2025 Roadmap proposition & discussion

General
1

Hi, I’ll like to propose a roadmap which is a result of compiling thoughts and a wishlist across the entire team, now finally I’d like to invite everyone to comment here and share their views.

2025: A Crucial Year for PWN DAO

2025 marks a pivotal phase for the evolution of PWN DAO and its product suite. In Q4 2024, we achieved strong product-market fit (PMF) by offering liquidity leverage opportunities on LP tokens (via Swaap) at competitive rates, notably 12% APR on WETH across Base, Optimism, and Arbitrum. Additionally, December 2024 saw the launch of PWN DAO governance, accompanied by the initial token distribution to early supporters.

In the spirit of Ethereum’s open community ethos, we aim to incentivize and align 100 business development (BD) teams. However, in the short term, we must significantly enhance our business development and marketing capabilities.

For 2025, two key objectives should guide our efforts:

  1. Increase protocol throughput to achieve $100M TVL
  2. Expand PWN DAO governance token distribution to 1,000 participants (holders)

These goals align with four high-level verticals:

  • A) Product
  • B) Business (TBD @Pierre)
  • C) Community & Communications (TBD @Jiri)
  • D) Experiments

A - Product

Key targets:

  1. Achieve 100% reliability.
  2. Enhance the incentives system to boost engagement and TVL.
  3. Simplify liquidity entry points by abstracting perceived complexity. (Measured in user interviews)
  4. Enable protocol integrations to allow more teams to build PWN-based products in parallel. (Having at least 1 team building their own product on PWN by the end of 2025)

Q1:

  • Improve reliability of web2/platform components to support the full scope of PWN Protocol v1.3.

    • Target - user reported: (Measured by user support tickets or issues in the internal #bugs channel):
      • Basic flows Maximum of 1 user bug per month :
        • create / repay / claim loan
        • bundle / unbundle assets
        • from Rabby / Frame / Safe wallets
      • Advanced features / flows (max 1 user bug per week):

  • Establish a robust user testing routine (reward testers with reputation points).

    • Target: Conduct 10 full user interviews per month (2–3 per week).

  • Open Lending Strategies Editor to all users.

    • Improves operational efficiency by enabling direct strategy management without consuming BD resources.

  • Release PWN on UniChain & Ink (potentially Starknet mainnet).

Rationale:

In Q3 and Q4 2024, we implemented major features such as Strategies and PoolHooks, alongside new DAO-related interfaces. However, dependencies and niche user pathways (e.g., native Safe wallet support) revealed suboptimal user experiences. Ensuring a seamless experience is mission-critical, supported by rigorous testing.

Q2:

  • Implement a Referral & Future fee-share system.
    • Target: 30% of deals to include a referral address.
  • Release PWN SDK for integration into wallet interfaces and DeFi yield aggregators.
  • Deploy a unified liquidity entry-point solution (leveraging PoolHooks and featured strategies).
  • Release the PWN Protocol V2 Whitepaper.
  • Explore additional features (to validate with users):
    • Counterparty selection (e.g., optional KYC).
    • Perpetually available liquidity through dynamic commitments or commitment pools.
    • Enhanced integrations for complex DeFi assets, including:
      • In-app liquidation and unwrapping into underlying assets.
      • Parametrized filtering on the platform.
      • Stateful proposals for Uniswap v3 and v4 LP tokens.

Rationale:
To scale our PMF success, we must create additional incentives for market participants to choose PWN. Building on traction in the LP segment, we aim to broaden our offerings, especially targeting Uniswap LP users. Additionally, PWN’s universality is a competitive advantage - enabling wallets and DeFi interfaces to offer in-app lending/borrowing for full portfolios fosters additional fee-sharing opportunities.

Q3:

  • Improving UX by integrating convenience features, such as automatic in-app asset swaps
  • Aggregated loans (executing/repaying a multitude of loans in 1 transaction)
  • Explore additional features (to validate with users):
    • new loan types such as optional liquidation mechanisms
    • privacy layer integrations
    • cross-chain loan creation

Rationale:
There are some clear UX low-hanging fruits which are in the pipeline based on earlier user-feedback, yet don’t have the highest priority - realistically those are achievable within 6-9 months as backlog projects.

