The TWAB Rewards contract is done! This is an extremely powerful primitive but it takes a bit of imagination on how to best us it. This post describes a few ideas.
First, what are TWAB Rewards?
TWAB stands for “time weighted average balance” and the TWAB Rewards contract gives anyone the ability to distribute any token to depositors in PoolTogether. The tokens can be claimable after a certain period of time and are based on a users average balance.
Okay, now we know what a TWAB is technically, lest talk about how to use it!
Distributing POOL Tokens
This is the most basic use case for the TWAB – we can distribute POOL tokens to all depositors. This is extremely powerful because it allows people who use the protocol to become owners of the protocol. This delivers on a core promise of crypto.
POOL distribution was something done in V3 that was highly successful in driving deposits but also became largely used by “yield farmers”. However, the scalable prize distribution of the V4 plus the TWAB contract with time-delayed claiming should make POOL distribution much more effective
Distribution Gamification Tokens
People want to be rewarded for saving their money in the protocol. Rewards don’t have to be explicitly financial – they can also just be fun! We could mint a token that has no financial value – lets call it “POOL PARTY” and start distributing it to all depositors. This will give people something fun to accrue and measure their progress.
Utility could be introduced if we wanted to, perhaps you could redeem $PARTY tokens to get special NFTs. Or we could even create an exchange rate between $PARTY and $POOL and enable people to gain protocol ownership.
Distributing Incentive Token
I’m defining “incentive tokens” as tokens provided by third parties that are integrated with the PoolTogether protocol. Two examples historically, Celo and Polygon have distributed their native tokens to PoolTogether depositors. This benefits them because it drives growth on their blockchains.
We can replicate this with the TWAB. Blockchains that PoolTogether is deployed on as well as yield sources PoolTogether is integrated with all have an interest in driving growth.
Distributing Partnership Tokens
Similar to “incentive” tokens but I’m defining this as third parties that are not directly integrated with the protocol. An example here would be “Trader Joe” – Trader Joe is the largest dex on Avalanche, PoolTogether recently launched on Avalanche. PoolTogether could buy $10,000 of JOE tokens and ask Trader Joe to also provide an equal amount. PoolTogether can then distribute these $20,000 JOE tokens to all depositors on Avalanche. This creates a very natural joint marketing opportunity.
Summary
These are just a few ideas! The TWAB gives us an incredibly powerful primitive to grow the protocol – lets start leveraging it!