Summary:
Create a pilot for a “prizes team” with authority to adjust prize distributions within a narrow band of parameters until September 30th. Goal of the team is to improve performance against stated metrics outlined below.
Use data from this pilot team to inform the creation of a fully governance mandated team.
Background:
The ability to win prizes without needing to risk your deposit is what makes PoolTogether unique. Yet historically, little attention has been paid to creating, measuring, and optimizing how prizes are distributed. The TWG noticed this deficiency and has stepped up to greatly improve things but I believe there is still a need for a focused team.
On top of that, the process of adjusting prize distributions has been complicated requiring a full multi-day vote. This has encouraged many last minute opinions and made it hard to form consensus and implement changes.
Optimizing the prize distribution is more urgent than ever for a few reasons:
1). On Tuesday, OP rewards will kick off. This offers the protocol a huge growth opportunity and we want to make sure depositors have the best experience
2). Since the launch of the most recent changes to prize distribution & the Optimism network we are currently seeing a large drop-off in deposits on Polygon. TVL on Polygon is now lower than it has ever been in 2022. This is expected to same degree given Optimism launch and
- Prizes continue to be the #1 source of treasury distribution
Proposal:
I believe we urgently need a “prizes team” focused solely on optimizing prizes. Furthermore, this team needs to be empowered to make fast changes (within guard rails established by governance).
In the short term, I anticipate this team would undertake the following activities:
- Build analytics dashboard analyzing how any changes to prize distribution impacts protocol usage
- Conduct interviewers with depositors understanding their desires
- Conduct surveys informing satisfaction with prize distribution
- Gather outside research and experts on ideal prize distributions
- Monitor prize subsidy and seek prize sustainability
In the long term, I anticipate this team would:
- Codify a prize distribution thesis balancing large prizes which attract new savers & small prizes which provide economic rewards to all depositors
- Codify success metrics and measurement tools to manage prize distribution
- Codify a growth framework for increasing total prizes while reducing prize subsidy to zero over time.
Next Steps:
I ultimately think the “prizes team” will be one of the most important. Therefore, I would like to see a robust discussion on who should be on the prize team and how it should operate.
However, for the reasons outlined in “background”, I believe we need to move faster. The first step towards this goal is starting a small team immediately that can both 1) begin addressing the goals listed in “short term” and 2) provide more information to inform how the permanent team should be formed.
This small team would be authorized by POOL governance to make adjustments to the prize distribution between now and September 30th provided those changes:
Do not change prize frequency to be greater than 1 week
Target an overall prize subsidy equal to $xxx daily (this is the current subsidy)
The prize team will work within those parameters to achieve progress against the following metrics:
Growth in network TVL
Decrease in Network churn
Increase in unique depositors
Additional to these metrics, the team will be expected to build the needed infrastructure and processes to measure the above effectively.
The Team:
I suggest a maximum of 5 participants and minimum of 3. I would suggest myself, Underthesea, Bronder, Cookie and Dylan as the initial 5. I choose these people because it represents a cross-functional group (between PoolTogether Inc and TWG and other community members) that has already been working significantly on this problem.
Specification:
This prize team will be delegated control of the prize tier history contracts from the executive team in order to make changes.
Vote:
I will post a snapshot vote shortly, for now I have inserted a poll
- Support creation of a pilot prize team as outlined
- Oppose creation of a pilot prize team as outlined
- Support with changes suggested
0 voters
EDIT: VOTE IS HERE: