PoolTogether

Prevent winning all prizes in a pool

#1

Something I noticed in the COMP pool this week is that 1st, 2nd and 3rd place drawings were won by the same player. This might just due to the fact that the COMP pool is small at the time and the player had an extremely high number of tickets.

I wanted to gauge the feeling in future pool drawings for a winner to be removed from the eligible drawings if they have already won in that drawing? Meaning if a player wins 1st place, they cannot win 2nd or 3rd. This would ensure that the winnings are more distributed among the group and limit the potential of a whale exploiting the game by taking the top spot with a huge gap in tickets.

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Win Factor Value
#2

I had the same thought today but there are some issues that need to be considered. Take a look at this post for more insights:

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#3

No, one person needs to be able to win all of the raffles because if they can’t then there is no reason to put more than 33% of the pool in, but putting in that much and more is beneficial to the smaller participants as well because if it lands on them the payout is 33% more.

You might think that that isn’t a good trade off, but remember that they are playing a dangerous game. One week of not winning a raffle could put them heavy in the red when it comes to opportunity cost.

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#4

Following and what your are saying here…

is there a middle way?

what might be the implications for a pool that has a more round winning distro.

What might be the impact of a pool that has say 10 winners but only allows for like 3 winning tickets per wallet address. after a 3rd win or xwin that address is locked out and the lottery draws again

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#5

I see your point here VT, however I would argue that all players are parking money here with some level of expected risk.

My expectation comes from what I have read about the winners in discussion TK13 posted. That there would be 2 - 5 winners based on how the pool is created. Also, when looking at the Pool in the app it states “This prize is split between the grand prize winner and 2 runner-ups” My interpretation of that is there will be 3 winners in this pool.

So I guess my question is that an incorrect interpretation of these statements or should it be clarified?

1 Like
#6

We’ve already had this discussion many times. I’ll repost my thoughts here:

"I’m totally onboard with multiple winners! However, forcing the prize to be won by 3 different players changes the expected value to unfairly favour addresses with fewer tickets.

Let’s take an extreme example:
Imagine there are $100 in the pool and three participants. For simplicity we assume the Loot box has the same value as the 2 interest prizes.
A has $90 in, B has $9 in, C has $1 in.
In the draw of the first prize, A wins.
In the draw of the second prize, A should once again have a 90% chance of winning but is now blocked as he already won a prize. So B wins.
In the draw for the third prize, only C is left. So C wins.

Now A,B,C each won 1/3 of the total prize, even though A contributed 90% of the interest that even made that prize possible, B contributed 9% and C only contributed 1%. Obviously, A is being taken advantage of.
This was not bad luck. In this situation the outcome would always be the same, no matter the randomness generated.

So what would A do if he was smart? He would spread his coins among a bunch of addresses that hold a few coins each. And B would do the same. Theoretically, distributing your tickets over infinite different addresses with a tiny sliver of a ticket each is optimal (ignoring gas fees).

I don’t think incentivizing the creation of useless wallets is good for anyone. All it accomplishes is wasting gas and clogging up the Ethereum network even more than it already is.

Of course this example I shared is an extreme case, but the same principles apply to any distribution where there are holders with different amounts of tickets."

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#7

aye went back to the original and read through. I think you’ll continue to see a call for this in the face of the whole playing the lotto is like a prayer for the poor and a communion that there’s a chance the universe can be unpredidictably kind just as it can be cruel.

But hey maybe thats just what harvest.finance and FARM is for. Idk the case you explain is logical how many folks would actually care to game it that. their time is still worth something to them.

PoolTogether so I can win is more of the ethos here that PoolTogether so WE win.

Seems like POOL community is def more the traditional play than an inovation towards the people

But thats a damn lottery for you and why we shouldn’t use them to fund education lol

#8

Yeah, maybe it is all just a wishful dream and sadly nothing will come from it. I do think there is a real danger of this becoming a playground for the super rich quickly. With the rise of crypto news more people are coming to play. I include myself in that as I only joined late 2020, so maybe I’m just a newb trying to change the game.

I do see the possibility as this app gains popularity the pools will increasingly tend to favor the big players. And that’s expected. But as gas fees continue to rise new players who want to throw in a little money only to pay for the connection, pay to deposit watch the huge wallets take the spread and then pay to withdrawal when they want out this app may only serve as a lesson in foolishness. And maybe I’m expecting more than I should. I get that.

I do like some of the ideas I’m seeing in other threads like this one PoolTogether Jackpots which may only sever to provide another fools hope, but at least it’s a less bitter pill to swallow.

#9

The fundamental problem here is that the POOL rewards are being paid out to players in the pool. Whales just want to farm the POOL tokens, they don’t even really care about winning the prizes.

IMO, the best solution to this would be to bring back the concept of the Sponsor Pools, where funds can be contributed and their interest adds to the prize, but they aren’t eligible to win. Then, make sure the POOL rewards are meaningfully higher for the Sponsor Pools than the main prize pool. This will result in bigger prizes while also making it less likely they will be won by whales.

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#10

@delitzer so whales who “don’t even really care about winning the prizes” will start farming POOL at a higher rate than the majority of players and then control the direction of the protocol? That doesn’t seem very community friendly.

