Nice to see you here Gorilla!
We are focusing on partnerships
Partnerships are definitely where we are focusing our attention. We are working with partners on co-marketing such as sweepstakes NFT and incentive campaigns. We are deploying to new chains and integrations in order to increase our addressable market for users, incentives, and grants. More on that in the PTBR, if you haven’t read it yet.
POOL staking is good
The value of staking POOL is right in line with the rest of defi. It’s easier to compare it to other protocols, such as Aave:
- Aave gross revenue as a percentage of TVL is approx 2.57%. They have ~$330m in yearly revenue and that’s for about $12.8b in TVL.
- POOL net staking rewards are about 1% of TVL. Deposits are currently earning 10% APR on average, and about 9% is going to the reserve (will be higher on Ethereum).
Note that our number is net and Aave’s is gross; our protocol has zero additional costs outside of hosting. Our numbers are right in line with the best of Defi.
I think the biggest problem with POOL staking right now is that it’s poorly communicated. We aim to address that in our PTBR with a user interface update and better comms.
Validating the Product
I appreciate this blunt statement. I would love to hear more clear-eyed and constructive takes like this.
Our hypothesis is that large prizes will attract depositors. POOL liquidity mining intends to increase the prizes by increasing deposits. However, it will take time for the prizes to grow.
But we don’t have time. We need to validate this product right now.
I like your suggestion of going big or going home. I think that’s the attitude we need to have; to shoot for the moon with the best shot we have and see how far we can get. That’s the intention of this endgame post, but it’s not directly addressing our core value prop.
There is no point in worrying about cash and maximizing our runway on a project where the core value prop isn’t validated. We should spend money now to determine if this is project deserves more of our time and energy.
We’ve received a lot of feedback about using non-POOL incentives, dilution concerns, and rewarding past users. I’m going to fold this feedback into a more detailed plan that is less about the POOL endgame, and more about the PoolTogether Endgame.
Thank you for your thoughts! I’m glad that you’re still loitering.