Hey friends 👋

The first DeFi protocol I ever got excited about was PoolTogether. I immediately fell in love with this idea of prize-linked savings. Back then it was commonly referred to as a no-loss lottery since anyone can deposit money and get a chance to win prizes while still being able to withdraw their full deposit again. It’s like if every lottery ticket you bought could be refunded if it wasn’t a winner 🤯 Of course that would never happen in the traditional lottery industry, but fortunately we have prize-linked savings.

Prize Linked Savings (PLS) have existed in different forms for at least 400 years, they combine the chance to win large monetary prizes without the risk of principal loss. This is possible because the prizes are funded by the interest that accrues on money deposited into prize linked savings accounts.

— Leighton Cusack, co-creator of PoolTogether

Prize savings, as they are often called are such a brilliant invention because they play to our natural longing to access asymmetrical returns (aka big payoffs) from our investments 🎰 They incentivize saving while offering both the opportunity and excitement of randomized rewards.

But I’ve already written about why and how to get started using PoolTogether. This post is about a new feature 👀

Introducing Deposit Delegation

Because PoolTogether removes the possibility of losing your initial investment — to the extent possible in the world of self-custodied crypto in smart-contracts within blockchain protocols, so DYOR as they say — one could view it as a sort of vault, and the tickets that represent your chances to win daily prizes, as something extra: a perk, an incentive, a potential gift 🎁

This is where PoolTogether’s newly launched Deposit Delegator comes into the picture.

This fantastic graphic is from Chuck Bergeron, one the PoolTogether co-creators

According to PoolTogether’s User Guide:

The Deposit Delegator allows to easily delegate portions of a PoolTogether deposit (in the form of PTaUSDC tickets) to multiple wallets (Delegatees). This increases the Delegatees chance of winning prizes by the delegated amount.

A Delegator can delegate to an unlimited amount of different wallets with individual amounts each.

This opens the doors to all kinds of really unique opportunities, like:

Onboarding

Got a friend or family member who is getting started in crypto but still isn’t confident about exploring DeFi? Delegate to them and when they win, they’re sure to warm to the possibilities of this new world. If they win big, who knows, maybe drinks are on them next time you see eachother? 🍻

Raffles

Let’s say you’re a small to medium sized business and you want to run a contest on social media with a big exciting prize like, for example, $25000, but you don’t have the budget of a bigger enterprise. Why not keep the lump sum and simply delegate the deposit to the winner(s) of the raffle? 🧠 This could be a one week delegation, a one month delegation, even one year! In that amount of time, $25k should have brought in a pretty nice return. You contest winners (delegatees) keep their winnings and you keep your initial investment to use for the next raffle. It’s win-win! 🙌

Incentives

Another great use case for deposit delegation is for DAOs and other Web3 communities to use as perk/incentive for participation. Protocols can deposit treasury funds and delegate to their active users or token-holders; NFT projects can delegate to holders; Discord communities, twitter super-followers, or POAP holders could all receive delegated deposits. This could even lead to a sort of contributor of the month prize 🏆

Charity

Imagine being able to save your money while also supporting a good cause 🧐 With the deposit delegator, No Loss Donation is now a reality! There’s even an official page for donating to support Ukraine with humanitarian aid (via delegation to Unchain Fund). And it takes just a few clicks! 💙 💛

FYI: If you want to delegate to other charities, all you need is their Polygon address. This should be the same as their Ethereum address, but it’s always a good idea to confirm that a particular charity has a way to access funds on Polygon. In some cases they may be receiving funds directly to an exchange wallet. In that case, it may be preferable to send accepted cryptocurrencies to them directly 🤝

Now you may be wondering how to get started… so let’s go over that!

How to use the Deposit Delegator

Step 0: It goes without saying — but I’ll say it anyway just in case — you need to have a deposit in PoolTogether to be able to delegate said deposit. Fairly straightforward right? If you don’t have a deposit, you’ll want to check out this post, and the accompanying video to learn how and why to deposit into PoolTogether v4.

Step 1: Open the Deposit Delegator UI, connect your wallet, and click + New Delegation

Step 2) A pop up to create a delegation will open. In the corresponding boxes, enter the wallet address of the person you want to delegate to, the amount you want to delegate, and duration you want to delegate for. When you’re sure all the details are correct, click Queue Creation. The delegation will be queued, meaning you can batch multiple delegations into one transaction to save on gas ⛽️

Disclaimer: If a lock duration is entered the Delegatee cannot be changed, and the funds cannot be withdrawn until the lock has expired.

Step 2.5) If you want to delegate to more than one address without creating multiple transactions, you can click + New Delegation and repeat Step 2 again. Do this as many times as you want. There is no limit to the number of wallets you can delegate to… well except the limit of your total available deposit.

Once you have all the addresses added you’ll be ready to finish the delegation process.

Step 3) Click on Save Changes and sign the transaction that pops up on your wallet. Then you’ll have to confirm the transaction and pay a gas fee. Once the transaction is confirmed, the delegation is live!

Withdrawing Delegations

Withdrawing delegations is very straightforward, and just like when you made your initial delegations, you can batch all of the transactions together.

Step 1) From the Deposit Delegator page, with your wallet connected, click on Withdraw.

Step 2) Choose which delegations you want to withdraw by checking the boxes in front of the respective Delegatee address. Once you’ve selected all the delegation slots you want to withdraw, click on the Withdraw button.

Step 3) A pop up will open to review your withdrawals. Click Confirm updates and confirm the transaction in your wallet.

After withdrawing, the delegation slots remain with a balance of 0. You can re-use them for future delegations to other Delegatees by editing them. You can see how to do that here 📝

So that’s how you delegate your deposit on PoolTogether. This feature has the potential to change the way people look at DeFi. From a digital marketplace that’s solely about making money to a tool for a better financial world.

Delegation really is unique in that it allows you to give something to someone else without losing anything. All you’re giving up is opportunity. If that’s something you are able to do, your generosity will surely be appreciated.

After all, as my mom always said, sharing is caring 💜

Until next time 👋
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This post is brought to you thanks to a grant from PoolTogether.

If you liked what you read and would like to support, consider minting my patronage NFT on Ethereum or Zora Network. You can also buy me a coffee via Woop on Polygon or Optimism or send any token to thumbsupdate.eth.

And for the cypherpunks, I accept anonymous tips with Zcash to my shielded address:

zs17a2mhl6xeu56cqqeqync9kddyg8gggcy6253l5evjdyw8l8j8f60eg40exr4wk27hnvfgkkgnju

Emojis used in the header graphic are designed by OpenMoji — the open-source emoji and icon project. License: CC BY-SA 4.0

The tutorial section of this post is modified from the PoolTogether User Guide.