From PoolTogether to Creating My Own Game

PoolTogether Community Interview #15: TangFeng

Hello Everyone,

Welcome to the end of the first month of January which has been as ever, a hectic month for PoolTogether with lots of work and initiatives being launched and further developed.

Today, we have an interview with someone who has been an integral part of the building of the PoolTogether DAO - namely TangFeng - who was instrumental in the initial phase of the Grants Committee and has a huge passion for manga and anime.

Tell us a bit about yourself. Describe yourself in a few words/facts:

I'm currently a senior compsci student. My name comes from the Tang family from chinese wuxia novels. I personally spend my time either reading manga/novels, biking, or playing rouge-likes (Risk of Rain2 and Gunfire Reborn are my favorite currently).

How long have you been into crypto?

I was an investor in 2017-2018, spending money on random projects on Binance without knowing what the company did at all but just listening to people telling me why the charts were good and why the project made any sense.

I took a break midway through 2018 cause I realized it wasn't good for my mental state, but I got reintroduced to it during winter 2019 and summer 2020 with Uniswap v2 and Compound.

Do you want to tell us about the main lessons you have learned since then?

- I think gambling and being a degen is fine as long as you tone your expectations. If you have a small amount of money, I think being a degen is the best way to grow that, but once you get above the 20k range, that might be a good time to risk diverse.

- Try every app just to see what exist and see if you like it more then the alternatives. I remember checking once a week or month to see if new projects had been added to Defipulse or the WalletConnect (88mph still looks the coolest)

- I think the best resources can honestly be found on discord. Joining these small groups where we are sharing what we know is the best way to get into crypto and learn new things

What was your best crypto moment?

- I think my best crypto moment had to either be seeing how magical Wallet Connect is, or my UNI airdrop. Back when I was messing around with crypto in 2017, you put in a QR code to literally copy the wallet, and you hope nothing went wrong with it.

All that existed were storage wallets and not really "Application" ones if that made sense. Walletconnect helped give a better sense of trust to doing interactions with my crypto, since I was able to verify transactions on my phone instead of my PC, it felt like there was less risk.

- On the topic of UNI, it was my first experience with a company basically saying "You guys are the reason we got this far, so we should pay back that trust and generosity". That action I think was one of the biggest ones taken that really embodies what makes Web3 different from Web2 to me. We aren't just there for the platforms, the platforms are there for us.

And your biggest fail?

I think a list is the best for this;

- I sent waltonchain to the contract address

- I was in the IRON/TITAN bankrun

- I forgot my bitcoin seed

- Some very early investments in Polkadot didn't pay out

How did you find out about PoolTogether?

I downloaded Argent as my first crypto wallet again in Defi Summer and PoolTogether had an integration with it . Those integrations were the first interaction I had with the DAPP idea, where you can let a contract manage your money and not a person. I was reading through all of them, and PoolTogether was the easiest to explain to me.

I didn't need to personally know how my money was building interest, because as I understood it, it was probably similar to a bank and the protocol used it themself to generate small profits.

This lead down a rabbithole of protocol integrations like PoolTogether and Balancer integrating features with Aave, and honestly before I knew it, I was hooked. No more looking at charts and only looking at 100 turn into 100.001.

What made you stick around?

Truth be told, I really only used POOL as a savings account for the longest. Back when it cost 1-2 dollars to deposit and withdraw on mainnet, I just put extra paychecks in the protocol to hopefully win a prize. I don't think it was until during summer 2021 that I decided to join a DAO, and I naturally joined the one that I first saw when I started.

How are you involved in the community? Tell us about it.

I was one of the few people that spoke during the community calls during 2021 summer and fall. Doing so got me more involved in the community. In early august, I started doing governance updates on PoolTogether on Boardrooms website, which then lead me to being put in the coordinape program.

As I was winding down my time in Boardroom, I saw the grants committee election was coming up, so I entered and happened to join.

What do you see as having been the impact of the Grants Committee? What are you most proud of with your time there?

I personally think the grant committee has been a really good experience, and I love the diversity in request we have gotten. My personal favorite that soon should be released is a ramp to enter the Pool using your bank or debit card, helping the onboarding process for some people.

I think the best grant we have done during my tenure is the delegation party with Unstoppable domain. The concept of delegating winning odds opens up the doors for community outreach we haven't seen yet.

Would you recommend PoolTogether to others? How would you describe it to them?

I think Pool is the first app I actually show people without fail, just because how simple and easy it is. "Instead of having a boring 3-6% APY in either aave, or .75% at your bank, deposit it in PT for the chance of winning a lottery".

I have sent people Ptausd to people as a joke when I'm paying them back for something or if I just am feeling nice, and most of the time they check it a few times in a month still to see if they won.

Are you involved in any other projects or communities?

I am making a game with 2 of my friends called Path of Dao, a wuxia/xianxia semi-idle mmorpg. No idea which chain it will be on yet but hopefully it will be one that PT is on so I can give some giveaways.

I'm slightly involved in getting us a plot on Aavegotchi and maybe a sponsorship with PT and Gitcoin. Possibly a Mask network plugin so you can buy PT Tickets on twitter

What is the purpose behind doing the game? What are you hoping to achieve and what will be the benefit for players

We are making the game because we (The team) love chinese wuxia fiction and the stuff that happens in it. Cultivating yourself to become stronger to the point that a single action you make can change the world is a cool concept, and we don't feel like it has been explored enough.

It personally started as a joke, where we said "I don't want to deal with an inventory system, so I'm going to use blockchain", and 6 months later, we have the contracts almost done, we just need to finish up the front end to start the alpha test

Do you have any other thoughts and comments you would like to make?

If I get to put anything here, I'm making a list

A) Go read cultivation chat group, its my favorite novel

B) Can someone please develop a better mobile hardware wallet. It hurts me how it is still mainly Ledger and Trezor

C) My anilist is here https://anilist.co/user/TangFeng

D) Can more projects please implement the EIP standard for royalty payments. Why does every marketplace have its own standard

What specifically would you like to see in a hardware wallet which is missing in Trezor and Ledger?

It feels like every hardware wallet has too much proprietary software that it makes it hard for software wallets to implement features on top of it. I can't use my ledger to execute transactions on my gnosis safe on mobile,

Why? I have to use the browser wallet for trezor if I want to use it on a phone, Why? There has been so much development for computer focused hardware wallets (Lattice Grid, Safepal is cool too), but it feels like the focused has shifted from a good mobile focused hardware wallet to more smart contract wallet with safety features (Argent and Dharma)

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We hope you enjoyed this incredible interview. Thank you so much TangFeng for the time and care you put into this interview and your contribution to PoolTogether overall.

Please look out for the PoolTogether Community Newsletter this weekend and next week’s fantastic podcast interview with Crypto Texan of Index Co-op.