My Involvement with the PoolTogether DAO
PoolTogether Community Interview #19: Lonser, Coordinape Lead and Executive Team Member
Welcome to the latest PoolTogether Community Interview, this time with the person in charge of running the Coordinape program for PoolTogether: Lonser.
Tell us a bit about yourself. Describe yourself in a few words/facts:
So, I'm from Germany and I'm obviously into crypto.
I like reading books, currently I'm reading Red Rising by Pierce Brown. It's a Sci Fi YA novel with Action and Adventure, a bit like Hunger Games in space.
Oh, and I have a dog :D
How long have you been into crypto?
I've been following crypto for about 4-5 years. I've really been doing it for maybe 2 years.
I started with a few altcoins like Doge and Nano. There were nice faucets and the community around these two coins is actually quite nice. Later on, a bit of XLM.
Unfortunately, as far as smart contracts were concerned, they all couldn't really do much.
At some point, I became interested in cryptos that could also do a bit. Ethereum scared me off with the high fees. Fortunately, I then came across L2 Chains like BSC, Fantom, Polygon and Celo.
Do you want to tell us about the main lessons you have learned since then?
Crypto is a huge rabbit hole and sometimes less is more. Now I try to be only on a few chains and a few protocols (Polygon, Celo, Pooltogether).
So for newcomers I would recommend starting small and finding a L2 with a good Fiat On Ramp (depends on Country) and a cool DAO like Pooltogether and then expanding from that.
What was your best crypto moment?
Finding Pooltogether :D
And your biggest fail?
I once sent quite a large amount to Binance on the wrong chain.
At the time, Binance only accepted USDC on the BSC chain and I sent Polygon USDC.
The error happened because I always used Binance as an onramp, withdrew the coins on the BSC chain and then transferred them to Polygon via xpollinate.
I sent a message to support asking if there was any way to get the coins back, but they said it wasn't possible.
However, I was damn lucky and just a few weeks later Binance announced that they now support Polygon USDC deposits. After another request to the support it was possible to get the coins back.
So kids: Check first that you are on the right chain!
How did you find out about PoolTogether?
I think it was Reddit. I was looking for some Lottery themed crypto stuff and someday I stumbled across Pooltogether :)
What made you stick around?
At first it was this simple but ingenious idea to turn boring yield farming into more exciting prizes.After looking around a bit, I realized that Pooltogether is not an 08/15 crypto project, but something special.
I finally stayed thanks to the great community. I don't think you can find so much fun and friendliness anywhere else. I also think it's good not to be so fixated on the token price like other projects, but to put the project itself in the foreground.
How are you involved in the community? Tell us about it.
I'm active on Discord and try to help people and generally get involved when possible.
Currently, I am also running Coordinape.
If anyone wants to know more about Coordinape, I can only recommend Tjark's great explanation page!
https://pooltogetherdao.super.site/coordinape
In short: “Coordinape is a platform for DAOs to incentivize and reward contributors. DAOs usually have no HR department or fixed salaries, so the decision making is moved to the community.”
I am also a member of the Executive Team.
What the Executive Team is, is well described by Brendan here in the Gov Forum:
https://gov.pooltogether.com/t/rfc-formalizing-the-executive-team/1904
Among other things the Executive Team is distributing prize liquidity to Prize Distributor contracts. I would like to emphasize here that Pooltogether is and will always remain "non-custodial" in V4.
The DAO has no way of accessing users' funds.
Oh, and I also refill and award the Polygon Pool every Saturday.
(Not with my own funds, it's sponsored by a generous PT Inc employee ^^ )
Definitely check it out! https://community.pooltogether.com/pools/matic/0x2ac049f07d56ed04f84ff80022a71a1a2d8ce19b/home
Would you recommend PoolTogether to others? How would you describe it to them?
Yes, ofc :D The description on the website "PoolTogether is a crypto-powered savings protocol based on Premium Bonds. Save money and have a chance to win every day." is not bad.
Generally, I think Pooltogether is the perfect way to get your feet wet in crypto.
Are you involved in any other projects or communities?
Not really, Pooltogether is my first and at the moment only DAO. I also don't think I will engage much in other Daos in the future.
Do you have any other thoughts and comments you would like to make?
Thx Smartinvestor for doing these cool interviews!
We hope you enjoyed this interview. Please learn more about depositing at PoolTogether.com and join us in the PoolTogether Discord to become a part of our Community.