Q4:

  • Launch PWN V2 on all chains
  • Infrastructure decentralization :
    • alternative hosting for UI (IPFS,…)
    • alternative intent storage solutions
  • Validate:
    • SDK - wallet integration & 3rd party UIs oriented functionalities
    • White-label products for institutional use.

Rationale:

Achieving network effects requires expanding beyond current “whale” participants. PWN V2 enables new revenue opportunities for market participants, such as solvers and bridge liquidity providers.

B - Business

This section will still be improved on, but sharing here a very brief high-level outlook.

Focus on quality partnerships (e.g., Uniswap, Ink, market makers).

Q1:

  • Lock in new opportunities in the PMF segment (e.g., unchain market-making, DEX LPing).

Q2:

  • Drive adoption among crypto-native institutions (e.g., Stakehouse, Re7).

Q3:

  • Enable wallet integrations.
  • Pursue TradFi institutional adoption (e.g., Bitcoin Suisse incorporating PWN into their product suite).

Q4:

  • Expand TradFi institutional adoption.

C - Community & Communications

Maintain a continuous presence in the ecosystem and ensure active participation in digital marketing.

[EDIT: Removed the actionable ideas not to distract the conversation]

Q1:

  • Tailor campaigns for the Uniswap LP community.
  • Onboard a dedicated community manager to host regular Spaces.
  • Launch a reputation boost program to incentivize social media engagement.

Q2:

  • Partner with a marketing agency budget of: $25–50k.
  • Achieve milestones:
    • 50k Twitter followers.
    • 5,000 Discord users.
    • Appearances in major media and podcasts.

Q3:

  • Expand to 75k X followers and 5k Forecaster/BlueSky followers.

Q4:

  • Reach 100k X followers, 10k Forecaster/BlueSky followers, and 10k Discord users.

D - Seed Planting & Experimentation

  • Showcase undercollateralized loan products on World & Base.
  • Support PWN protocol forks for institutional or compliance domains (e.g., Project Deuss).
  • Foster DeFi mortgage use cases built on PWN (e.g., via hackathon bounties).

Looking forward for the discussion, once finalized I’d pose a completed version up for a vote by the PWN DAO.

5 Likes
2

Regarding the community and communications

The marketing team has yet to have a proper meeting to define goals and objectives for 2025. These are my initial comments that might change next week based on those meetings.

I suggest we stick to incentivizing the community using Reps, not directly $PWN token. Two reasons for this:

  1. We have already started lining up the concept and comms for the incentives program in Reps.
  2. Reps and their distribution is easier to manage while the incentives programs are going and the points stay offchain.
    Then, when all rep farming concludes, we will proportionally (and all at once) distribute the tokens based on Reps to the individual community members.

With that being said, a few comments on the values below:

  • 250 tokens for hosting a Twitter Space.

There has to be a set of rules in place that will assess quality of a given space, otherwise we risk ending up with tens or hundreds of zero quality spaces farming airdrop. (This is up to the marketing team, just noting)

  • 500 tokens for delivering a Meetup talk.

If you mean speaking on a PWN organized event, then yes, I agree.

  • 1,000 tokens for recognized conference talks.

Same as above I suppose. Does the talk have to be solely about PWN? Or just a mention? (This is a detail to be refined in the incentives program)

  • 100–1,000 tokens for published articles, based on views (1k+, 10k+, 100k+).

Fair.

  • KPI: CEO participation in 1 conference and 1 podcast per month.

Can you clarify what exactly do you mean by this. Do you mean PWN CEO? Podcast should be made by PWN, or mediated?

Quarters

Q1 – no comment so far, mostly agree.

Q2 – On top of that, I also propose we start using Kaito Mindshare as a key metric. Their product is basically an AI scanning the whole of twitter and showing terms and projects and how they are perceived by the ct community. Frankly, that should be our highest non-financial KPI, to constantly increase our mindshare and be talked about.

Q3 – Hard disagree on BlueSky, from my perspective nobody uses that and our marketing team is not big enough to spread thin across platforms with minimal impact.

