[RFC] PTBR-2: PoolTogether <> Generation Software Inc

Governance PT Budget Requests
1

PoolTogether <> Generation Software Inc.

TL;DR

This is an announcement of the new company Generation Software, and it’s initiative to provide research, development and support for the PoolTogether Protocol.
Start Date July 1st, 2023
Timeline for Deliverables 3 months
Budget $460,000

Generation Software (GS) was formed to unlock new human behaviours using innovative technology. We believe that the PoolTogether V5 hyperstructure is the most accessible way to incentivize wealth building, and wish to help it achieve widespread adoption.

Our Team

Our company is comprised of PoolTogether community members and ex-employees of PoolTogether Inc. who hold deep knowledge of the technology, our history, and the vision for the future. In the past we’ve made core contributions to the protocol, so we have direct hands-on experience.

Our Values

We are dedicated to:

  • The research, application and innovation of new technologies that benefit people.
  • Work in harmony and alignment, while maintaining a high degree of autonomy. We work together, but also encourage the individual to excel.
  • Continuously improve everything we do; whether it’s improving the way we work, trying out new ideas, or learning new technology.
  • Contributing to the fields in which we operate. We open source our technology whenever possible, contribute to new standards and ideas, and help others who wish to learn and engage with our products.

Scope of Work

Motivation

We’re an extremely knowledgable team that can accelerate PoolTogether’s growth.

Goal

Our goal is to deploy the PoolTogether hyperstructure to as many chains as possible, and to maximize distribution and reach of the protocol. We will support the PoolTogether community’s permissionless expansion of the protocol.

This first PTBR will help get the hyperstructure off the ground. GS expects to make future PTBRs with deliverables that build on the foundation laid in this first quarter.

Deliverables

Audit & Mitigations

GS will coordinate audits with Code Arena and another third party firm. We expect this to begin around July 3rd.

GS will apply any mitigations to the code, and publish the smart contracts and all supporting software as open source code on Github.

GS will also publish tutorials and documentation on how to use the above tools.

Deployment

GS will deploy to Ethereum and Ethereum L2s, but we wish the community to help determine the order. We need to proceed one at a time as there is a significant amount of off-chain infrastructure, so each deployment will need to pass health checks before we launch the next. It will be up to the community to launch vaults, so we will coordinate with you to determine the right launch sequence.

We will deploy a production version of PT V5 to the following chains:

  • Optimism
  • Arbitrum
  • Ethereum
  • zkSync Era

We will deploy a production version of PT V5 to the following chain if mainnet is ready and our infrastructure (Defender) supports it:

  • Base

Regardless of mainnet status, for all of the above we’ll have testnet deployments.

Each chain will have a similar sequence

  1. GS deploys core smart contracts and infrastructure for the new chain. The Prize Pool will be tuned for each chain it is deployed to.
  2. GS launches communications campaign to reach builders on that chain
  3. Community permissionlessly creates vaults
  4. GS runs health checks and moves on to next chain when successful.

Deployment Details

For each new chain deployment:

  • GS will deploy the core smart contracts
  • GS will host an app to view and interact with the vaults
  • GS will host a vault factory app
  • GS will deploy supporting subgraphs
  • GS will deploy any custom 4626 compatibility-layers for yield sources selected by the community.

Note: We will guarantee app and subgraph hosting until the end of 2023, but funding from future PTBRs will be required to keep them going beyond that date.

Communications Campaign Details

For each chain, the GS team will build out a communications campaign to reach and activate partners, encouraging them to integrate yield sources, prize tokens and/or wallets. Successful campaigns will require…

  • Identifying the audiences we aim to reach (yield sources, protocols, token issuers, wallets) and creating a list of leads
  • Creating and distributing media including written and visual content for Medium, Mirror, Twitter, Discord and Lens.
  • Creating and distributing documentation for relevant to partners.
  • Conducting direct outreach to a list of potential partners

Community Creates Vaults

We will support the community in launching new vaults. In particular:

  • Provide tutorials and documentation
  • Give guidance on which protocols would be good integrations
  • Offer assistance in the Discord #developers channel

Infrastructure

As mentioned above, there is a significant amount of off-chain infrastructure. Polish and refinement of the bots and subgraphs will continue beyond the launch date. We expect growing pains and needs to change as the system scales. By the end of September we’ll have 1.0 releases for each piece of infrastructure, and will make them public, open source, and documented.

  • Liquidation Bot
  • Prize Claimer Bot
  • Draw Bot
  • Subgraph
  • App to view and navigate vaults
  • App to create vaults

Timeline

Note that we will work with the community to determine the final chain order.

