After an informal discussion in the governance channel on Discord, I wanted to summarize the main points on the governance forum and get a small vote going to get a sense of what the DAO thinks should be prioritized.
As most of us know, the goal of PoolTogether v4 has always been to deploy on multiple chains such that the cross-chain aspects could really shine. As of now, 90% of our TVL is on Polygon. Launching on rollups (Optimism and / or Arbitrum) can be an opportunity and may open up a significant boost in TVL and users. After all, rollups rely on the security of the Ethereum main chain (unlike a side chain like Polygon) and that does matter for some ecosystem actors. Furthermore, the imminent launch of Optimism incentives could give us an extra boost.
Currently PoolTogether Inc is 100% focused on implementing the prize pool network improvements to the protocol which will allow us to easily accept multiple assets over multiple pools while still “sharing” the yield to some extent. It will give the POOL token much more utility besides pure governance. As a timeline, PT Inc aims to have a prototype finished by the 6th of June followed by, likely, a two week period for code audits (wait time + actual audit) and a launch date of June 21st. Of course, there are always unknown factors, software development is never a certainty (unforeseen delays, issues discovered by the audits, …). After the prototype has been developed, rollup deployment can be investigated.
The main question which was discussed is whether we should first prioritize rollup deployment over the prize pool network development? @Leighton is currently hashing out details of our potential eligibility for incentives on the Optimism L2 and I’m sure that he can post an update here once they are clear. @Brendan mentioned that deploying on Optimism will likely be about a two week job because while the OVM toolchain is EVM-compatible, it is slightly different and of course all aspects need to be thoroughly checked.
On to my personal opinion. I think that, while this discussion can be framed as many things depending on how deep you want to dive, it ultimately comes down to a timeline matter. Essentially I’m curious if the DAO agrees pushing the prize pool network deployment by approximately two weeks in favor of rollup deployment is worth it? Personally, I think the prize pool network developments are aimed at long term value creation and whether we push the development by two weeks or not is hardly going to matter. Deployments on rollups could lead to short-term growth (which may or may not stick in the long term) and it could yield us a decent chance at incentives (e.g., on Optimism) and / or airdrops (e.g., if Arbitrum launches a token). To me this seems like a worthwhile trade-off.
Thanks for this post. I think we need to get out there as soon as possible. A prize network should be where the action is and I think there is a very clear forecast for a party on both Optimism and Arbitrum. I believe there was a takeaway with Avalanche that we were too late to the party. We have a product that is built to scale across chains, let’s do it!
Thanks for writing this up @drcpu at this stage – I’m not going to vote because I don’t want to sway the community votes at all. However, I did want to show my appreciation
Hopefully we get some more votes on this and discussing going.
I’m in support of deploying on Optimism and/or Arbitrum over alt-L1s for numerous reasons. I’ll write out my thoughts below.
The TWG deployed POOL/WETH ranges on Uni v3 (Polygon) more than a week ago. We’ll collect data and see what unintended consequences come with having POL across networks. In any scenario where we are distributing POOL via the TWAB contract or in the new tokenomics, we’ll need to have robust POL where we are distributing POOL to people using PT.
I don’t envision a future where the treasury deploys significant POL on each network where PT is active. That means we need reliable bridge infrastructure that allows users to transfer assets from one L2 to another and/or back to mainnet. The most realistic approach will be to have significant depth of liquidity on both mainnet and an L2 with a bridging solution like Connext that can provide the infrastructure necessary to transfer POOL quickly from one L2 to another. As @Brendan’s work on true cross-chain governance progresses, the ability to transfer governance tokens from one L2 to another will become more important for multiple protocols, not just PT.
As our protocol scales, I think it’s imperative that we deploy where many people who already use Ethereum are moving their capital. There are not as many yield options for stablecoins on Arbitrum and Optimism, and I could see PT capturing more market share on each rollup solution. I concur with @drcpu and @underthesea’s comments about existing and potential future incentives on these networks as well.
We should prioritize deploying on Optimism and Arbitrum.
With Arbitrum Odyssey pushing the bridging season and Optimism gearing up their rewards campaign, PoolTogether will give L2 users an easy and fun application to use and try out.
It’ll be a bridging frenzy and we can capture some of those bridgers.
Hopefully they’ll enjoy the warm waters and stay.
We have seen the interest in L2s through Polygon.
Optimism and Arbitrum have staying power and seem to truly scale.
They’re the real deal: Optimistic Rollups are the present and future of Ethereum scaling.
With that said, will these 2 weeks make a material difference in our L2 adoption?
Probably not, but why not join in while the water is warm?
Love it, I think bother are very important and exciting developments! I would lean more towards launching on an L2 with a time frame so small…like Doctor Computer says, in the grand scheme of this, that two weeks won’t matter, whereas, in order to fully implement the POOL token network, we could miss the boat on some easy growth incentives. I don’t think that happens vica versa
Fully in support of prioritizing Optimism (and probably Arbitrum) rollout.
L2s are the future and we specifically built V4 for this. Let’s make use of what we have instead of waiting for “the next big thing” to come save us.
Even once we have the prize network code all done, I imagine rollout to new chains will be very slow. The new model will take significantly more POOL liquidity on all chains to be feasible.
Thanks for putting into words what I’ve been thinking too @drcpu. Very well articulated.
Thank you @drcpu for kicking-off this important temperature check! This kind of organizational effort helps move the protocol forward.
I want to open by saying that I speak on behalf of the PT Inc. team.
Our team is an independent contributor to the PoolTogether protocol. We are not governed by the POOL token, but we do find the signal helpful as feedback. We are a small, dedicated team that helped conceive the protocol. As such, we have deep knowledge of the protocol so we spend our time and effort on long-term strategies and plays that can unlock exponential growth.
Our current effort is to evolve the protocol into a prize pool network; one that can support any asset and bridge effortlessly across L2s and L1s. We believe this will fuel us to $1b TVL and beyond. We are currently very busy developing the prize pool network concept; the token model, the design, and the code. We need to dedicate time to this research so that the model can be properly evaluated. Soon we will have much more content to share with the community to build understanding, excitement, and most importantly consensus.
Optimism is on our roadmap; we like the L2. Our plan was to include Optimism when we launch the network in several months time (assuming all goes well). However, it’s evident by the polling and general sentiment that the community has a strong interest in deploying our existing system on Optimism right now.
This presents an opportunity. While the PT Inc team needs to stay focused on the big picture, we want to enable other contributors so that the protocol has more than one leg to stand on. This is a great time for others to get involved. However, this is knowledge work. Our team holds all of the technical knowledge. We will need to help other contributors walk before they can run.
What I propose is a combined effort of the community and the PT Inc team. Our team will lay out a deployment plan along with bounties for key technical milestones. This will incentivize knowledge dissemination within our community, and empower the DAO such that it can deploy on other L2s beyond Optimism. Some tasks are best handled by PT Inc for the moment, however: when V4 launched we had an incentives design ready for AVAX. While those incentives didn’t pan out, we can reuse the designs for OP incentives. PT Inc. will tackle the front-end updates to support incentives.
In the Discord conversation we’ve already seen people express interest in joining forces. I think with clear direction and strong incentives we can make this happen as a community.
