PTBR-18: PoolTogether <> G9 Software Inc

[Brendan]

PTBR 18: PoolTogether <> G9 Software Inc.

Start Date	July 1st, 2024
Est. Timeline	3 months

Generation (G9) Software Inc. is a proud service provider to the PoolTogether protocol. In our previous budget request we helped relaunch PoolTogether V5 across major Ethereum L2s.

For this scope of work, we aim to build upon the new V5 deployment with new chains, vaults, partnerships, and marketing campaigns.

Scope of Work

Motivation

We launched PoolTogether V5. Now it’s time to build on it.

PoolTogether is live on Optimism, Base, Arbitrum, and will be deployed to Ethereum by the end of Q2. Each deployment can be permissionlessly extended by anyone.

However, in order for a fully decentralized and permissionless system to grow it must be easy and valuable for anyone to build on. We must continue to develop partnerships, improve tooling for builders, and design incentives such that the protocol is well positioned to grow and operate in perpetuity.

Goals

Our primary goal is protocol growth. We measure growth based on prize pool contributions (PPC) and total unique wallets (TUW). Our current PPC is ~$1000 USD per day, and we have ~1000 active accounts. Our goal is to 5x both of those numbers by the end of Q3 2024.

The prize pool contribution is the amount of Ether contributed to the prize pool in a given timeframe. This is a direct measure of the volume of funds flowing into prizes. For example, our current daily PPC is ~0.38 Ether, or approximately $1000 USD.

We can achieve high PPC with high TVL, high APR, or through other means such as vault boosts. Focusing on PPC allows us to find creative means to improve this metric rather than obsess over TVL.

Total unique wallets is also an important metric for us; it serves as a signal indicating the reach of the protocol. Historically, PoolTogether has had a high number of users with conservative balances of $100-$1000 USD. While it’s not our most important measure, it’s essential for us to track TUW for efforts such as partnerships.

Strategy

We believe we can achieve growth by working on three fronts: incentives, partnerships, and user experience.

Our PoolTogether flywheel thesis is that large prizes will attract deposits, which lead to larger prizes. However, this is a catch-22: we need deposits for prizes, but we need prizes to attract deposits. This tells us that incentives are required to bootstrap the protocol. We must continue to push for incentives and favour partners with incentives whenever possible. Fortunately, prize liquidity is sticky in V5, so even if mercenary capital leaves abruptly the grand prize will take months to disburse.

Strong partnerships are key to a successful protocol. We believe that building relationships with proactive partners will allow us to increase our profile and reach new communities. We can bring these communities more TVL in a fun, gamified package. Partners will unlock new abilities for us.

It’s important to make PoolTogether as easy to use as possible. This is a unique product, and V5 is significantly more powerful than prior versions. We need to lead and showcase what it can do. For users, we need to make our interface as intuitive and fun as possible. For builders we need to make integrations a snap. Simple ideas spread; and the more brain trust we have the stronger we will be.

Milestones and Deliverables

New Chains

We can reach new users, partners, and integrations by deploying to more chains. We will deploy PoolTogether to at least two new chains. We are currently evaluating a number of chains, and will prioritize them based on the potential for growth and partnerships. We need to be opportunistic!

Our short list of chains are:

• Polygon
• Gnosis
• Scroll
• zkSync
• Blast
• Zerion
• Worldchain
• Linea

Each new chain deployment will need to be bootstrapped, so we will be creating a separate budget for Ether to bootstrap prizes.

New Yield Sources

We will continue to research and add yield source integrations to the Vault Factory app, allowing anyone to safely and securely spin up new vaults with new yield sources. We will prioritize integrations that we deem to be the most impactful in terms of supported assets, incentives, and security stance.

We aim to execute on the highest impact partnerships and chains, while also supporting the overall ecosystem efforts (improving developer tooling, and docs, etc).

To achieve this we need to actively seek out and support the most impactful partnerships and new distribution channels.

And we need to make the builder experience as easy as possible; with great documentation, tooling, and playbooks describing what can be done with PoolTogether.

We need to do all this while maximizing the safety of the protocol.

