Proposal to Reduce Entry Friction to PoolTogether and Boost DeFi Adoption

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Looking at the active addresses in DeFi and the total number of depositors on PoolTogether, I wonder where all the people are: why is there practically no one?

I believe this is because there are still several critical issues that need to be addressed to simplify the entry of the average person into DeFi. Firstly, user experience (UX) is often too complex and unintuitive for newcomers. For example, navigating through multiple steps to set up a wallet, secure it, and understand the platform can be overwhelming.

Secondly, there is a significant lack of education. Many people are not aware of what DeFi is, how it works, or the benefits it offers. Comprehensive tutorials, beginner-friendly guides, and educational campaigns are necessary to bridge this knowledge gap.

Thirdly, regulatory clarity is a major concern. Many potential users are hesitant to engage with DeFi due to uncertainties and fears about legal implications and security. Clear, supportive regulatory frameworks can build trust and confidence in these systems.

Lastly, integration with traditional financial systems is often inadequate. Seamless integration with existing banking and payment systems would make it easier for users to transition to DeFi, allowing them to move funds in and out of these platforms effortlessly.

So I asked myself if it makes sense to dedicate the last funds we have in the treasury not to developing another two or three blockchains, but to reducing the entry friction to PoolTogether for people who are not yet in DeFi.

We may not be able to influence regulatory changes, but we can find a more effective way to use our remaining funds. Instead of asking our friends at G9 to develop another blockchain or product for those already in the ecosystem, we should focus on reducing the friction for new users entering PoolTogether from outside and ask them to develop something in that direction.

The real issue isn’t what’s missing within the platform, but rather the difficulty people face in joining in the first place.

This is the idea. How to implement it is open for discussion… maybe an iOS and Android app or something else entirely.

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Also answered in the G9 PTBR RFC (tldr I absolutely agree we should develop this and its part of the request already).

I think the four items you highlight are really important and probably a necessity for any good crypto-in-the-backend app be successful nowadays with a larger non-crypto audience.

What I’d disagree with is the zero-sum between expanding to different networks and building this experience for new users. These are largely two distinct disciplines and G9 can honestly handle both.

As for launching different products, the only one I’d see in the G9 PTBR RFC fitting that description would probably be the NFT sweepstakes. If you believe that this new experience/interface/app should take priority over this, then I think that’s a fair argument.

There’s been a lot of discussion in the past of whether to target onchain or offchain users, and I think this is a clear continuation of that. Ideally we do both, but that’s tricky imo.

On a small technical side note; I’d much rather build a PWA that works on any device than an app that works on one specific OS, but I recognize the value in the apple store or play store’s discoverability. For later discussion, hehe

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I agree that both are not mutually exclusive, but time and money are limited.
I’m talking about priorities: what is better to develop first, especially if we risk to run out of money before we develop everything.

The first idea that comes to my mind is a very very dumb app that has hardcoded a chain and a vault.

If you know how to do it you can use the site and metamask or watever, if you don’t you install Cabana™ from the Play Store, buy a forever ticket with Google pay and receive a notification if you won.

If you win or if you change your mind you can give back your tickets and receive the money back on your credit card account.

No need to know that you are depositing on a DAI valut on Optimism, just like you don’t need to know that you are using Amazon AWS and Clouflare to book your concert ticket.

We should learn from Apple in this context: the less the average users have to make choices the happier they are.
(In before: I use Linux and Android as daily drivers, but let’s get the good from everything)

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Absolutely, and this is the sort of abstraction Geeloko is working on with Susu Club, albeit for an arguably different audience. We’d probably need this level of abstraction for any interface targeting new, offchain users.

I actually built an interface 6 months ago (new year’s, I was bored) that emulated a traditional banking app; funds in your wallet were your chequing account. Funds in PoolTogether were your savings account. No token addresses, networks, etc. Actually launching this with a good wallet experience would need significantly more dev time, but it was fun to play around with it.

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I partially replied to this in #general on Discord. Agree with most of your points!

Your post does a good job reviewing the status quo and the current mood in the defi sector. I’m not sure if there is a clear enough ask to call it a proposal but we should take all this into account when planning for the next two quarters.

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Attracting liquidity already inside of DeFi is going to be a lot easier for now than trying to get normies to use PoolTogether. Cart before the horse in my opinion. We know we can capture a larger share of DeFi liquidity (we have done it twice before). With more yield generated daily the prizes grow. With bigger prizes the story of PoolTogether becomes a lot more clear.

I do think you are highlighting something good about the one chain one vault. In my opinion we need to focus a bit more to build the prizes. This is why Im against deploying to new chains just cause. We have the most clear path right now to grow on Optimism using OP incentives from three different sources. I think our second focus should be Ethereum where there is the most capital.

If we have more meaningful prizes then its going to be a lot easier to go to market looking for non-crypto native folks to play in the pool

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