The PoolTogether Protocol currently has three three key growth metrics:
- Total deposited value
- Unique users (measured by unique wallets)
- 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:
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Overall the protocol is growing each week but the rate of growth is slowing
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It appears growth in deposits is highly dependent on the size of the prize.
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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:
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How do we accelerate growth?
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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!
