While Pots are currently used for quadratic funding rounds, they are a way to incentivize people to raise funding pools transparently for their own rewards programs, while standard quadratic funding just describes a method of calculating payouts from the matching pool using donations as a metric; we are building Pots to support many distribution mechanisms.

While people think POTLOCK is Potluck, a communal feast where everyone brings something to the table, at its core, we enable Pots of money, and they are locked, as we don’t have any keys, and accounts can only be rewarded based on the rules of the game—literally, POT-LOCK.

The What & Why of POTS

**Pots from a contract level consist of**

• phases including; continuous fundraising, applications, voting/matching, challenge, and cooldown periods
• A system for having owners, admins, and fees that can facilitate pots
• Accounts must be accepted into the pot during the application period to qualify for rewards
• How could parameters be changed to reflect other rules and mechanisms? What could you build on current contracts or use QF outside of our pot-based contracts?

Why use a pot as a primitive vs building your funding mechanism?

• Leverage an audited contract for holding funds and showing sponsors transparently
• You can raise funds directly on a contract that can only go towards program applicants (on-chain accounting + sourcing from many sponsors.
• Leverage decentralized fundraising via referral systems for pot growth through organizers and user payouts
• Fail-safe for payouts challenge periods to contest calculations on chains, on-chain community discourse
• Outsource program management by easily delegating to a Chef who can get fees, or Admins to run the round for you. Less overhead and onboarding, direct incentive alignment for those managing pots

Why the change from quadratic funding?