PTBR-20: susu.club <> PoolTogether

[geeloko]

PTBR-20: susu.club <> PoolTogether( Launch in Ghana & Kenya )

Start Date	August 23rd, 2024
Duration of Work	6 months
Budget	$35,000

Susu is a term in Ghana, used to describe Savings and Credit Cooperatives( SACCOs ). It is a common way for people to save money in places where there may not be access to traditional banking.

susu.club is built on top of the Pooltogether protocol and is designed to provide a better experience & security for these kinds of financial services.

susu.club uses account abstraction( gasless smart accounts ) w/ email logins( embedded wallets ) and third party cash on & off ramps to bring SACCOs operations onchain.

Using susu.club members primarily in emerging markets, like Ghana, Kenya, South Africa, Nigeria and more can onramp USDC stablecoins with cash, and magically have it deposited into a special( 50/50 Yield/Prizes ) susu.club <> PoolTogether USDC vault on Base

Scope of Work

Motivation( Why susu.club <> PoolTogether? )

susu.club is focused on onboarding non-crypto natives & SACCOs in emerging markets at its start, giving PoolTogether a strong foothold in African countries like Ghana and Kenya. susu.club aims to serve the “unbanked”, change at this level could potentially spark change in the thinking & use of onchain assets in the region, proving why they are better and more practical for fintech applications & systems. Having PoolTogether power this service in Africa, alongside Coinbase Smart Wallet, Privy and Biconomy puts the protocol in a good position to benefit from the growth this user group will see in the coming months and years.

Goal

To actively build & reimagine what SACCOs operations could look like onchain w/ susu.club as the model for this experiment. The goal is to provide users the more simple values of DeFi without having to worry about knowing what crypto is…becoming the go to infra provider for simple community savings accounts with a recognizable web2 user experience.

Milestones & Deliverables

• Develop go-to-market strategy for susu.club( Onboarding susu.club Members ).
  Create & execute a marketing plan, refine the susu.club brand, and create marketing materials. Run onboarding sessions resulting in the onboarding of 1000 users in 3 months. Make walkthroughs for getting their first funds onboarded & setup on susu.club, show them what they can win, how/when they can claim their rewards. Includes defining an incentive program( deposit $5 get $5 for first 100-500 users? ) and creating strategies to promote the campaign.

• Onboarding Susu Collectors
  Susu collectors are the ‘mobile bankers’ who work for the SACCOs collecting deposits from all their members spread across the local community. It’s a very hectic job that involves walking & standing all day. They may very well be the lifeline of SACCOs operations, the whole chain is impossible to run without them as it stands now! The goal is to design and Run onboarding sessions with 20 susu collectors. Develop business models that attract susu collectors, teach them the basics of PT including prizes and yield, get them setup and ready to act as ‘agents’ in the system, onboarding members to susu.club

• Community Education, Management & Meetups
  Create & Manage WhatsApp groups w/ the two main interest groups, i.e. susu.club members & susu collectors alongside other management from SACCOs. Plan & organize monthly ‘pool party’ meetups creating a better bond and familiarity with the problems, goals & user groups we are building for.

• Building and Strengthening susu.club mobile app & website
  Build out final code needed to allow for claiming bonus rewards, and withdrawing funds to cash, etc. Integrating more third party cash ramps to cover diversified regions & offer more competitive rates and fees for club members. Also in order to provide the best experiences and ease availability to mobile users, will be beginning work on react native expo app deployments for Android and iOS devices & expected to have them live in the respective app stores before the end of the funding period.

• Apply for Grants
  Build relationships w/ & Apply for 3+ grants for future funding from Base, Circle, Biconomy, Moonwell and Optimism. Grants should be aimed at sponsored gas for club members, continuing to fund development & scaling up of susu.club, not to forget incentives for onboarding so the club can grow its audience after this PTBR has ended.

Team & Timeline

@geeloko - Product Development and Operations
@TBD - Design & Community

The timeframe of this request is expected to last six months, featuring weekly team updates with the council.

Budget

Below highlights the general budget for a growing team’s operational expenses & details the budget allocations, including the KPI’s we will be tracking for each of these specified milestones mentioned above

Amount	Token	Budget
35000	USDC	Team

Allocation Breakdown

Budget - 5000 USDC
KPI - Customer Acquisition Cost( CAC )
Task - Sponsors the signup bonuses for first 1000users

Budget - 3000 USDC
KPI - Monthly Active Users( MAUs ) ( Reach 5-10k unique visitors monthly )
Task - Experiment with influencer marketing on non crypto native socials Snapchat & Tik Tok( our target users are not crypto native ) ( team of up to two social marketers )

Budget - 12000 USDC
KPI - Total Volume (TVL) ( 3000-5000$ in initial launch months and projected to grow 10-50% MOM )
Task - Special alliance with susu collectors who will double as community moderators, putting us in a unique position to get organic deposits from the current active user base of IRL susu enterprises( vampire attack deposits ) ( team of up to five susu collectors )

Budget - 15000 USDC
KPI - Mobile Downloads
Task - Designs, Mobile app/Web app development, operations ( team of up to two builders )

Status

This is the final version of the PTBR. Vault Sponsorship has been sunset in favor of Prize Pool Contribution
You can review the updated draft on Tally here before it will be posted onchain: PTBR-20: susu.club <> PoolTogether
If this proposal doesn’t get any further feedback it will proceed to vote.

