PTIP-15: Reduced & Continued POOL distribution

PTIP-15

Simple Summary

This proposal is to continue POOL distribution to governance managed prize pools at a reduced rate. If not passed, POOL distribution will completely stop on May 26th.

Motivation

The initial POOL distribution period has been quite successful in

  • Generating ~$200,000 in weekly prizes
  • Growing AUM to ~$230 million
  • Growing reserves by $75,000 - $150,000 weekly (depending on interest rates)

However, since this POOL distribution was set before the POOL token was issued. It has never been optimized using the real world data we now have. The initial POOL distribution was outlined here and was designed to distribute 5% of the total supply over 14 weeks.

This proposal continues POOL distribution at a substantially reduced rate. The goal of this proposal is to optimize POOL distribution to generate the largest prizes and getting POOL into the hands of long term aligned community members.

Specification

  • Extend POOL distribution for 14 more weeks at the following rates
  • Reduce USDC POOL distribution from 2,295 per day to 1,400
  • Reduce Dai POOL distribution from 2,295 per day to 700
  • Reduce COMP distribution from 255 per day to 50
  • Reduce UNI distribution from 255 per day to 50
  • Increase LP reward distribution from 300 to 500 POOL per day

Overall, these changes reduce total daily POOL distribution by 49%. Maintaining these rates fo 14 weeks will distribute a total of 274,400 POOL. It should be communicated that we expect POOL distribution to continue after those 14 weeks but there may be modifications to it.

Rationale

There are many variables involved in setting POOL distribution rates so it’s impossible to fully know what the impact will be. However, a few over-arching ideas guided our thinking.

  • POOL distribution had to be slowed for the simple reason that it began with a VERY fast distribution rate. The initial distribution rate was optimized for getting as much POOL as possible into the hands of the community (5% of total supply over 14 weeks).
  • The yield rates on assets are highly varied. Targeting high yield assets with POOL distribution leads to larger prizes and faster reserve growth. Targeting low yield assets helps grow AUM but doesn’t contribute significantly to prizes.
  • POOL distribution is equal across similar asset types (stable coins both get the same rate) this fragments prizes and prevents the growth of really large headline prizes ($1 million per week).

With these high level ideas we landed on the following parameters

  • A total 49% reduction in POOL distributed per day
  • The largest cuts 80% were to the non-stablecoin prize pools which have the lowest APRs and therefore smallest prizes
  • USDC receives the highest allocation of 1,400 POOL (2x that of Dai) this creates a clear favorite pool that can be the primary entry point to new depositors and also provide the highest headline prize.
  • An increase in LP incentives to POOL / ETH holders of 200 POOL (500 per day instead of 300 per day) which should incentive healthier liquidity for POOL

You can see the details of the changes along with other variables here.

It’s worth noting a few things this proposal does not do.

  • The proposal does not re-allocate any POOL specifically to incentive sponsorship over deposits. This has been a popular idea as a way to have less whales win prizes but it was deemed too big of a change to implement right now alongside the other changes.
  • This proposal does not change pool reserve rates. It was decided it was best to address this separately.

Technical Specification

This proposal exceeds the current 10 transaction limit of proposals, so it will be split into two parts:

Part 1: Reduce Drip Rates
Part 2: Deposit more POOL

Status

Part 1 Proposal
Part 2 Proposal

POOL Pool combined Snapshot Vote

9 Likes

Looks good to me. The only thing missing imo is the “reserved for new pools” category.

We could either add that in or decide that there will be no additional incentivized pools in the next 14 weeks.

I like giving some room (maybe 400 POOL?) for new pools.

Mainnet yearn, Mainnet Aave, Polygon Aave are all strong contenders for incentivized pools very soon.

4 Likes

im good with this. I agree with @Torgin . should probably have some POOL available for new pools. specifically the USDT pool on mainnet that has been discussed.

3 Likes

Yes! Agreed with @Torgin & @RegisIsland that we should have some capacity for new prize pools. Let me explicitly add that in.

2 Likes

Personally I would have liked the margin between DAI and USDC drip to be less but also don’t want to delay things further. If it was up to me I’d have the DAI pool bumped up to 1000/day. I like that DAI is a decentralized option and I don’t want to see that pool drop off. Despite my opinion on the DAI pool I would still vote in favour of these numbers as is. I’m looking forward to see what effect these changes have on the POOL token price.

I would like to see a less drastic reduction in DAI rewards. My rationales are this.

  1. Historically rates are higher for DAI than they are for USDC, thereby generating larger rewards and reserves.

  2. The friction in generating DAI from a personal ETH holding is 1 step lower than USDC. I have personally taken a CDP out to enter the PoolTogether DAI pool.

  3. Ideologically, DAI which is “crypto native” is more aligned with PoolTogether than USDC. If i remember correctly Maker helped bootstrap PoolTogether with a grant right? Has Circle/CB helped to the growth of our protocol? Im not saying its a this-for-that relationship, but lets not forget who was our friend before we were cool.

Thanks to all the people who work on PTIPs and the fruitful discussions

D

1 Like

Thanks for the input!

1). Interest rates have actually been higher on USDC than Dai (at least on a 30 day rolling average: https://defirate.com/compound-finance/)

2). This is a good point but I think it is variable depending on the user (i.e. it’s easier for you to do Dai but for some others USDC is easier). The other thing with the Dai prize pool though is that it is being VERY heavily yield farmed (50% of current deposits are from yearn.finance) and they are simply dumping everyday. So by reducing the rewards we should hopefully discourage some of the heavy yield farmer and see a better distribution of deposit sizes (i.e. smaller depositors should actually end up with a better APR).

3). Yes! MakerDAO gave a grant to get PoolTogether going, Circle also has had $100k of “sponsorship” deposited in for the last 1.5 years so they have given us some support.

Overall, I think you bring up good points but I also think the value of having an A/B test right now is very helpful and using the prize pool that is a bit less APR and getting very heavily yield farmed makes sense.

  1. I stand corrected - I also forgot we stay within the Compound system not broad market - Crypto Lending Rates - Earn Crypto Interest by DeFi Lending

  2. Hopefully it discourages large whales from farming and dumping, but they may just adjust accordingly - which doesn’t support a less drastic reduction but… ya lets change something and see what happens

  3. I wasn’t aware of the Circle “sponsorship” thats great. Is this still ongoing?

Thanks for your thoughts

D

1 Like

Looks good to me. The only thing missing imo is the “reserved for new pools” category.

This is an interesting request. While it’s always good to discuss a topic and reach consensus, this wouldn’t actually be part of the proposal. When it comes time to drip to more pools we’ll just have to discuss it again in a new proposal.

It’s fine to talk about, but it probably makes sense to save that conversation until actual action is needed. No reason to block a proposal for a soft commitment.

No, I wasn’t planning on blocking it.
We were discussing building a complete plan for our yield farming strategy in an earlier post.
I think having a plan now makes sense. If we were for example to be deadset on reducing total emissions by 50% and not going above that in the future, we’d have to reduce the values in this PTIP in preparation for future pools.

That is! They only have 100k deposited so isn’t a huge thing but it’s a nice show of support. Coinbase invests 1.1 million USDC in Uniswap, PoolTogether via its Bootstrap Fund

Voting is now live!

Due to its size, it has been split into two parts:

Proposal Part 1
Proposal Part 2

POOL Pool combined Snapshot Vote

2 Likes