RFC: Hyperstructure GTM Discussion

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Growth in crypto has four elements to it (alliteration incoming):

Posts - podcasts, blog and video content, social posts, any content marketing will reach folks new to crypto, defi, or you know, prize savings accounts.

Partnerships - Another way to raise awareness is to see PoolTogether integrated into as many wallets, dapps, and CEXs as possible. The more places PoolTogether pops up in a way that’s easy for a user to deposit… we want that. The beauty of Hyperstructure is that PoolTogether shows up in more places automatically by allowing users to deposit more than USDC.

Prizes - Just because we show up places doesn’t mean that users will deposit. Incentives (massive prizes, OP rewards or delegations) encourage users to deposit immediately to win prizes, claim op rewards, or grab a Phi Land trophy.

Preservation - PoolTogether retains users by connecting them to the community and rewarding that community for contributing to the growth, development, and proliferation of the protocol.

PoolTogether depositors can withdraw at any time, so when incentives dry up, the thing that retains depositors are prizes and knowing your deposit connects you to the most wholesome community in crypto. The challenge in times of explosive partnership and prize growth is that we must protect the quality of community interactions from farmers and bots while also making every effort to connect with new true depositors.

Some challenges:

  • If PoolTogether is to integrate with protocols, we need to find builders to build these integrations.
  • We are at the mercy of yield for prizes
  • Delegation is a confusing incentive/reward
  • We are hesitant to connect incentive seekers to Discord, our main channel for community, due to low quality farming accounts.

Still, hyperstructure has generated a ton of excitement, and if we can find builders to create integrations (or partner with protocols willing to provide the builders and auditing) then we have the potential to reach a large audience of potential depositors.

This combined with deposit incentives, higher quality quests (such as Phi Land), a referral program for committed community members, and a way to connect depositors to the community (a la PoolyCon) will generate growth for the protocol.

My main question: Who is the target audience for the Hyperstructure roll out?

Right now it’s the partnerships and prizes (incentives) part of the four Ps. We’re targeting protocols who are most aligned with the PoolTogether community with the greatest reach who will work with us!

Once we have a full fledged product out in the audited wild, we will still be working in the B2B world, but more and more we can pursue more B2C opportunities.

The following are pitches that I’ve been circulating in my conversations with potential partners. I post them here for comments from the community to make my approach stronger, to equip others to represent PoolTogether as they interact with potential partners, and to generate a productive discussion from the die hard PoolTogether community members.

Consumer pitch
Crypto is flooded with scams and shitcoins. Even if you had the time to comb through every opportunity, you would need to complete a ton of actions or build a bot to take advantage of profitable low risk opportunities.

So yes, there might be life changing money in crypto, but no matter how bull the market gets, most will be left sitting on the sidelines due to inaccessibility.

PoolTogether gives everyone no loss exposure to these yield opportunities, and now with Hyperstructure, anyone can buy and hold any token they wish, and have the opportunity to win huge POOL prizes while they save. ETH, GHO, OP, WBTC all supercharged with prizes by PoolTogether!

Wallets/Interfaces Pitch

PoolTogether unlocks growth for wallets by offering a simple and secure reason to try crypto. The no-loss prize savings protocol is already one of the most popular with 33,000 unique depositors on Optimism and 22,000 on Polygon. Daily prizes give an organic reason for recurring wallet engagement and the consistency of prizes drives swapping volume for wallets.

Token/Yield Sources Pitch
PoolTogether unlocks growth for yield sources by offering a stable TVL of deposited tokens. PoolTogether made up 75% of Aave’s TVL on Optimism in Q1 2023. With PoolTogether Hyperstructure, depositors can hold any token they want, as long as there’s a yield source for it. You have the chance to be that yield source at launch!

Blockchain Pitch
PoolTogether unlocks growth for Blockchains by offering a killer app for your blockchain. The PoolTogether primitive just works, and now with Hyperstructure, you can deposit any token, using any yield source, and win significantly outsized prizes for a small depositoor. The no loss prize savings protocol is already one of the most popular with 33,000 unique depositors on Optimism and 22,000 on Polygon. Daily prizes give an organic reason for recurring engagement and the consistency of prizes drives swapping volume.

Developer Pitch
PoolTogether Hyperstructure creates a range of opportunities for developers to build innovative new products targeted at onboarding more people to the blockchain, profit from building bots and vaults on the PoolTogether Protocol, and connect with a community of builders committed to defend DeFi and contribute to the public good.

Creatives/Causes Pitch
PoolTogether Hyperstructure allows creators/causes to generate income in a no loss way from their supporters. Your fans deposit into your PoolTogether Vault, you can take a percentage of the prizes (up to 100%!) and you can reward those deposited with NFTs, Content, Special Access, and experiences. The more supporters deposited, the more money you’ll raise, all while encouraging your supporters to save!

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Hey @tim,

Appreciate you taking the time to share your thoughts on the gtm strategy and ask for input.

