I’ve started to notice some users come through the discord who share the same disappointment as me. They are disappointed because they aren’t earning any yield on their Pooltogether deposit since they are deposited in the prize pool on Polygon and not the sponsorship side. This week I thought about moving some of my funds to Polygon to earn POOL but it’s just not as simple and fun anymore so I didn’t bother. I still have my POOL on Ethereum and plan to keep it for a long time but this whole sponsorship thing has made things a bit boring to me.
It is true that dripping only to sponsorship improves the odds for smaller depositors by separating the whales(who care about the yield most of all) from the pool but for most depositors they are just losing to a smaller whales and have lost their opportunity to earn yield. Some bigger depositors who favour yield are losing out on the fun of winning prizes. Ethereum is only useful for big depositors and if we want to grow it’s going to have to be focussed on layer 2.
Those of us making these decisions are mostly users who have been in crypto a long time and often have significant skin in the game. I feel like we’ve lost touch with the average user who simply wants to deposit to earn AND have a chance to win. The average user is not an advanced crypto trader and not everybody wants to get their calculator out when they try a new app. Going back to basics would help us achieve more growth in my opinion.
Think about the user who has never heard of Pooltogether until today.
Deposit to earn and have a chance to win> Come on over and we’ll explain how this works and you can decide how you want to deposit.
Wondering how many others out there feel the same as me? I know there are many who like sponsorship.
Are you disappointed in the Polygon pools only dripping to sponsorship?
Yes, I prefer users earning yield AND having a chance to win.
No, Sponsorship drip improves odds for small fish.
I really think you are severly misrepresenting the average PoolTogether user (on Polygon). Looking at the USDC pool, more than half of the users have less than 100 USDC deposited and more than 80% have less than 1000 USDC deposited. I cannot believe that people with such small deposits care about earning POOL through APR. Over the course of a year, people with less than 100 USDC deposited would not even earn 1 POOL (assuming the APR goes to a similar rate as on Ethereum).
Compare that with the size of the prize these small depositors can win each week and take into account that their chances are vastly improved by (most) whales depositing in the sponsorship part of the pool. It seems to me the sponsorship mechanism is a vast improvement for most players compared to earning a negligible APR reward and (practically) never winning a prize.
If you have $100.00 in the USDT pool right now your odds are 1 in 24,350 to win and we are hoping to grow those pools. I know some people with small balances in defi and they are just happy to be earning a better rate than the bank would pay them. Nobody is expecting to get rich off a $100 deposit but more likely looking to have a little fun. Watching your balance grow a little while having a chance to win is just more fun for users in my opinion. Simple and fun would get us more depositors. Dripping to sponsorship was sold as an experiment on USDT and that pool had little growth after the switch. Would be nice to experiment with Pooltogether in the traditional way on Polygon with something other than USDT.
I am not paricularizing myself, because I believe that the intention of separating the drip from the prize, is done to favor the small fish. But I do agree with @TheRealTuna that it takes fun out of the game. If someone enters Pooltogether only for the % APR of POOL, they could find better performances in other protocols and simply buy POOL in Quickswap. That’s why I think the point that sets Pooltogether apart and makes it unique is to be able to participate in the draws and win an extra prize. I think small fish would appreciate having a little trickle inside the Pool with prizes.
A good way to settle the debate would be to run a DAI pool on Polygon with the traditional settings and the same drip as the others. Since it’s cheap to switch and DAI is widely used like USDC, we can see where the deposits end up. Appears that 1.5MM left the USDT pool when the USDC pool drip launched. If DAI pool runs away it would prove that having both gets more deposits. Would be best to do it now so that when V4 comes we can have a clearer direction. I am fine with being proven wrong, I just want to see growth and I see a different path to reaching our end goal.
That is the whole point of taking part in a lottery though. You participate knowing your odds are not massive. If you buy a scratch ticket, you’re not expecting a 1/2 chance of winning something.
Anyway, in the end, this discussion boils down to one choice and that is whether we want to improve the odds of small fish winning. It has been unequivocally proven that moving APR to sponsorship has a (very) positive effect towards the prize winnings of smaller fish. Unless you want to reverse that effect, keeping the drip into sponsorship, is our best option until v4 launches.
I guess your right in that everything may change with V4. So while I’m not a fan of the current sponsorship setup it is probably best to wait and see what V4 brings. @drcpu
I think the real question here is, how do we incentivize those looking to aid, build, and improve the protocol equally or more than those trying to farm the token and sell-for-profit. Not to say that whales aren’t trying to improve the protocol, but some whales are certainly only looking to flip the token for profit. So how do/can we incentivize those helping the protocol in such a way it builds value both for the protocol and the token. I think we’re making the right steps with collab.land and coordinape, and we’re certainly starting to explore a more participation mining experience.
That being said, I think the yield on sponsorship is currently the only way to really build out the prizes sustainably for the time being. Once we get many more participants and V4 creating a strong tide, maybe the currents will change.