PTIP-24: Revised saving the little fish (phase 1)

See PTIP-24

Simple Summary

• Split the accrued COMP evenly across all winners.
• Increase the number of weekly prize winners on Dai prize pool from 3 to 5
• Increase the number of weekly prize winners on POOL pool prize pool from 1 to 5

Motivation

Not enough small depositors are winning prizes. For PoolTogether to scale to the next level of growth (billions AUM / millions in weekly prizes) we have to find a way to get more people winning prizes. Especially people who have smaller deposits (10k or less). This needs to be done while keeping the protocol simple and not driving away the large depositors which create the large prizes.

Specification

This PTIP would do three things:

1. Increase the number of weekly winners to the following Dai Prize Pool: From 3 to 5 winners POOL prize pool: from 1 to 5 winners

2. Instead of giving all the accrued COMP to the “grand prize” winner, split the accrued COMP among all winners equally for all prize pools (Dai, USDC, COMP, UNI)

Overview

This should be considered phase 1 of Operation Little Fish. This phase uses the levers immediately at the control of governance (i.e. no new solidity code written). It will meaningfully adjust the odds to favor smaller depositors by. Phase 2 is in R&D and will expand on this same goal.

NOTE: the same wallet can win multiple prizes. So large whales will still win many of the prizes but far less of the total prizes than today.

Rationale

PoolTogether is currently a victim of its own success. With over $200 million deposited, $100,000+ in weekly prizes, and prize pool reserves growing things are going better than ever. BUT, deposits into the prize pools have become increasingly dominated by large depositors. We’ve gone from the majority of prizes being won by large depositors to almost all of them being won by large whales. We need more depositors like the person who deposited $73 and won $43,000. The core value proposition of PoolTogether is giving people the chance to get an outsized return on their money without risking it. Having more prizes means the odds of winning increase and this value proposition becomes stronger. PoolTogether becomes more FUN.

The change to the POOL pool to emphasize staking APR over a weekly prize also helps improve returns for POOL hodlers.

There are other methods to achieve this goal that the community has discussed. Specifically the idea of moving the POOL incentive to “sponsored” deposits that are not eligible to win. This idea has merit (I’ve been a proponent of it) but has some key limitations.

• Adding a second token “drip” will increase gas costs for all users (TBD on exactly how much)
• We will likely still have whales winning all the prizes, the whales will have the same % of total deposits but a smaller deposit in absolute numbers
• We risk losing a lot of capital in the migration
• We lose the benefits of having the value propo of “a chance to win + an APR” for depositors
• The value prop of sponsorship becomes solely yield farming which is not competitive for us long term

Ultimately this is the simplest change to immediately and meaningfully help out small depositors. Phase 2 of the operation will expand on this same goal.

Technical Specification

All these changes are simply parameter adjustments. This proposal pushes the limits of the current architecture and prepares us for phase 2.

Status

This proposal was extensively discussed and supported widely here. As such this will go to vote