Since the hyperstructure (hereafter, v5 since it’s shorter) is still in development and the promise of v5 is a wider variety of assets available for deposit and higher yields, my view is that the target audience you want to focus on is the potential integration partners (i.e., vault managers).

Looking at the growth factors you’ve outlined in your post (included below as well):

Posts. This initiative targets potential retail users, and the marketing campaigns executed in the last 6-12 months show that as well. We’re seeing small deposits from a large number of wallet, which could either be unique depositors or people splitting wallets, attempting to sybil the protocol in hopes of an airdrop or greater rewards. This is a top of the funnel initiative that helps with discover of PoolTogether.

I’m not sure if you have any analytics or information that create a picture of who the average audience is for the community podcast, Twitter Spaces events, marketing campaigns, and other growth initiatives the team has executed to date.

Partnerships. PoolTogether has been integrated into the Rainbow and Coinbase apps, among others, which is a great way to increase reach. But given the low yields available in Aave markets right now, PoolTogether isn’t seen as competitive or compelling for the protocol to realize conversions from these integrations at the current moment in time. Before the growth team focuses on more partnerships with wallets and CEXs, it might be beneficial to focus on the core value proposition of the protocol.

Prize-linked savings with a chance to win outsized prizes

Once people are able to deposit a wider range of assets and realize higher yields within the PoolTogether protocol, partnerships should be easier to pursue and close. Because of that, I think this is a priority that can come post v5.

Prizes (a.k.a., yield). The core benefit of v5 has been highlighted as a unified prize token, which enables the permissionless creation of different vaults that accept different assets other than just USDC. While this infrastructure opens up the potential for a wide array of different vaults, it might be beneficial to ask:

  1. What assets can be supported at launch that drive the most growth?
  2. What yield sources provide higher-than-average yield on those target assets, while meeting the security standards of the community?

If the community and Growth Team can select a core 3-4 assets for question 1, then the audience then is narrowed down to the teams that can satisfy the requirements in question 2.

The incentive for an existing development team to launch a vault in PoolTogether v5 is two-fold:

  • Bootstrap TVL. As you noted, PT represented a large share of Aave v3’s USDC market on Optimism. By integrating with the PT protocol, you can bootstrap your TVL and, in turn, drive adoption of your protocol.
  • User retention. One of the strengths noted in the Analysis Of PoolTogether growth metrics post was the protocol’s user retention rates (cited below). Development teams who launch vaults that allow Poolers to deposit in their protocol can expect a higher rate of retention that other DeFi protocols. For lending markets, yield aggregators, etc., this means more protocol revenue for teams that create vaults in v5.

Pooltogether has noticed a rather high six month retention at 46%, illustrating the high probability of users maintaining a positive balance in the platform, while on a yearly basis it goes just below 30%

There’s a clear economic incentive to integrate with PoolTogether when v5 first launches. Grants could be given, but I’d imagine protocols with ERC-4626 vaults would have the resources to integrate, given the key benefit of ERC-4626 is greater composability and easier integrations.

Imo, this then means the audience the Growth Team would benefit most from targeting between now and the launch of v5 would be:

  • Protocols that accept supported ERC-20 assets; and
  • Provide average, higher-than-average (competitive) yields in the supported assets; and
  • Have ERC-4626 compatible vault infrastructure already developed

It also seems beneficial to limit the chains that v5 will initially be deployed on, so optimizing for chains where sustainable growth (i.e., sustainable yield) is possible and limiting to 2-3 target chains were gas fees are reasonable (e.g., Ethereum L2s, Polygon, etc.). Locating the yield sources that fit into the specifications above, talking to their development teams, and gauging which chains they want to achieve growth on would be a great way to narrow down potential chain/network deployments.

Of the pitches you’ve shared, the audience for the Token/Yield Sources Pitch is likely the most important to achieve growth after launch.

Once the yield is there and more assets can be deposited, then increasing awareness through content marketing, while pursuing wallet and CEX level partnerships will be a clear focus. There’s also a clear CTA for a retail audience (“many assets accepted, fun way to save, chance for outsized prizes, etc.”) and potential partners (“growth in deposits & DAUs, competitive yields, many assets accepted etc.”).

Focusing on content marketing or wallet and CEX level partnerships will be much more difficult and perhaps not the greatest use of the Growth Team’s limited time between today and the launch of v5.

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AWESOME! Thanks for writing this up @BraveNewDeFi!

So on Crypto Twitter, much of the retail audience also works in crypto (at least in my feed) and is also a B2B audience. Things like the Podcast and Twitter Spaces might be targeted at a retail audience, but the real play is using the platforms to invite those B2B guests. These channels promote existing partnerships and open up opportunities for new ones.

Demographics: Podcast is 50% US based and 50% the rest of the world (or VPN users)
@thumbsupfinance can provide a breakdown of their audience but I think it’s similar. Web traffic from the marketing campaigns is over 50% from HK/China and then US in second place.

I would love to have better info on this, and I’m working with potential partners on giving us better info here, especially with on-chain analytics.

