeling slightedā¦ iād think that person would actually be impressed that their effort towards PT (however seemingly insignificant it was) makes them eligible for reward payouts and then motivated to go get them, contribute more, etc.etc.
other projects have had success using coordinape and that alone makes me think itās worth at least trying.
ANDā¦ no one else (that iām aware of) is using it to distro rewards to community at large yet, itās mainly smaller groups working within a project that have access rn. opening it up to community would be exactly the kind of thing PT does well and could end up being a model if/when itās implemented.
True! That one example wasnāt an indictment of the idea or anything.
I like it! Itās just getting the execution and distribution right and making it fair.
This is exactly what the community needs and major props for digging into it all and coming up with this plan.
I think coordinape is a fair mechanism, albeit a little strange to select people to award POOL but itās still a fantastic tool. Combining it with Collab.land I think is a really interesting approach.
My only concern is the long-term usage since these tools will eventually be charging some small fee for transaction/tracking. But that certainly something to only take into consideration after our initial sprint of the implementation.
I think this is definitely worth giving a shot.
What I like most about this, is that itās a āpushā model for rewarding people, rather than āpullā like grants and PTIPs. People may get rewards without even expecting them.
I think if people start to contribute more in order to get rewards, thatās a positive. Iām hoping that the rewards will be an incentive to make more people more active.
On the main, im hugely supportive of at least trying the system. This stuff is at the absolute bleeding-edge of DAO governance and nobody really knows how its supposed to work yet. The grants team should consider at least approving this with some low amount of initial value on the basis that its an experiment only.
I think we already see some positive activity in the discord with Collab.land tipping. Tips are thrown out left and right these days and for all the right reasons, so as a community, I think there is the correct ethos of 'hard work and participation is rewardedā. At least i think so anyway.
I do have 2 concerns.
Money always changes incentives. I look at the $DONUTs experiment on r/ethtrader where people basically copy/pasted articles and spammed low effort content and memes to farm the $DONUT distribution. The $DONUTs were intended to promote higher quality content and tighter community participation but they did the exact opposite.
āCore contributors groupā could be another way of saying āInner circle of high priestsā. I wouldnt want the core contributors to gate-keep access to the POOL distribution. How does one become part of the group? Things get highly political in such a structure, especially when there is real value on the line.
this is not a system in which you are rewarded automatically for certain actions. You can only receive tokens if others in the circle decide you deserve a reward of their own free will.
Anyone will be able to join. Anyone who joins will be eligible to receive rewards. the only restriction will be on who is actually givn an allocation of tokens to give out. this is to prevent collusion and a sybil attack. the circle has to trust that the person entering is a uniqe and legitimate community member. if everyone was allowed an allocation immediately it would only dilute the value that core OG community members can distribute.
I think we will need to formalize a process for how itās determined that someone will be able to get an allocation to give.
Iām not sure how problematic it will be, but in the worst case this could be something that makes the whole experiment fail.
At the same time, we wonāt want it to have a huge overhead.
Iāve thought about this. I just donāt know how to handle it. i had @Oops make a coordinape channel in the discord. I was thinking we could reach a consensus in there as people are added.
@RegisIsland
One simple and quick metric on checking if someone is eligible could be a mini background check (2 minutes of time) to see their message history in discord and or this forum to gauge their interest and previous engagement. Simply use the search feature in discord and āfrom: insert nameā.
This would only work for previous users but might not work for engaging new users.
Great initiative @RegisIsland - I think that Coordinape could evolve into a nice tool to reward active community members and contributors. The proposed amount seems very reasonable for a test pilot. Thanks for bringing this forward, even though the momentum was slow initially which can be frustrating.