Date Description
July 17 Completion of audit and mitigations
July 24 Launch of first chain (TBD)
Aug 7 Launch of second chain (TBD)
Aug 14 Launch of third chain (TBD)
Aug 21 Launch of fourth chain (TBD)
Aug 28 Launch of fifth chain (TBD)
Sep 29 1.0 releases for infrastructure

Budget

Amount Token
460,000 USDC
5 Likes
2

Adding a little temperature check poll here for people that maybe don’t want to comment:

Do you support this proposal?
  • YES
  • NO
  • ABSTAIN

0 voters

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I support this proposal! :slight_smile:
Only thing I would add is the ETH address you wanna receive the funds, then we can later verifiy with what happens on chain (spot any accidental mistakes) :slight_smile:

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I fully support this proposal. The PoolTogether V5 hyperstructure is a paradigm shift and we need to make the most of it. This would help us get off the ground running.

This is great and a much needed component to achieve the hyperstructure we’re envisioning. Community support is integral.

2 Likes
5

Interesting… Goldman isn’t gonna be happy you’re stealing their abbreviation, lol.

Are these GS people willing to be revealed? A half million dollars in 3 months is a large spend in our quickly depleting treasury.

What is the dividing line between what PT Inc. is doing and this GS entity? It feels like we’re just rebranding PT Inc. to GS and moving the workflow over with it. Is there overlap, what is it?

GS will coordinate audits with Code Arena and another third party firm. We expect this to begin around July 3rd.

  • Who is the other third party firm? Or is it TBD
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For sure! I’ll add the Safe address once I create it.

It’s no secret! The team is most of the PT Inc employees, and we’re bringing several of the contractors on full-time (Cookie and Mid). We’re also bringing on the growth lead Tim. I’m super excited to keep the existing team together and add important new members.

There is no personnel overlap with PT Inc, in that no one will be employed by both companies. Generation Software is strictly a dev shop. Our proposal is to build tools for the community and provide support for the tools, defined by the above deliverables. The protocol will remain community-led.

4 Likes
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What happens to the PTinc budget request that passed with the objective to launch V5?

The goals for this request seem similar which I’m assuming is what @Taliskye means by “overlap”?

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As someone who is staying with PT Inc. I can jump in on this question as well. PT Inc is not rebranding, the company will continue to exist. It is however scaling back and will not be contributing to protocol development anymore. There is no IP, money, or any assets being transferred from PT Inc to Generation Software.

I can understand the distinction can seem unclear since Generation Software is a newly incorporated company that as of today, hasn’t done anything for the protocol yet… but I do think the distinction will become very clear moving forward.

1 Like
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I can speak for the PT Inc Q2 budget request…

As of today, we are only 2/3 into the budget request (it was for the April 1st to June 30th period). So there is still more time to go but that money (and more from PT Inc’s corporate treasury) has been expended accomplishing the goals laid out in the budget request.

Most prominently so far:

  • Launch alpha version of Sepolia. This includes both the smart contracts and a web app
  • Release code that allows anyone to liquidate yield and claim prizes

Still expected to happen before June 30th:

  • Launch JS SDK
  • Launch beta version for final testing and polish
  • Launch new landing page
  • Launch an ecosystem portal to surface third party apps

In addition to the above, two major thing were re-prioritized and pushed earlier (originally scheduled for July 15th & August 1st).

  • Develop an incentivized draw mechanism to ensure the prize pool is rewarded
  • Install the draw mechanism and renounce ownership of the prize pool

So the two major things that are behind schedule and won’t get done by PT Inc are:

  • Code Audit
  • Launch the production version

The money allocated for the audit & security is ultimately all still going to the auditors so no change there. The one big thing that won’t get done though is the actual production version launch.

If you check out the Generation Software Budget Request, it picks up these last two items plus a bunch more related to the launch / rollout / and setup. So largely I would say the PT Inc budget request was focused on development, debugging, testnet deployments, new UIs, and research and the Generation Software one is focused on rollout, deployment, auditing, etc.

One thing I will say that was confusing about the PT Inc budget request. It only asked for funding for April 1st to June 30th but it had a timeline that extended past June 30th. I think at the time, there was an operating assumption PT Inc would continue into July on protocol development but that is no longer happening.

Hopefully this brings some clarity. I can only really speak for the PT Inc side but made some assumptions for Generation Software based on their request.

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Thanks for the reply, to me it still seems like the goal of the PTinc budget request wasn’t hit, and this is a request for an extension. One of the big topics of the formation around the council was holding accountability for teams missing their marks. This looks like it falls under that umbrella. I’d be happy to give an extension, but almost doubling the first request seems aggressive. Was the initial request underbid maybe and we are seeing this requires more work…We have Tim on the team now, so is this kind of swallowing what was once the growth team?

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Growth will have a proposal to be posted soonTM that will not include me

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Every quarter the budget increases with less and less explanation of added costs/salaries. What started as a “protocol team” Q4-2022 +Q1-2023 budget to launch Hyperstructure, then shifted to “PT INC team” Q2 to launch Hyperstructure, and now we have a new company with an even bigger budget for Q3 and the same goal for launching V5. In another year when the remainder of treasury has been signed over to your company will the rest of the team be going on a sabbatical since we have nothing left to pay you?