Love this and we’re getting close to an answer on these, but would love to hear suggestions from the community on these.

Also love this.

Again, would love to hear community feedback on who these are. We’re working with the 4626 Alliance on developing vaults for existing yield sources. Really pumped about what’s ahead!

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Thanks for the responses, Tim :pray:

Understand the overlap, but from the interviews in the last year, which interviews resulted in an initiative that drove growth in key metrics? If initiatives were started and are still in progress, can you share which conversations led to ongoing growth initiatives, what the objective of the partnership is, and what target metrics you’re hoping for from the partnership?

Just trying to get a sense of where this falls among growth priorities vs. reaching out to teams directly (i.e., could another person on the Growth Team interview people, edit the podcast, post and announce across social channels, etc.?). This could still be a way to connect with teams; however, there might be higher priorities ahead of v5 that the team lead could focus on while delegating to other Growth Team contributors.

In my experience, Twitter isn’t great for conversions and engagement trends around 4-8% of total impressions. It’s a useful comms/marketing channel, but unless it’s driving growth in the key metrics you’re targeting, it may not be worth a decent amount of the Growth Team’s time every week if resources are limited.

For any community members curious what ERC-4626 vaults are currently live and on which networks, the 4626 Alliance has a great database here.

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Great discussion. Thanks for starting this thread. I was thinking about the Hyperstructure update and realized from the Vault mechanics that prizes will be distributed in POOL. This is great because the smart contract turns yield from the Vaults into Pool I’m assuming on Uniswap or other Defi LPs.

  • PT can gain revenue by providing POOL LPs (fees)
  • POOL exchange volume will increase
  • POOL holders will passively increase

But this leaves users without many options to trade their POOL for other tokens, seeing as there are only a few exchange options available, mainly Uniswap.

So I guess the whole point of this post is to ask the question:

  • How/when/if POOL will be listed on exchanges? We have the default Defi swap available with about $500k in liquidity, but I assume people want to use exchanges like Binance and Coinbase too and I’m just wondering how those listings happen? And why haven’t they happened yet?
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In v5, the protocol has a virtual AMM, where yield is liquidated for POOL–previously outlined in this forum post and the early dev docs for v5 go into detail on this process.

The POOL POL managed by the Finance Team will be enough to manage the trade volume post v5. You can read the POOL Liquidity Considerations April 2023 post here for more information on the current POL positions.

If v5 had $200m TVL with average yield of 5%, then there would be ~$27k in yield that would need to be liquidated every day. Well within the capability of the current POL positions and that would be in a scenario where TVL sees a 20x increase and yield sees a 2.4x increase.

Getting a token listed on a centralized exchange typically costs money. Custodians only want to list tokens where there’s a financial incentive for them, which means people either have to pay large fees (in the range of 6-7 figures per year) and provide liquidity for marketing making. This is likely something the community would not want to use treasury funds for, and it would be unsustainable if a six-figure sum were paid for a custodial listing.

TL;DR: the POL positions will be sufficient to support POOL trading; once networks are identified for v5, POL will need to be established on those networks, as well.

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So it’s either an initiative that came after the podcast, or a podcast episode that promotes an initiative.

Quick math here: 18 podcasts out of the 66 have resulted in campaigns or we have one in the works.

Tied to key metrics, there have been two: Galxe and Polygon, that contributed directly to the 50K+ wallets deposited. The Juno spending card came out of two podcast episodes, one with Nucleus and one with Juno. We’re in regulation hell with that but soonTM we will have that card!

Again, I don’t think Twitter Spaces or the Podcast need to connect directly to key metrics as long as there’s a marketing benefit, increases relationships in the space, and gives me a tool in the toolbox to initiate a converstation with a new protocol. Today I booked Instadapp on the pod for June 17th. I think they could be a really great partner. We’ll see what comes of it.

I also spoke with the founder of Cypher Wallet this week, as I too question if the podcast is worth it, and he was really encouraged by it and told me to keep going! They have a sweet SDK btw that allows users to move assets cross chain for gas and purchases. You love to see it!

Every time I talk to @McOso he’s begging for more PoolTogether Marketing, not less. And the Growth Team came out of the marketing team, so definitely want to keep up the marketing that’s working. I would say that Twitter Spaces is def growing. The podcast is chugging along.

Screenshot 2023-05-10 at 5.10.52 PM
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@poptones and @bab run Twitter Spaces fully and we’re planning to do two episodes on Hyperstructure with 4626 Alliance and Graph (pending invite acceptance), and @DenicioDelToro1 produces the podcast. I spend 1.5 hours on the podcast per week.

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Hey Tim,

Thanks for adding me to the discussion.

I wouldn’t rely too much on my analytics yet since I have been running them for less than one month, but here is a screenshot from my GA dashboard. It shows that 66% of measured traffic came from the US.

Again, take that for what you will given the small sample size and short sample period, but I’d say your instinct of around 50% US-based audience feels pretty realistic to me.
CleanShot 2023-05-11 at 22.07.43

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