Statistics on how people play the lottery globally are staggering. According to CNBC and the US Census Bureau in December 2019,
“about half of Americans played state lotteries, with total sales topping $71 billion in 2017 (the most recent year on file). Consumers each spend an average of about $86USD per month on lottery tickets, including everything from scratch-off cards that come out of vending machines to entries for the Powerball and Mega Millions competitions.”
What happens when you take society’s obsession with gambling on the lottery and turn it into a game of saving money where no one can lose the money they originally put in? The concept of a no-loss lottery or no-loss savings game is exactly what PoolTogether launched as an application built on Ethereum in mid-2019. With over 12,000 global users, $34,000 in prizes awarded, and $0 lost, this is one of the most interesting use cases you’ll discover in DeFi.
I’ll point out that if you’re reading this asking, “who cares?!” then PoolTogether probably isn’t your jam. PoolTogether has presented a new gamification of saving money, which is a habit many of us have become terrible at doing. I have known the Founder of PoolTogether for about a year and I can share that what drives him is he simply wants to help people help themselves. You can listen to Laura Shin’s podcast Unchained interviewing Leighton Cusack to understand his founder story and why PoolTogether was designed to make such a big impact with small changes in human behavior around saving money.
How PoolTogether works
PoolTogether is a rather simple, but powerful concept. It makes sense immediately to those of us familiar with the trustlessness empowering DeFi applications combined with the potential to earn yields, often due to lending interest.
- First, anyone can buy as little as 1 PoolTogether ticket for 1 DAI.
- PoolTogether then does exactly what it states in the name–pools together funds from the tickets sold, which has totaled over $1 million some weeks, and lends those funds to Compound Finance to earn interest.
- At the end of each week, the pool of money, depending on the size of the pool and the lending rate earned in Compound can earn thousands of dollars in interest, which gets awarded to one random ticket holder in the pool!
- Best of all, tickets are 100% redeemable for the 1 DAI whenever you are done playing PoolTogether. It’s like going to buy a lotto ticket and returning it (digitally of course) when you’re all done playing!
I would highly recommend watching this 50-second explainer video by the PoolTogether team!
Make PoolTogether Even Better with v3
If you’re unfamiliar with PoolTogether and this is your first introduction, you might not appreciate the following updates but it’s worth knowing all the interesting incentives designed to make PoolTogether v3 a more fun game, with significant upside and zero potential losses–that’s why we commonly call it a no-loss lottery or no-loss savings game.
- Larger pool prizes: Made possible by the protocol connecting to multiple yield sources and leveraging yield farming
- Referral rewards: Now possible if you share your unique code like mine linked here
- Instantly eligible to win: Receive tickets upon deposit, with the ability to win the prize the same week while fairness is enforced by measuring deposit…
Hi! My name is Lark Davis!
I’m a cryptocurrency investor with years of experience and I’ve been making consistent profits in the crypto space.
I’m passionate about helping others do the same, so I run multiple educational channels on crypto investing.
