PoolTogether has been building an incredible product. We continue to branch out to the entire Defi ecosystem. Everything that has been deployed has been running very smoothly. The backend foundation of the protocol is in very good shape. I appreciate the safe and detailed approach that the team here takes. Security is of utmost importance in this space. An exploit can scar the name brand. We do not want to be complacent, and we want to continually improve.
We could gain more users with a more robust front-end experience. New integrations need to be more easily accessible to novice users. I feel this is currently an undervalued aspect of Defi. I am speaking from personal experience with the industry. I spent a lot of time on my own learning how to use a Metamask and interacting with protocols. The average person does not have a similiar appetite for learning the complexities of interacting with a Defi protocol. When I speak to people in my life about the steps involved in getting into Defi, most are intimidated. This project has an opportunity to blaze trails in user experience. If we are the best place to onboard new Defil users then we should have a UX to match that mantra.
In the future I would like to see a front-end upgrade be part of releases like pools on Matic. Currently. you must be in the know about new places to deposit into PoolTogether. In order to participate, you need to find the exact URL. The links to these sites are easily accesible to the community, but not quite as accessible to casual users. I would like to see new features integrated into the main PoolTogether page. I am not a programmer, but I know people. The average user is currently less likely to take the neccessary steps to participate in new PoolTogether integrations.
If everything was easily accessible on a homepage we would accrue more value to the protocol. I am asking the community to consider this opportunity. I would like to see some bounties,sponsored hackathons, or grants issued for building the front end. If we can streamline the process to interact with Defi, we can provide an incredible service to the entire crypto community.
We can build a framework for other projects to emulate.
This, this so much. I’ve tried to get a dozen (well 13 so bakers dozen) of people new to defi into PoolTogether. Unfortunately, we’re all scattered through the US, so I can’t be in person to walk them through the steps. I’ve tried explaining getting a metamask and getting some DAI through Coinbase, and I’d send them some ETH for depositing (back before gas was regularly insane). It was all too much. Too much tech, too new, and too confusing for such a steep entry fee.
With the Polygon integration I’m hopeful the latter of those has been taken care of. But I think cyrpto as a whole has a long way to go to being approachable to people that aren’t inherently interested in crypto. And I personally see no better money lego than PoolTogether to tear down those other crypto roadblocks and get the newbie in DeFi.
Regis, do you have any design/UI experience or thoughts of direction this could go?
This is key. On a related point, I think a good start would be updating the landing so that it’s more enticing.
Something very friendly to people ignorant of crypto. I personally really like Index Cooperative’s main website / landing page. For example, I think the total amount of deposits and weekly winnings should be front and center on the landing page, rather than on the dApp.
Additionally, some clear call-to-action buttons which lead to easy fiat-to-crypto channels for deposits and/or documentation to make using PoolTogether as easy as possible.
I unfortunately do not have any design experience. I wish I could. I think a really good start is having every PT site accessible through the main page or app page. It feels a bit fragmented right now. I think partnering with EPNS was a fantastic move and I’m excited to see how that plays out. I made this post to spark some thoughts in the community and hopefully someone much smarter than I will come up with some solutions.
Maybe something where everything is done for the user on the backend. This would probably need to be facilitated through a centralized exchange where you aren’t paying a gas fee to swap some of the deposit into eth. Also users wouldn’t need to maintain custody if they operated through someone like Coinbase. but they basically say how much they want to deposit and on the back end it takes care of the transactions. They make a single deposit and the protocol swaps some into eth and pays gas fees with it. We could batch the deposits through an interface like that to reduce fees. We would need some collaboration with an exchange to make things work.
Since there seem to be at least a handful of sites that allow direct fiat purchases without requiring a signup (think of the Paypal user flow but on Coinbase), will any of them allow a purchase and subsequent contract interaction?
Seems like the ideal user flow would be being able to turn USD directly into pcDAI or pcUNI or whatever by saying “I want to put $20 in”. Then the total fees (gas limit * current gwei for the purchase and Pool Together contract interaction and whatever else) get shown separately a la Ticketmaster checkout → your tickets are $20 and added fees are $5.
This rough thought experiment doesn’t have a solution for where the pcDAI tokens would end up going (as well as the offramp). Perhaps PoolTogether would have to offer a custody service for the pool tokens? This would involve user registration and the introduction of a centralized server/service… At least offramping might consist of a Paypal transaction?
I’m intrigued to see what Dharma puts together to see if they integrate a direct to ticket point-of-service. I’ll take note of this idea though, I think it’s great!