Background
PoolTogether Inc. has been working on Avalanche compatibility for the last couple of weeks. We are now very close to being ready to extend the PT prize pool network to Avalanche. PT Inc. has covered development costs for the code. The new code is currently being audited by PoolTogether Protocol’s auditing partner C4.
Now that the work is nearly complete, the PoolTogether Protocol needs to make a decision as to whether to accept the new code and extend itself to Avalanche and operate prize pools on that chain.
Originally, Avalanche had agreed to incentivize the deployment so we knew it would be a win-win for both the protocol and Avalanche. However, Avalanche has pulled incentives for launch so the decision is more nuanced now.
Presented below are some of the important points regarding:
- Operational overhead in terms of human coordination
- Costs
Operational Overhead
While much of the prize pool network has been automated, there are still key responsibilities that the protocol will need to take on. In particular:
- The Executive Team needs to manage prize liquidity
- The Ethereum Operations Team needs to manage the Prize Pool automation
Migrating Prize Liquidity
The PT Protocol’s executive team currently handles prize liquidity distribution. This includes:
- Creating gov proposals to transfer USDC from governance to the exec team Safe.
- Moving USDC across chains using the bridges to corresponding exec team Safes on the other side.
- Depositing tickets into Prize Distributor contracts on each chain, so that they have sufficient liquidity to satisfy prize claims.
The Gnosis Safe does not currently exist on Avalanche, but we can use the legacy Gnosis Multisig. The multisig is open source and a version is hosted by Pangolin Exchange. The multisig does not have Wallet Connect support, so the exec team will have to hand-craft transactions in order to bridge funds back from Avalanche.
Managing Automation
Once we deploy another prize pool to Avalanche, we will need to update it alongside Polygon. Each day we’ll need to push the Draw information to the chain, so that prizes can be claimed.
The Ethereum Ops Team will need to create a Gnosis Multisig on Avalanche to custody funds, and top-up a Defender Relayer to execute transactions on the Avalanche network. The budget for the Ops Team will need to increase by several hundred dollars per week at least.
Costs
- One-time launch Costs:
- Contract Deployment: ~$20 (~8m gas total, when gas cost is about ~$1 / 500k gas)
- Prize Liquidity: $250k USDC up-front to stock the prize distributor
- Operational costs:
- Total cost of prizes will remain the same, but liquidity will shift to AVAX as it grows.
- A few dollars per day to broadcast the draw to the prize pool + Eth bridging fees from time-to-time.
PoolTogether Inc Team Recommendation
The PT Inc team has met and discussed the above and shared our opinions. We’ve also reviewed a productive Governance Thread on the matter.
We’ve come to a consensus and our recommendation is to launch on Avalanche on December 20th for these reasons:
- The biggest operational cost is human coordination. The exec team and ops team will have more on their plates, but this needs to improve no matter what chain we deploy to next. We need to do this anyway.
- Avalanche is a very different ecosystem, and could present a brand new market for us.
- Operational expenses are minimal, although they will require the Eth ops team to move funds over.
- If we deploy to Avalanche we should commit fully and move over $250k USDC like the other chains. This will require a full week for the governance proposal to pass.
Community Vote
We’d like to put our recommendation up for a vote to see if the community wishes to proceed.
- Yes! Let’s deploy as recommended.
- No! And I’ll explain why
0 voters
