Introducing POOL

Leighton Cusack
PoolTogether
Published in
4 min readFeb 17, 2021

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The POOL Token is live and control of the PoolTogether Protocol now rests solely with the community! This concludes a multi-year process of progressive decentralization creating the world’s first open source, decentralized, and permissionless protocol for no loss prize savings.

Key details:

  • Token address is: 0x0cEC1A9154Ff802e7934Fc916Ed7Ca50bDE6844e
  • 80.04% of POOL tokens have been allocated to the community, 12.44% to advisors and employees, 7.52% to investors.
  • 14% of total POOL supply is available today to all depositors before January 14th, 2021 at midnight UTC. (V1, V2, V3 all included).
  • 5% of total POOL supply will be distributed to all prize pool depositors over the next 14 weeks. Starting at midnight UTC, February 17th.

What POOL does

The POOL token exists solely to govern the PoolTogether Protocol. Any changes to the Protocol will be proposed and voted on by POOL token holders. These proposals can include things like adjusting the number of winners, launching new prize pools, integrating new yield sources, implementing scaling solutions and controlling future distribution of POOL to protocol contributors.

Distributing POOL

The POOL token is being freely distributed to all contributors to the protocol. The total POOL token supply is 10,000,000. After a four year waiting period a 2% yearly inflation can be implemented if token holders choose. The following is the initial distribution:

  • 14% of total POOL supply distributed to all POOL depositors across the V1, V2, and V3 protocol up until January 14th 2021 at midnight UTC. This is 17,072 unique addresses.
  • 12.44% of total POOL supply distributed to early core team contributors (locked for one year)
  • 7.52% of total POOL supply distributed to PoolTogether Inc investors (locked for one year)
  • 5% of total POOL supply allocated to an initial 14 week depositor distribution (details below)
  • 2.5% of POOL supply allocated to onboarding and education of new users
  • 1% of total POOL supply distributed to addresses that voted in the first two snapshot governance votes AND held a PoolTogether deposit at the time of voting.

The 14% of POOL supply is a weighted distribution to all depositors based on the length and amount of their deposit.

Ongoing Distribution

5% of POOL supply has been allocated to on-going disbursal to all PoolTogether depositors. This ensures anyone who uses the protocol can freely receive tokens to govern the protocol. No action is needed other than depositing into one of the four prize pools.

The initial 5% distribution has been setup to be disbursed over the course of 14 weeks totaling 5,100 disbursed per day. The distribution is heavily weighted towards the stablecoin prize pools (see graphic). This ongoing distribution can be modified by governance.

Future Distributions

The initial distributions total 42.46% of the total POOL supply. The remaining 57.54% of the POOL supply has been place into a protocol treasury for further distribution determined by governance. This could include things like:

  • Distributing POOL to those who refer deposits into the protocol
  • Continuing or adjusting POOL distribution to depositors
  • Setting up a grants program
  • Anything else token holders determine!

Next Steps

Control is now fully in the hands of the community. No loss prize savings is one of the most important consumer financial primitives in the world and is ideally suited to being controlled by its users. If you’re reading this, this is your opportunity to step up and start building a better financial system. Here are educational materials to get you started:

Thank You

PoolTogether governance utilizes the work of other decentralized protocols. We would like to thank Compound Labs for their work on the Governor Alpha contract and Uniswap for their work on the retroactive distribution contract. Both these contracts have been forked for PoolTogether governance.

Following in these footsteps, all PoolTogether contracts and the governance front-end are open source and free to use!

Risks & Disclosures

The POOL token exists solely to govern the PoolTogether Protocol. It is not an investment opportunity. It can be freely received by using the protocol.

PoolTogether is an open-source and decentralized protocol. The protocol has unique risks associated with its use. It is important to understand these risks before using the protocol. Users interacting with the protocol are solely responsible for the safety and security of their deposits.

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