I wish I could stay positive but it’s been a long few years of only the founders/developers getting rich. I am also curious of what became of the $2MM that was raised in the POOLY NFT sale? Is it being held in case the lawsuit escalates? Will those funds become available to the team once that is finally settled or are they already spent?

V5 was targeted for July 2022 in this forum post, and here we are a year later.

Sorry if this post comes across a bit harsh but I think there needs be some accountability when asking for this much money as well as a clear plan on how what’s being built will benefit all members of the community (both depositors and token holders).

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to me it still seems like the goal of the PTinc budget request wasn’t hit

I don’t agree with that, every goal has been hit except for 2 (TBR-Q2-2023 - PT Inc Team). Arguably one of those 2 will be hit (the audit) because the code should be audit ready by the end of the budget request.

We’re only 2/3 through the budget requested so there is still time before completion should be judged.

In addition, goals that were not even suppose to be hit were moved forward.

Was the initial request underbid maybe and we are seeing this requires more work

I can’t speak to Generations Software’s finances but I can definitely say the PT Inc budget request did not cover 100% of our exspenses (nor was it designed to). So there might be some sticker shock there when people are looking at what this costs rather than just a portion like the PT Inc budget request. And yes, I do understand Tim is joining Generation Software but unsure on details on that but it is an even bigger team than PT Inc is currently.

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Hey folks! I’m seeing some confusion around this PTBR, so I want to address a few things:

Concern 1: Perceived Overlap in Deliverables

The Generation Software budget is based on deliverables, not time. The timeline provided is our expected delivery date for each piece of work, but if those dates aren’t met we will still work to ship those pieces.

This is in contrast to the PT Inc Q2 budget, which was a budget for one quarter of time for the team. The PT Inc milestones were given to illustrate what we’d be working on. It’s written quite plainly: “Dates given are estimates, not hard commitments. We’ll do our best.”. PT Inc reprioritized its work, and even with the new timeline it will be meeting its goals, albeit in a different order.

GS is committed to delivering what we have outlined; this is much more concrete than how PT Inc operated in the past. We are making the deliverables explicit!

Concern 2: The Size of the Budget

Some have expressed concerns about the budget size; but this is the true cost of a high-tech R&D team. PT Inc shouldered the bulk of their costs, which is why the community hasn’t seen budgets like this before.

Budgets of this size are very normal. As an example you can see the Bored Ghosts Developing Labs company applying for funding from Aave in this request. Their proposal is structured differently, but at the end of the day they’re asking for $8m USD for 15 months of development.

Intellectual Property

While no one has expressed this concern, I feel it’s necessary to highlight it because I want expectations to match what we’ll deliver.

Generation Software will retain ownership of all intellectual property it generates, whether code, graphics, tokens etc. However, the deliverables outlined above will be open-sourced so that the community (and everyone else) has the freedom to use it as they please.

PoolTogether does not have a legal entity so it is unable to hold any IP; by making the deliverables open-source we ensure that the community can do what they want with the code. We’ve been using the GPL-3 license so far, but we might want to explore the MIT license to make it even more accessible.

Next Steps

I think I’ve answered any of the outstanding questions, and Leighton has summarized the state of PT Inc very well. I’m happy to answer any more questions here or in Discord.

Today we’re going to continue discussing PTBRs on the Council call, I’ll post any updates here. Otherwise, I expect we’ll be going to vote shortly.

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Thanks for the reply, Brendan. The size of the budget is only an issue after it appears that last deliverables haven’t been met. Simply “working” on the deliverables isn’t enough for me to vote yes. This doesn’t mean I don’t value highly what work has been done, but I think shipping V5 to three agreed upon chains could be done with the budgets already provided plus another 100k. Everything on top of that which is included in this proposal could be a separate budget.

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With this passed and executed can we have an update on the timeline?

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Hey Atomic, not Brendan but he gave some little updates here and there on Discord and during the Community Call I wanna share here as well:

So, as you may already noticed, the proposed timeline is not totally up to date.
The Code4Arena audit happened and went quite well, GS is currently looking through that and Code4Arena will publish the audit results on their website as well: https://code4rena.com/reports
The Macro audit is still going on and will end July 31 https://0xmacro.com/ . Mitigations for that could take maybe 1 week, so we are looking for a launch 7-14 Aug as far as I know.

The first chain to launch on will be OP.
GS may deploy a usable version on OP in July / early August arleady and we do a “soft launch” to see how the system and smart contracts behaves on live conditions and not only on testnet.

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Hey Lonser, awesome, thank you! This part is really good to know. Glad to be aware of the general direction and progress of the launch. Appreciate it!

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Thanks for jumping in @Lonser! I’ll have the launch plans posted tomorrow morning.

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Great, looking forward to them, Brendan! Excited.

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