Million Dollar Idea

1

We have been sitting in the 170-200MM TVL range for quite some time and I’ve been trying to think of ways to heat things up. One idea that I’d like to discuss is having a well marketed 1MM guaranteed prize go to the POOL pool on New Years Day. This would give the time needed for build up and marketing. The way I see it if we can get people hyped on this 1 Million dollar prize it could create a surge in demand for the POOL token which could boost APR in all of our pools and attract a wave of new depositors. Maybe this is the catalyst we need to get us to 1B+ TVL and 1MM+ prizes funded by the interest. It could be awarded in USDC from treasury or POOL from treasury. If it is funded in POOL from treasury and drives up the price then it will cost us less POOL by the time it is awarded but the winner will likely sell it off so it could add to sell pressure when draw is over.

PROS:

  • Great odds for someone to win 1MM dollars.
  • Amazing marketing opportunity.
  • Opportunity to drive up APR + Deposits.

CONS:

  • Possible negative impact to governance.
  • Could be a sharp drop after the draw.

Let’s discuss and hear your ideas to improve this proposal.

Should we explore having a one time 1 Million Dollar Guaranteed Prize funded by treasury?
  • Yes
  • No
  • Undecided

0 voters

Which asset from treasury should be used to fund the prize?
  • POOL
  • USDC

0 voters

1 Like
2

Perhaps it would start with a prize of $100,000 in the POOL pool, this could increase the demand for the token and thus get more USDC with another diversification agreement. If this works, the value of the prize could gradually increase to 1 million.

1 Like
3

I agree that this would be pretty great from an initial marketing perspective, however I think I don’t like what it would result in.

In my opinion, we would likely simply be giving away $1M (or another amount) to a big whale. I am almost sure that for that amount of money one or more big one-time player(s) will show up and leave after they got the money (especially if you announce it months ahead of time).

There are definitely advantages to doing this in the POOL pool that somewhat mitigate above worry:

  1. You cannot instantly build up a massive POOL position (unlike in the DAI pool where you could take out a massive Maker DAO loan). You’d have to do this over multiple weeks to months.
  2. The early exit fee would require you to stay in the POOL pool for quite some time, so you cannot just win and run.

Because of above worry, I’m not quite convinced this is a smart use of our (limited) funds, but I’ll follow below conversation and vote afterwards.

4

I voted no on this one.

Too much risk to governance in my opinion. The Snapshot multisig is already very powerful.

Also agree with @drcpu, I dont know if giving away that much money will have the intended affect. I feel it it too large of a gamble.

5

I have mixed feelings here, I think this would capture the news and funnel people in, but it also smells of token pumping.

This would further dilute the POOL pool making it increasingly difficult to reach the voting threshold. Additionally, this redefines the purpose of the POOL pool, gasless voting for our governance token. Not to mention this is a large amount of money for what we’re bringing in weekly via reserve. Perhaps if we had more reserve coming in sure, but right now I can’t help but feel like $10k is easily doable, $100k could be arguably okay, but $1MM is too high.

I think using a POOL pool for this is interesting for the reasons @drcpu stated above, but I think a new POOL pool should be created for something like this, thus removing some of the POOL in the voting POOL pool. This Awarding POOL pool would have the same early exit fee, but the POOL retained from early exiters would go to treasury or to the voting POOL pool - more complicated yes, but it’d be strange to award more POOL to people that are their for the Award. We would then also be able to reuse this Award POOL pool for other interesting opportunities - special limited edition NFT, special token POOLFI that awards the holder a small percent of the reserve earned in a week, other tokens awards: a bunch of xSUSHI to celebrate a PoolTogether x SUSHI partnership, etc.

6

It would be nice if you accrued tickets all along the way. Perhaps 1 a week to encourage long term holders. That might actually increase the reserve enough to give pool liquidity of that was the price or to replenish the amount used for the prize. If we go into a bear market next year, starting the year with a $1M headline might attract a lot of the hodl until the next halfing crowd . Maybe the price could vest (or be lower if you took the lump sum) an idea many are familiar with.