Thoughts on the Pooltime team
I’ve been a fan of Pooltime since it started. Ultimately, the Treasury Working Group (TWG) transitioned into the Finance Team once it became clear treasury management wasn’t the community’s priority and the desire was to put most of the treasury USDC into the PoolTogether protocol to generate yield and use as delegation capital. Tthe Finance Team managed the prize tiering in V4, which cut the subsidy quite a lot, and they established Protocol-Owned Liquidity (POL) to reduce slippage and stablize the value of POOL held in the treasury. While this POL isn’t performing well in the current market, it did perform well and provided an efficient use of resources for ~2 years. The Finance Team then transitioned to Pooltime once V5 launched, since underthesea created the first community user interface (UI), which displayed all available prize vaults and didn’t take the curation approach.
underthesea
I’ve been a big proponent of the work that @underthesea has done for years in the PoolTogether community. He’s created the Pooly bot in Discord; provided support in general, get help, holders hangout, developers, and governance when he’s been able to; underthesea and bronder both worked to provide an overview of team spending throughout 2022 and 2023; underthesea created and launched Pooltime, which has features that allow everyday Poolers to claim prizes, liquidate yield, etc. I view underthesea as an invaluable asset to the protocol and DAO.
Of all the contributors, I believe underthesea provides for the most value for his individual funding requests. He’s also raised concerns about runway throughout 2023 and tried to have some of the discussions we’re having now, with the most recent post being the Q4 2023 Treasury Report and Runway Considerations that was posted in November 2023.
Tjark
Tjark is right up there with underthesea. He’s been active for quite some time, and he provides a lot of value for the community. He hosts the weekly community calls; provides support in Discord and communicates bug reports to GS as they are shared on Discord; shares updates on the forum and Discord; posts on the PoolTogether Twitter and Lens accounts; led the initiative for a PT V5 hackathon in Q4; led the effort to start the contributor fund to encourage more community participation without impacting the treasury; and more. From my point of view, Tjark has been a constant presence in the PoolTogether Discord and is a great representative for the PoolTogether brand. When Lens launched and Tjark created the PoolTogether Lens handle, he was active in the Lens contributors Telegram and Stani and the Lens team were highly engaged with his posts from the PT Lens account. Through Tjark’s efforts, he’s gotten a lot of exposure for the PoolTogether brand.
Feedback on Current PTBR RFC
For the Pooltime budget request, I would be in favor of supporting both Tjark and underthesea. Looking at the previous Q4 2023 budget request, the ask was $58,000, which is an amount I would be happy to support. I would also be open to cost optimization, but I can’t see myself supporting an ask greater than the Q4 2023 Pooltime request given the current environment.
I will say that the Pooltime PTBR could use greater clarity on how the team plans to re-engage community members who aren’t in V5 or who have drifted away from the community. Retention and growth should be the core focus for the next quarter. Again, applying some more quantitative information on how these deliverables are expected to have impact would be a welcome change before this moves to a formal PTBR.
Costs from Q4 2023 to Q1 2024
Looking at the cost between the two quarters, there’s been a ~55% increase quarter over quarter. I know that both Tjark and underthesea were on Pooltime in Q4 2023.
There’s no budget breakdown in either of these PTBRs but the move away from budget breakdowns occurred after the Council Discussion: Changes to the Team Budget Request process was published. This was a council-driven change and not something POOL holders voted on.
I have to assume, then, the increase comes from the cost of adding Darby and Lonser to the Pooltime team. I was present on council calls when both Darby and Lonser shared they were winding down the Growth Team and Grants Team respectively and were planning on joining Pooltime to reduce cost. However, there’s only a ~17.4% reduction when you add up the total of the Q4 2023 Growth Team, Grants Team, and Pooltime budget requests and compare it to the current request on the Q1 2024 Pooltime request. The additional cost to this current request is $16,000 per new contributor and that annualized cost is $64,000 per part-time contributor being added to the Pooltime team.
While I think Darby and Lonser are great community members and have done valuable work before, their respective teams have not contributed to protocol growth or adoption in the last couple of quarters. The metrics of the Growth Team and the impact of the Grants Team don’t indicate to me that it’s a good use of funds at this time. However, I may be wrong here. I know the Growth Team was dependent on other teams completing their deliverables.
I’d be happy to review a funding request for @poptones and @Lonser if they can provide a detailed RFC for separate PTBRs that outline their deliverables, the quantitative impact they estimate these deliverables will have (would welcome stretch goals), and how these deliverables will contribute to TVL growth and adoption of V5.
Closing Thoughts
As others have stated, I don’t support this RFC in its current form because it’s not clear what roles the new contributors have, how they define their relationship to the team, and the impact of their deliverables. Going back to the comments I’ve shared elsewhere, incorporating OKRs or KPIs that let us measure your success and impact is feedback that applies to every team and contributor creating a PTBR. I don’t want Darby or Lonser to think I’m singling them out with this comment.
@poptones and @Lonser, I know you’re dedicated, but I would encourage you both to create a team together or draft and post separate RFCs from the Pooltime RFC to request funding for Q1 2024.
While I’ve been able to see the impact of underthesea’s and Tjark’s contributions in recent quarters, I haven’t seen the same success from the Growth or Grants teams. Please show me and others what we’re missing and share your RFCs on the forum. I’d be happy to give feedback and help in anyway I can.
My overall view is that the community needs to take austerity measures to preserve runway however we can until it’s clear what direction we need to head in to grow TVL and boost adoption. I know all contributors work hard and give it their all, but we’re at a point when hard decisions have to be made, so we can ensure the protocol survives until market conditions improve and we can find a way to grow our runway resources.