NFT Sweepstakes

We will build a first-class NFT Sweepstakes feature. This feature will allow anyone to give NFT holders a chance to win prizes. Sweepstakes will allow people to use PoolTogether in a whole new way, and offers a rich new surface area to explore in terms of distribution.

We are running marketing campaigns that leverage an early version of sweepstakes with imToken and Exodus.

imToken Campaign Tweet

A first-class implementation will feature the ability to self-serve the integration and be accessible through the Cabana interface.

POOL Staking Improvements

We will create a new staking section of the user interface that highlights the POOL vaults and communicates their unique value proposition. This will educate users on the utility of the POOL token.

The przPOOL vaults are currently being displayed like any other vault; but they operate in a very different way. The behaviour of the POOL vaults needs to be communicated more clearly to the end-user, so that they can see how the vaults behave reflexively to the prize volume. Doing this effectively will have a significant impact on the strength of POOL, as it helps people understand the benefits of staking their POOL

Apply for Grants

In Q2 Generation, in collaboration with Pooltime, submitted a grant application which led to the procurement of 120,000 OP tokens that will be used to incentivize vaults. We also collaborated with Sherlock and won a grant of 75,000 OP to fund an additional security audit. We see many opportunities across ARB, BASE, OP and other chains to secure incentives for the protocol.

We will continue to apply for grants to fund protocol improvements and incentives.

It’s important to note that G9 received grants that came to nearly our last budget. Our goal is to bring in more value for the protocol than we cost.

PoolTogether Classic

We will explore a streamlined interface that abstracts away all the complexity in Cabana and deliver to users the most simple and clear prize savings experience possible.

Documentation & Support

G9 will continue to improve the PoolTogether documentation, write tutorials, and provide support for PT builders in Discord.

Open Source SDKs and Development Tools

G9 will build open source SDKs and tools to make development easier. These deliverables will be largely driven by partner and builder needs, so that we can be adaptive about how we can improve tooling.

Hosting & Maintenance

We will also continue to host the Cabana suite of apps along with providing maintenance and making minor improvements. G9 will continue to host the Cabana suite so that builders have a no-code way to interact with vaults.

Budget

Description	Cost
Operations	$266,000 USD
Chain prize bootstrapping	8 Ether

[Taliskye]

I don’t know if reducing the time from 6 months to 3 months and cutting the amount in (roughly) half is really listening to the community. Hoping you just had an itchy submission finger.

Also… we’re still missing any proof that these metrics have any actual value…

@Taliskye

What have these metrics done in the past?

• What did they look like through V5, V5.1, V5.2?
• Any indication what they did in V4?
• Are they proving V4 didn’t perform and/or V5 is performing better?

Edit:
Maybe we adopt something more similar to what Optimism is doing. Through the RFC a lot was discussed around what could be of value and what isn’t. Perhaps we as a vocal community put together a list of things we would like to see, G9 (or anyone else) builds it and then we award funding retroactively as is the meta for independent builders in the space.

I’ll be voting against this PTBR.

[Brendan]

Something both you and @underthesea shared was that there were superfluous deliverables; i.e. the marketing and experiments. I eliminated those so that we can instead focus on building! That’s what we’re good at.

@Taliskye

Also… we’re still missing any proof that these metrics have any actual value

Prize Pool Contributions = prizes go up. I think it’s something we can all agree on; it seems you want some report that retroactively analyzes past deployments? That wouldn’t be a valuable use of time right now. We need to plan, take action, and measure the results.

@Taliskye

then we award funding retroactively as is the meta for independent builders in the space

This is not practical; you’ll lose the builders that PoolTogether currently has. No other professionals have stepped up; it would be a devastating blow to PoolTogether to lose G9.

The budget was halved to give governance an earlier check-in on how things are going; I think this is a critical distinction.

I also want to emphasize that we can change our deliverables based on what is needed by governance. If the community successfully coordinates a new set of deliverables, we’ll be happy to adapt.

At it’s core this budget extends G9’s building on PoolTogether; we have defined some general north stars, but we can be adaptive to what the community needs.

[Taliskye]

@Brendan

Prize Pool Contributions = prizes go up. I think it’s something we can all agree on; it seems you want some report that retroactively analyzes past deployments? That wouldn’t be a valuable use of time right now. We need to plan, take action, and measure the results.