@onibocho I 100% agree with your suggestion. I’ve been saying this for months! Even my first post on here is me being disappointed to see a dai wallet win twice on the same day. The term “runner up” doesn’t even make sense if the same person is both the grand prize winner and the runner up.

People will start leaving the pool if the whales continue to win multiple prizes in the same drawing. I know I will - I’m missing out on hundreds of dollars worth of interest. When I voted, I assumed there would be a grand prize winner, and 2 runner ups. THAT MEANS 3 UNIQUE WINNERS! Has anyone played any sort of game where a winner and the runner up can be the same person?!? (I’m sure there might be some but you get my point)

People will join if they see small ticket holders win more often. We need to give the small ticket holders a tiny little edge. Who cares that it incentivizes multiple wallets. Multimillionaires aren’t going to waste their time and gas to make millions of wallets. And if they do, so what, all we’ll know is that a small wallet won and that could attract more users! :stuck_out_tongue:

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#11

The retroactive airdrop was the best way to get a significant amount of POOL into the hands of individuals. Whales will go where the incentives are. Right now, they can earn 600% APY from being in the USDC or DAI pools - notably, that level of yield involves them selling the POOL and reinvesting the proceeds, so at least they won’t end up controlling the protocol.

Ongoing liquidity mining rewards always get scooped up by whales for as long as it is profitable. As much as I wish it weren’t true, as long as distribution is weighted based on capital, whales will get vast majority of it. My suggestion simply helps ensure they don’t also win all the prizes.

If you prevent any given address from winning more than once, whales will just split their tickets across 3 addresses.

People will join if they see small ticket holders win more often.

Yes, agreed. Hence my suggestion.

Multimillionaires aren’t going to waste their time and gas to make millions of wallets. And if they do, so what, all we’ll know is that a small wallet won and that could attract more users! :stuck_out_tongue:

Unfortunately, this isn’t true. Whales will just automate spinning up a bunch of proxy contracts. For example, see https://twitter.com/danielque/status/1333914395437461505?s=20

#12

I don’t think incentivizing whales to front run the price of POOL will be good overall for the community. Let them spin up millions of wallet and pay absurd amounts of gas fees. We need little wallets winning more, end of story.

#13

Personally, I’m not as concerned with whales buying up smaller wallets as I am with their ability to win every slot in the pool. I do see your concern there and it is valid. But, it’s self defeating. Buying up lots of smaller wallets and tracking them is a lot of overhead, and the cost of gas will eventually become prohibitive of reward. Especially if you can only win 1 slot per wallet. The act itself will also drive up the gas fees as they add traffic to the network. So while it is a real concern it’s not one that is easy or possible to control.

Limiting the win per wallet to one player is an easy fix and I think is fair to the larger part of the community. I had to think about what @Torgin wrote above for a while and it does make sense. However in that example I would argue that A who contributed 90% of the interest in that pool still wins out better than all the other players because they walk away with the loot box which could in some cases be as much as the interest prize. So in this example the goal of the player is to win 1st drawing. And for that chance they put in the most tickets. If that player continues to win 1st place because they have the best chance to win week after week it’s a fair system on it’s own because they come out with the lions share week after week.

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#14

A couple thoughts:

  1. If you are to have multiple winners, there should always exist the possibility of someone claiming all the winning spots (unless the number of winners is greater than the maximum number of tickets an individual can purchase). This is just the only way to have a true lottery.

  2. With regards to whales mining the pools. We have to remember that the bulk of the prizes come from the interest generated by the contribution of the whales. However, if we were to see whales entering late, winning, and pulling early (and not necessarily contributing to the interest), I think that there would have to be some discussion about a “vesting period.” As was said before, the whales are mining POOL tokens at the moment, so I don’t expect to see this.

  3. If you want a lottery where multiple people win, but one person can’t win it all, you create a pool with a ticket limit of 1. This may not sound appealing, but in the future when there are millions of users (and lower gas fee solutions), this could be very viable.

  4. I was monitoring address 0x33… this week as a test as I was convinced they would win multiple pools with 6M tickets scattered. To my surprise, that was not the case.

PS: I’m new and still learning so most of this may have already been discussed in the past.

#15

I personally believe that something like I explained in this post

to be beneficial for everyone…
Also, with the note to create a way to create Unique addresses
like I posted in this post too

Yours sincerely,

Richard Jansma
Empowering the vision and possibilities of everyone and anything
RichardJansma.nl & RichardJ.nl
ETH: 0xa9196E531aE237B3edFE0B10299932CfD5dd494B
Opensea: RichardJansma

#16

I suppose PoolTogether is for everyone together… and a winning person (One unique address) wins a prize and then another unique person wins the runner-up price.

One of my posts is to create a way to prove and get unique addresses one per person.

For example in this post.

or adding a penalty for more fairness to not have people win each time after each other like I stated in this post

Another way is to create certain pools with certain restrictions and requirements.
Like I posted in another post

Of course how you state it makes it seem unfair. But in the end an address wins… and not a ticket. I see and would like to see that the tickets are the chance for the address to win. And not an individual win chance each time.

An address wins, and not the ticket

I would love to hear your reply.

Yours sincerely,

Richard Jansma
Empowering the vision and possibilities of everyone and anything
RichardJansma.nl & RichardJ.nl
ETH: 0xa9196E531aE237B3edFE0B10299932CfD5dd494B
Opensea: RichardJansma