Q4 – Same

3 Likes
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Hey, all good points. Thanks!

Regarding “appearance” incentives - this is more targeted towards PWN DAO Foundation - so this would be decided on the PDF level as it would be touching on core-contributors on the payroll - take it as an idea draft that can be applied to core-contributors but also to community contributors (in Reps). The whole point here is that we need more district appearance - including the ED/CEO (I admit I’m mixing in the ‘ceo’ as a generic labe, but what I generally mean is the PDF ed & board)

I removed that point from my post not to dilute the message with a random actionable ideas.

1 Like
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Hello. I would like to elaborate on the product key targets to better reflect reality and achieve more measurable results.

When we discussed plans for 2025 with the team, we concluded that creating an open-source SDK with extensive automated testing should help us achieve higher reliability and align more closely with the ecosystem.

Considering existing bugs, we’ve already taken measures to address the recent avalanche of issues. Regardless, I think the metrics you suggest are realistic, and we’ve already started working on gathering existing data to address this metric.

    • Target: Conduct 10 full user interviews per month (2–3 per week).

The Dev team would like to organize 7 external testing sessions to help the community to get familiar with the platform to bring more attention to reputation gaining via QA.

Updated version for Q1 from my side would be:

  • Maximum of 1 bug discovered per month in PWN SDK:**
  • Basic flows Maximum of 1 user bug per month :
    * create / repay / claim loan
    * bundle / unbundle assets
    * from Rabby / Frame / Safe wallets
  • Maximum of 1 new issue on average discovered by Sentry
  • 85% of code in PWN SDK is publicly available and covered with tests
  • Establish a robust user testing routine (reward testers with reputation points).
  • Target: Conduct 10 full user interviews per month (2–3 per week).
  • Target: Organize 7 external testing sessions.

Regarding Q2, I agree with the overall direction, but I’d like to dive into the details at the end of Q1.

3 Likes
5

Hello, thanks for sharing the roadmap, few comments on the Product side:

A) Q1, Open Lending Strategies Editor to all users:
This will possibly increase the noise on the platform, shall we also come up with some whitelisting solution?

B) Q2, 30% of deals to include a referral address:
What are the benefits of referrers? It is better to be defined to check the achievability of the 30% target.

C) Q2, Deploy a unified liquidity entry-point solution:
Supported the idea for a long time :smiley: I guess this would need more effort on r&d, moving it to Q3 seems to be more realistic imho.

D) Q3, new loan types:
I’d say let’s define the new loan types based on user interviews/reviews/feedback, not putting much effort into some loan types, and then figure out there is not much attraction to them.

General comment: Would be great to have prioritized goals for each quarter.

1 Like
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For 2025, two key objectives should guide our efforts:

  1. Increase protocol throughput to achieve $100M TVL

  2. Expand PWN DAO governance token distribution to 1,000 participants (holders)
    [/quote]

  3. $100M TVL based on lander’s amount? Or accepted offers?

  4. 1000 participants/holders What in token amount?

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Hello, I have a few points about the product goals:

Q1, Open Lending Strategies Editor to all users :
As @al2m4n mentioned, I don’t think allowing it for everyone without a proper manual check makes sense. 3 solutions come to my mind

1, Only keep the curators system (BD will only have to give curator rights to people/organizations they deem useful)

2, Allow the creation for everyone but have manual approval from PWN side before activating the strategy

3, Allow the creation for everyone but have a filter for verified ones
With one of these (ideally 1 or 2) it makes sense to me.

Basic flows Maximum of 1 user bug per month

  • Does this contain only flow-breaking bugs?

Q3, I’d say automatic in-app asset swaps should have a higher priority since IMO it allows for higher liquidity on the platform. (More offers will be acceptable for the user)

1 Like
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Thank you for putting this roadmap together!
I really appreciate the proposed direction and all the insightful comments from everyone.

A suggestion regarding the structure, it might be helpful to be explicit on the format for each vertical:

  • Objectives
  • Key Initiatives
    • Targets (for each initiative)

I believe this can enhance clarity and alignment, making it easier for everyone to follow.

Product
I assume that the Key Initiatives are listed in order of priority; if not, it would be great to clarify that as well. This will help organize the development team’s backlog.
For example, if opening the Lending Strategies Editor and releasing PWN on additional chains are our top priorities for Q1, we can allocate resources effectively to focus on those initiatives while deprioritizing other tasks which are also being worked on, like updating the UI.