Yes I agree that is the intention of the metrics. But if G9 is going to be utilizing these metrics to prove results, we need to see how these metrics work. We don’t have any indication that these metrics actually work other than hypotheticals. People didn’t just define Alpha, Beta, Sharpe Ratio and hope they worked after giving the definition, they provided data showing trends and that they actually mean something.

@Brendan

I also want to emphasize that we can change our deliverables based on what is needed by governance. If the community successfully coordinates a new set of deliverables, we’ll be happy to adapt.

Duly noted, more to come.

[Taliskye]

I don’t think lack of comments in a less than 24 hour period indicates consensus. Why does G9 always push so hard to get votes onchain after they have “revised” their scope…

Tally | PoolTogether | PTBR 18: PoolTogether <> G9 Software Inc.

[Brendan]

A PTBR is two things: deliverables and a budget. Based on the feedback:

• I reduced the budget by eliminating items that people didn’t think valuable. This helps governance control spending by affording a quicker check-in on how things are going.
• I made it clear (above) that we are happy to adjust deliverables based on the community needs. This flexibility affords the ability for the community to work with us to adjust deliverables.

I think this is the simplest next step. I’ve found that it’s much easier to propose a path forward, then make adjustments along the way.

We need to make payroll, so it’s important that gov knows that we are adaptable to the needs of the community but that we need to keep moving forward.

Consensus on our direction is a continuous process, because the landscape changes constantly with new information and partnerships. Some of the best insights have arisen from the council calls, where contributors gather to share updates and coordinate. I highly recommend that you join those calls if you want to participate more in-depth; they are open to anyone.

[MTheory]

@Taliskye

I don’t think lack of comments in a less than 24 hour period indicates consensus. Why does G9 always push so hard to get votes onchain after they have “revised” their scope…

Indeed, There are also times that things are discussed in the council channel for a few messages then pushed to a vote quickly.

[MTheory]

30 days into the 90 day funding period with about $90k spent. I feel there has been little growth and we are still fixing summer of 2023 issues.

I found it strange that Trevor is listed as a funding recipient on two teams. It seems redundant and it could have been done as a collaboration or differently. Maybe I would have a chance to get funded if I just hire generation software and ship the money to them.

Watch out of the announcement of having 7 teams building on pt, bc it will likely be just various combinations of the same people.

[Tjark]

Hey @MTheory,
I feel like people are already aware enough about how much you dislike the folks involved in building PoolTogether.

I wish we could stick to facts instead of feelings as a metric.

I’m not a member of G9 Software, but I’ll happily provide some context.

@MTheory

I feel there has been little growth and we are still fixing summer of 2023 issues.

The protocol is now live on three chains. G9 did a lot of work to facilitate conversations around potential growth plans for each. The way these conversations are setup is heavily depended on previous feedback of lacking community involvement. G9 has proven very patient in this process.
We’ve got a rewards campaign live, multiple partners onboarded, four interfaces building on the protocol (with more on lock), two more full code audits in the bag, lots of grants work, many improvements to the apps, a fully overhauled analytics.cabana.fi, etc.

I haven’t seen you around for any calls or participating in any conversations, so it might be that you aren’t following closely enough to make this assumption.

@MTheory

I found it strange that Trevor is listed as a funding recipient on two teams.

This is not true. Trevor is part of G9 Software and not any other funded team.

@MTheory

Watch out of the announcement of having 7 teams building on pt, bc it will likely be just various combinations of the same people.

Let’s please stick to the Code of Conduct. Your recent engagement exclusively consists of spreading false information and badmouthing people.
Please see this as your last warning, as this is not the first time you are reminded of the CoC.

[MTheory]

@Tjark

I feel like people are already aware enough about how much you dislike the folks involved in building PoolTogether.

Yes I am here because I care about the protocol and what you decide .

@Tjark

I wish we could stick to facts instead of feelings as a metric.

The metrics I have to go on in regards to growth are on chain and on Twitter as I have shared my issues regarding the disrespect of the Gen Software team in the privileged/controled Discord space. In the past 30 days, here are the announcement or “progress” shared from the Pool Together twitter handle. TLDR, there is a summery of the tweets at the end.