[TheRealTuna]

This is a really nice idea, but unfortunately Pooltogether treasury only has $220,000 USD and 120 ETH ($315,000 USD). I do not feel we can afford to spend our remaining non-POOL assets on anything other than liquidity and incentives.This would be 10% of the remaining non-POOL treasury.

[Brendan]

Thanks @geeloko for submitting this, and for all of your efforts so far.

I’m in full support of your venture; I’m excited to see what you build on PoolTogether. I think $35k is very reasonable for the given time and scope of work that you’ll be tackling.

With funding secured to build a fully fleshed-out product, I think other grants will flow much more easily. I’m pleased we can kick-start things here.

[polarsilicon]

Would be good to see the cost breakdown on the various milestones/deliverables.

If susu collectors are currently compensated, what’s their incentive to push susu club/pool together? Perhaps a small % could be delegated to them. But ultimately, they’re no longer needed with susu.club, so might be better to focus purely on the members. We don’t need more “bankers”

[geeloko]

thanks for your feedback @TheRealTuna. I appreciate the time you took to check this out! I share your concerns about the treasury but there may be some misconceptions here about the budget size, I have updated the PTBR to reflect only the relevant expenses.

[geeloko]

hey there @polarsilicon, happy to see your feedback & thanks for taking the time to share your thoughts on this.

the plan has always been to directly compensate the susu collectors that will be will working with us, there’s a budget allocation dedicated to them( as shown in updated PTBR )

It will be the ultimate goal to have members find susu.club without any ‘middlemen’, but for the next six months as a new market entrant using technology that is considered skeptically its important to coordinate w/ players that already inspire trust among our target user base

[geeloko]

@Brendan ser! I really appreciate the work you & other community builders have done on the protocol so far, would not be possible to get this far without it

inspired to keep building even as it gets tougher, the support is out of this world!

[Tjark]

Great work in implementing all the feedback you received, @geeloko!

To avoid confusion, PTBR-20 is live on Tally, but Geeloko has updated his proposal to better serve the feedback he received. An updated proposal will be posted onchain shortly.

[Brendan]

Quick Update

I want to point out a few updates: Geeloko went to the council call to discuss the PTBR and receive feedback. A few things came out of the meeting:

• He decided to remove the sponsorship request. Sponsorship is capital-intensive. Instead of sponsorship, he could contribute directly on behalf of his vault at $5 per day to receive a good chance of winning. That would be $800 for the six months.
• He provided some expected KPIs, so that we’d have a quantitative measure of the expected results.

We decided to “cancel” the existing PTBR-20 by voting against it (hence the heavily skewed vote).

If anyone else has more feedback or thoughts, please add them now! Geeloko will be putting a new PTBR on-chain shortly, and we don’t want to have to go through the cancellation process.

More Thoughts

I’ve been thinking about this effort that Geeloko is putting forward, and I realized something else about it that I’d like to talk about.

Savings and Credit Cooperatives are directly aligned with PoolTogether values; to help people be financially secure by having fun saving money. This is our true calling beyond the current state of degeneracy in crypto; this is what prize savings aka premium bonds are built for.

These values are what brought everyone in the community together; it’s a fun and simple product that is safe and takes care of its users. This is our brand.

We’ve also always prided ourselves at being the on-ramp to defi; being simple anyone can understand us.

These values and intent are exactly what Geeloko is pursuing; he’s onboarding real people to crypto and to PoolTogether.

I think this project has the potential to bring more to the protocol than just deposits; I think it can further our brand.

More Feedback

@geeloko I have a request I’d like to make from you: can you take photos of your onboarding events, photos at pivotal moments, along with some notes for each so that we can retell this story? Capture whatever content that is meaningful. I think this is a fantastic effort, and I want to make sure we can tell your story and how you’re using the PoolTogether brand and technology.

I’m not sure whether it’ll be via Twitter, Farcaster, Medium, Mirror or otherwise, but if we have the content then we can tell the story many different ways. Photos are great, along with context, and perhaps some video if you’re feeling up for it!