Community & Communications
I’d like to see this overall Objective as well:

  • Establish a framework for analytics and metrics to evaluate the effectiveness of our marketing campaigns.

Rationale: I think we need to measure success more accurately and adjust our strategies based on data-driven insights.

Then, for each Key Initiative, include specific Targets. For example:

  • Tailor campaigns for the Uniswap LP community
    Target: Achieve a XX% increase in engagement from the Uniswap LP community within three months.

  • Onboard a dedicated community manager to host regular Spaces
    Target: Host at least X community Spaces sessions in Q1 with an average attendance of XX participants per session.

  • Launch a reputation boost program to incentivize social media engagement
    Target: Increase social media engagement by XX% within three months of launching the program.

2 Likes
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Thanks, here are my thoughts splitted into sections:

Dev-wise I like these ideas/directions:

PWN being the base building block for other protocols/platforms

I like the idea of making the protocol as modular as possible, which gives it the attributes to be a good base layer to build on for other protocols or projects to do. For these to achieve I think it would be nice to start working on V2 protocol as soon as possible.

I think things like dynamic/stateful proposals would be also very useful, also to use these attributes when e.g. defining a custom strategy.

Target:

  • deploy PWN protocol in Q4, but ideally sooner if it would be possible

PWN SDK

Another important piece is the PWN SDK, which would simplify integrating PWN on the platforms/backends/wherever, which as we learnt in past years is often time-consuming as e.g. working with the proposal struct, signatures and producing them can be quite complicated.

We still need to agree on full scope of the PWN SDK so it’s hard for me right now to say exact deadline, but personally would be great to have it before some hackathons where we would like people to build on PWN.

Reliability

Also there should be some time allocated to better tests and making sure the critical parts of platform are always working. I’ve liked these 2 metrics:

  • Maximum of 1 bug discovered per month in PWN SDK
  • No bug found in the base flow path (create proposal, accept proposal, repay, including the pool hooks versions and the contract wallets)

I’d love to see the second one done ASAP, in Q1.

Product-wise

Making the UI/UX even more straightforward

I think one of the reasons why strategies are improvement is that it makes the UX much easier. I think we should continue with more simplifications for the users like this. I also liked the idea about lending/borrowing wizard.

Even better strategies

I think there is still a lot to be done better on the strategies, also from the contract side. Generally I think aiming for as low as manual management needed. Some examples of the things we are facing:

  1. need to re-post the proposals periodically to adjust to the price changes
  2. no auto recommitting of funds

In the v1.3 we have the shared credit feature which helps with the liquidity fragmentation/approvals, but I think there can be additional improvements made. For example:

  1. for lenders - auto recommit the repaid money to the strategy
  2. possibility to define dynamic values and conditions in the proposal/loan data, which would allow us to specify better which proposals should the strategy accept…

I can see things like these done in multiple ways, for example draftin inspiration from Morpho vaults - anyone could permisionlessly and trustlessly deploy this “lending account contract” with the specified dynamic data/conditions through which the lenders would commit to the strategy.

Seamless UX also for contract/AA wallets

Some of our biggest users right now are already using the Safe{Wallet} and I think we can still make the support for contract/AA wallets much better, one QoL improvement can be transaction batching.

BD-wise

ReFi usages of PWN

One random wish/goal would be to see usage of PWN in some ReFi project that wants to e.g. allow the users to borrow against their community tokens. I’ve been talking to few ReFi people lately and it seems like they sometimes have some lending component in their system and I think it would be great if PWN could also be used in ReFi projects.

To be sure, I don’t see this as a top BD priority, as there is much more volume in DeFi and that’s where our main focus should go IMHO, but still might be worth trying.

I can try help achieving this one.

4 Likes
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Hey!

ad TVL)
The TVL corresponds to the value locked in the protocol - that means that the collateral or other means of funds lock-up in PWN would reach $100M TVL.

Very likely this implies that the outstanding debt would be higher than that.

ad user token share)
Frankly, I’d focus on the number of people rather than distribution. Ofc having just a distribution equal to 1000 random addresses doesn’t mean the goal would be matched.

Not quite sure how else that should be specified. Happy to hear the thoughts.

1 Like
11

Hmm. You said :” equal to 1000 random addresses“?
I think I missed something. It’s gonna be random allocation?
Random?