Blockquote
July 2nd-End of Sherlock Audit
July 4th-OP Grand Prize now 2eth
July 8th-Incentives for Security
Same Day-Kames.eth Quote about a “Wild Idea” saying “Who’s In”
Same Day-Kames.eth retweet about how he sold RPGF grant funds at the top and will sponsor delegations
July 9th
Kames.eth Delegation quote
Same Day-Retweet of user winning $100
July 11th-Kames.eth delegation selection retweet
July 11th-URLs are secure
July 12th- Kames.eth Delegation retweet
July 16th- Bonus Reward on USDC vault
July 16th- Nookie (Generation Employee) saying “Best place in Defi right now”.
****I dont think anyone would agree with this and likely goes in the false category with the quote that “71000 people use the protocol” on PoolTogether.com
Same day- Retweet at someone deposited in the protocol
July 17th- Kames.eth Delegation quote
Same Day- Retweet of someone suggesting that people should deposit
July 18th- Voting live for 2 PTIPs.
****I am really curious what makes a PTIP eligible for a tweet. Seems selective by people with power.
July 18th- Tweet about bonus rewards
Same Day- Tim retweeted saying try PT
Same Day- Rewards Live tweet
Same Day- Self retweet
July 19th- A pic of grand prizes saying “I dare you”
Same Day- Two new vaults deployed
Same Day- An actual Growth metric saying that $71,000 has been deposited over a week from Superform
Same Day- Kames Delegation
July 20th Kames retweet about how USDC vault that has been selectively given additional promotions has grown 7x larger than any other pool
July 22nd- Someone won 0.5eth and “No one has lost a cent”.
****This is disceptive as I know that stakers have lost a lot with POOL price decreasing 40% this month and we can not get into LPs. I understand there is risk in crypto, but retail users will get rekt by your words.
Same Day- 2 new prize vaults
Today- User retweet of you might get lucky if you deposit
Today- "What if I told you that you could win $10,000 without spending a dime? " referring to the chance of a delegation might give you a chance to win .

To Summarize:

1. four new vaults
2. Kames is giving delegations
3. USDC was selected by the Team for Excessive Perks funded by the DAO and grew at least $70k (reported by superform not pt). Note we are unsure if that $70k was just pulled out of other vaults.
4. The Dao incentivizing only Vaults that gen software deployed as broader incentives.
5. A user won, a user deposited, and a couple retweets saying you should deposit.

These are the metrics that you shared and I don’t think spending DAO funds and deploying four vaults is worth $90,000 for generation software. If that is the case I have made three deployments of then entire pool together protocol with three different interfaces… What is that worth? From my experience being ignored.

I have expressed that metrics like unique wallets that could honestly be one person total using the protocol isn’t the best metric of user growth and it is a fact that Generation’s github and protocol design has a focus on bot usage.

While TVL broke out now, It looks about the same as draw 22 which would have been mid May

The previous PTBR focused on growth of users and it was stated as “1000 active accounts” a month ago. From the looks of it there are 200 more “unique wallets” not necessarily active accounts.

These also show me that nearly half the “unique wallets” that have used pool together this year have left in the 4 months of existence

It is possible that there are 200 new users, but you can not rule out it being 200 new addresses

@Tjark

The protocol is now live on three chains. G9 did a lot of work to facilitate conversations around potential growth plans for each. The way these conversations are setup is heavily depended on previous feedback of lacking community involvement. G9 has proven very patient in this process.

Cool. these deployment are not progress this quarter. I deployed the protocol three times too and each have a different user interface including gasless transactions on one. This does not impress me especially knowing that I likely have to deploy the protocol again. Come on, how many V5 redo’s will there be? .

If you want, I will go look into your “Community Involvement” in the discussion as you said , but I’m sure it is people on payroll and a couple ignored community members. I will have to back this up if you have an issue with what I believe to be a likely outcome based on my experience and time in your discord I will dissect that point for you.

@Tjark

We’ve got a rewards campaign live, multiple partners onboarded, four interfaces building on the protocol (with more on lock), two more full code audits in the bag, lots of grants work, many improvements to the apps, a fully overhauled analytics.cabana.fi, etc.

Well I have three protocol interfaces lol. We dont need to pay GenSoftware $90k to spend DAO funds to incentivize vaults.

