Evaluating Protocol Growth

[leighton]

The PoolTogether Protocol currently has three three key growth metrics:

1. Total deposited value
2. Unique users (measured by unique wallets)
3. Total prizes awarded

The chart below shows these metrics for the first four weeks of the V3 PoolTogether Dai Prize Pool. Note, all numbers are NET growth for the week listed. They also EXCLUDE users upgrading tickets from V2. The metrics for the week run Friday to Friday corresponding with the weekly prize.

Although it is early, we can infer a couple of trends:

• Overall the protocol is growing each week but the rate of growth is slowing

• It appears growth in deposits is highly dependent on the size of the prize.

• Growth in new users is much more steady than growth in deposits

Although it is not shown on this chart, it’s worth noting that the number of withdrawals per week and the dollar value of those withdrawals is relatively consistent. So the decrease in growth is more just growth slowing and not churn increasing (although the average withdrawal size is far higher than the average deposit size. You can see daily stats here.

Given this information, two key questions we need to address:

1. How do we accelerate growth?

2. Have we achieved sufficient product / market fit for continued progressive decentralization?

On the first question, I’m specifically interested in how do we foster growth of this specific prize pool? I believe launching more prize pools would accelerate growth but each individual prize pool most likely would exhibit the same slowing growth trajectory we see. Ideally, I’d like to see this single prize pool growing at an accelerating rate before launching more.

Our first stab at accelerating growth has been increasing the number of weekly winners (see governance post). But I would like to hear more ideas from the community – How do you think we can accelerate growth? One place to start on this question might be testing whether the slowing growth is more of a marketing / onboarding problem or if slowing growth is more of a protocol value proposition problem.

The second question is related. Does our current level of product market fit warrant further decentralization of governance? Or should control remain more centralized with the core team while iteration continues?

Our first community vote was quite successful with 20% participation and community participation in our weekly calls has been great. However, I would like to make sure we are decentralizing governance of a protocol that clearly growing rapidly and I’m not sure we’ve hit that threshold yet.

Input from the community is welcome!

[Frankz]

I think so far the core team have done an awesome job so far and I also think the protocol is still in its early stage. Keeping the same level of centralization as there is now with frequent calls for community feedback, as there has been, seems like a good option to me.

[Pierrick]

I agree, keeping the same level of centralization for now seems healthy to me.

About growth, isn’t it slowing down because the market is currently in a bull run and people are investing in riskier assets?

Difficult to know since V3 has been out for a only a week but maybe we could find data from other protocols to compare recent growth.

[leighton]

I think that is definitely a fair assessment. The withdraws we are seeing our primarily whales. It may just be a bit too early to read too much into the data.

[Jedrulez2k]

I think more focus on the Pool Builder tool by building partnerships and integrations to get others to iterate would potentially help a lot with growth. Also, you could open other prize pools (of only stablecoins or other similarly situated assets) but decide to pool the interest into a master prize. Currently at least I think most people in crypto would be willing to accept most reasonable stablecoins as an award regardless of their deposit asset type.

[ericreid9]

Adding more deposit stablecoins would be helpful. If I have USDC or USDT in my wallet, I have to manually go to Curve or somewhere to exchange them.

Maybe give users the ability to deposit other coins but have them automatically converted through Curve as part of the deposit process. I realize this will affect the number of tickets received (most likely receive less tickets than dollars contributed if DAI trading above 1), but will streamline the process. I’m not sure if every user has DAI sitting around.

[leighton]

I like both these ideas. On the pool builder, we are overhauling and simplifying that, we should have that launched this coming week. So that will be good to see if it gets more traction.

I also like the idea of somehow enabling people to deposit other tokens but still be eligible to win the same prize. That may be technically harder but worth thinking about.

[leighton]

Yeah, I agree on this. We need to let people deposit more collateral types. Swapping is a pain.

[Praneeth]

To appeal to a broader category of audiences might mean PT has different kinds of pools/rewards associated with the core product. This could translate to having different reward durations in conjunction with minimum size on deposits - so that we could have larger pools with quicker turnarounds and pools with longer duration with low/no cutoffs.

In addition, it quickly becomes important to understand what each segment of the community values - so it might be helpful to onboard certain collectives (artists, runners or the like) - maybe even match them together in the form of featured pools and let the experiment unfold.

Any thoughts?

[leighton]

We’re planning to release a big update to the builder the end of this week which should enable a lot of this experimentation! I think this will be the most immediate next step and then we can go from there

[Rawuniteds]

This is a defining moment if i speculated what everybody had commented. In comparison to your overall stats n concerns id ask your self what would be thea way users could learn and grow lasting partner ships within the pools or others tipping services (threw stable coins) and potentially make intended or seperate) pools for lasting partnerships and other pools more and in some cases, a less conventional more temporary protoczols for a shorter length but higher payout for an increased larger pool that embeds and used rounded off or burned off tokens in the tips future but intuitively so that new users stick to it and people are talking about it . however all are very valid and pivotable. Decision’s decisions my friend. Go by… The stats… The numbers dont lie.

Im new however and just feeling around in the atmosphere i am just a rook in this chess piece. Please correct or however u want to criticize my thoughts because im fresh. Skill sharpens skill, as steel sharpens steel.

@leighton

Our first stab at accelerating growth has been increasing the number of weekly winners (see governance post). But I would like to hear more ideas from the community – How do you think we can accelerate growth? One place to start on this question might be testing whether the slowing growth is more of a marketing / onboarding problem or if slowing growth is more of a protocol value proposition problem.