@Tjark

I haven’t seen you around for any calls or participating in any conversations, so it might be that you aren’t following closely enough to make this assumption.

Ah, so it is a requirement to be in the discord to be part of the community. You said the opposite in my Fork thread. How about having these calls in a public space like twitter?

It’s definitely fair to say that you have zero idea on how much I have been following and your statement is a pure assumption or speculation on your part. This is an example of how you attempt to discredit anyone who speaks up on the platforms you control.

@Tjark

This is not true. Trevor is part of G9 Software and not any other funded team.

This statement is a miss on my part. I realized it in this edit. Sorry.

@MTheory

Watch out of the announcement of having 7 teams building on pt, bc it will likely be just various combinations of the same people.

Blockquote
Let’s please stick to the Code of Conduct. Your recent engagement exclusively consists of spreading false information and badmouthing people.
Please see this as your last warning, as this is not the first time you are reminded of the CoC.

This direction of convo is retracted noting my realization above. Mybad

On the note of how it is said, I agree I shouldn’t say that it will likely be that outcome. I will continue to share warning on how this could happen or might be happening now. I hope your response is not trying to silence the worry of it happening of it or my act of informing users of the possible threat of it coming true.
I will say “Watch out, this could be an example or a precursor to it being the major issue that I shared and retracted.”

I believe that my statement expressing the lack of value to growth is valid and as a summery.

1. We can see that 200 new ADDRESSES have deposited in a month (based on Cabanalytics user stats minus 1000 that Branden stated are already active) and it is shown that 713 addresses have left in the three-four months of the protocol being live.

2. No record if they are new or active users. No growth in human vocalization or social activity. Only shown on the Gen Software released UI.

3. Vault incentivization funded by the DAO has worked. IMO Gen Software doesn’t get the credit for spending dao money on chosen vaults. I suggested voting on which vaults get perks, but you didnt care to respond in the Fork post.

5. The previous accomplishment of listing on superform was a good idea. Not progress this quarter.

7. Four new vaults have been deployed. It’s something.

Here, I see four new vaults were created by generation software for $90k. While I’m sure there are UI upgrades and other things done, in regards to the goals of this funding round above, I do not see the progress proposed in this request 1/3 into the duration.

This "progress vs the three interfaces and three different protocol deployments that I did that between July 1st and 8th (holiday week for US people), the growth show to cost $90000 has been a dud.

If deploying on the list of chains above justifies $265k this quarter, then I will do that today and tomorrow for $1000. I get that I would building on the previous work done when running existing scripts/simulations, but that is exactly what generation software is trying to play up being worth $265k

@Tjark

I wish we could stick to facts instead of feelings as a metric.

Maybe I should say the words feel or believe less often when I speak, but let me know if i missed anything.

If I missed any banger announcements, maybe your method of only sharing Pool Together progress in discord is probably not the best route to get the message out to more people.

[Ncookie]

I feel like this was a lot of words for a few points, but I’ll try to characterise these fairly:

1) You feel that the user metrics we use aren’t accurate
Sure, I somewhat agree. It’s hard to get real user numbers while remaining somewhat privacy-preserving. So we use unique wallet addresses like basically every other protocol out there not specifically focusing on decentralised identity.

2) You feel that the protocol is not growing
I mean, maybe not as fast as you think it should, but on basically every metric (wallets, tvl, prizes, ppcs), it is factually doing so.

3) You feel disrespected and unrewarded for the work you’ve put in
At your behest I’ve promised that I wouldn’t offer criticism of any of anything you build again, so I won’t do so here. I can only say that this community has always been extremely generous towards rewarding contributors, as I experienced it firsthand when first finding it years ago.

That being said, as to point #2 and #3, to concretely rewarding you for your work, as well as to your comments of being able to do the work that’s being done for cheaper, or that you don’t believe the direction of the protocol is moving is the right one, I’ll repeat what basically everyone has told you thus far; make a PTIP, a PTBR, whatever - as you said you would at least twice - anything with a concrete plan of what you think should be done.

Criticising others can be a valid way of helping things move in the right direction, but doing it yourself and allowing yourself to be criticised, while harder, usually produces better outcomes.