Author Topic: Simple, self-sustaining and easy to implement referral program  (Read 10912 times)

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Offline liondani

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Offline merivercap

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I feel like $10 is far to high. How about $0.50 or $1?

Who is picking up their mouse for $1?
agree, that is not enough

I think 5 bitUSD would be good.

It seems Square cash is giving $5 for sign up and $5 for referral now.  I remember before it was $1.  We have to remember that Paypal & Square had or have incredible amounts of VC capital so we have to do more with less.
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Offline JA

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I feel like $10 is far to high. How about $0.50 or $1?

Who is picking up their mouse for $1?
agree, that is not enough

TurkeyLeg

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I feel like $10 is far to high. How about $0.50 or $1?

Who is picking up their mouse for $1?

Offline merivercap

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 +5% +5%

A referral program is probably the best method for growth and to decentralize user acquisition outreach.

Anyone running a faucet can give away any amount (ie. 50 cents, $1, $5, $10) and can be judged based on user acquisition #'s.  The bottom line measure of success of course is those that can acquire more for less. 

BTW Square Cash gave away $1 for each signup. 

Also how robust is the proof-of-person algorithm?  I know Stellar had issues with their free coin distribution and it turned that people were 'farming' coins with fake social accounts all over the world, especially in developing countries.   I think it may be good to make it 2FA with:
1) smartphone: iPhone/Android UNID
2) desktop: a hash of CPU & HD IDs
How robust would the above be?  Just curious.

Also in regards to improving fake facebook accounts... there is a startup called Fakeoff that is supposed to help detect fake accounts:
http://www.businessinsider.com/fakeoff-app-weeds-out-fake-facebook-profiles-2014-6

« Last Edit: March 07, 2015, 04:36:41 am by merivercap »
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Offline valzav

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+5% very interesting idea, is this still in development?

There is some development but on a slightly different ideas, e.g. using referral codes (coupons) to send BitUSD or any other bit asset to any email address (find the progress here https://github.com/BitShares/web_services/commits/feature/add-referral-codes-updater).

The biggest concerns we had while considering implementing this in full were :
1. When delegate creates referral code (coupon) she issues IOU, transmitting it off-chain to somebody may be considered as money transmission from a legal point of view, this is just a concern - we never had any lawyer looking into this.
2. We don't know any reliable way to prevent sybil attack on a delegate that runs this campaign.

Offline fav

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 +5% very interesting idea, is this still in development?

Offline valzav

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Just talked to BM, he has a concern regarding coupons - when faucet issues coupon it creates IOU and passes it to user, so regulators may consider faucet a money transmitter business. What do you think?

Is there any way to make it peer-to-peer "redeemable"? That is, a group of us who had access to a community account could go in regularly and choose to tip/donate to users who submitted coupons? Just brainstorming here. Or give a group of trusted users 20 BitUSD each that they would agree to spend on tips for faucet users. Faucet users would present their coupons somewhere, we would tip them from our individual stashes, and their coupons would move off the checklist as having been handled? Memo: "Welcome to BTS. Contact me if you have Q's". Etc.

Yes, it can be a kind of p2p redeemable - I've just added support for coupon redemption API to the Wallet's GUI (still experimental, not going to production yet), so theoretically anyone can run a faucet that is able to issue coupons and let the wallet to redeem them via API.


Offline donkeypong

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Just talked to BM, he has a concern regarding coupons - when faucet issues coupon it creates IOU and passes it to user, so regulators may consider faucet a money transmitter business. What do you think?

Is there any way to make it peer-to-peer "redeemable"? That is, a group of us who had access to a community account could go in regularly and choose to tip/donate to users who submitted coupons? Just brainstorming here. Or give a group of trusted users 20 BitUSD each that they would agree to spend on tips for faucet users. Faucet users would present their coupons somewhere, we would tip them from our individual stashes, and their coupons would move off the checklist as having been handled? Memo: "Welcome to BTS. Contact me if you have Q's". Etc.
« Last Edit: December 03, 2014, 11:50:02 pm by donkeypong »

Offline valzav

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Just talked to BM, he has a concern regarding coupons - when faucet issues coupon it creates IOU and passes it to user, so regulators may consider faucet a money transmitter business. What do you think?

Offline hpenvy

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There is some progress. I've set up a simple proof of concept demo, please check this out..

(There are two independent parts, one is simulating the client the other one the faucet, currently they are both on the same domain, please don't be confused - in real life these would be totally separated talking to each other via api)

  • [faucet] open this link http://bitsharestestdrive.com/admin/coupons/new  and create your coupon (only XTS is supported yet), copy coupon code to clipboard.
  • [client] open http://bitsharestestdrive.com/ , log in with bitshares/password, go to My Accounts, click on Create New Account, select any name and paste your coupon code below, click Create New Account - now your account should be registered and you should receive coupon amount in 10 seconds.

Included in the community marketing newsletter.

https://bitsharestalk.org/index.php?topic=11947.0

I hope it draws some testers your way.
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Offline xeroc

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There is some progress. I've set up a simple proof of concept demo, please check this out..

(There are two independent parts, one is simulating the client the other one the faucet, currently they are both on the same domain, please don't be confused - in real life these would be totally separated talking to each other via api)

  • [faucet] open this link http://bitsharestestdrive.com/admin/coupons/new  and create your coupon (only XTS is supported yet), copy coupon code to clipboard.
  • [client] open http://bitsharestestdrive.com/ , log in with bitshares/password, go to My Accounts, click on Create New Account, select any name and paste your coupon code below, click Create New Account - now your account should be registered and you should receive coupon amount in 10 seconds.

very impressive!!!

Offline valzav

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There is some progress. I've set up a simple proof of concept demo, please check this out..

(There are two independent parts, one is simulating the client the other one the faucet, currently they are both on the same domain, please don't be confused - in real life these would be totally separated talking to each other via api)

  • [faucet] open this link http://bitsharestestdrive.com/admin/coupons/new  and create your coupon (only XTS is supported yet), copy coupon code to clipboard.
  • [client] open http://bitsharestestdrive.com/ , log in with bitshares/password, go to My Accounts, click on Create New Account, select any name and paste your coupon code below, click Create New Account - now your account should be registered and you should receive coupon amount in 10 seconds.

Offline Empirical1.1

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Worth reading http://blog.referralcandy.com/2014/01/23/paypal-referrals/ - here is how 7 to 10% daily growth in 2000 (PayPal acquired 1 million users by March 2000 and 5 million by summer 2000)

A small quote:
Quote
PayPal’s big challenge was to get new customers. They tried advertising. It was too expensive. They tried BD deals with big banks. Bureaucratic hilarity ensued. Over ice cream, the PayPal team reached an important conclusion: BD didn’t work. They needed organic, viral growth. They needed to give people money.
So that’s what they did. New customers got $10 for signing up, and existing ones got $10 for referrals. Growth went exponential, and PayPal wound up paying $20 for each new customer. It felt like things were working and not working at the same time; 7 to 10% daily growth and 100 million users was good.

My understanding is it cost PayPal a fortune. They blew through a ton of funds short term and it took a long time to generate positive returns. Applying the same idea to Crypto, where the give-always directly eat into the share price results in large shareholder losses in the majority of cases to date. They're completely different scenarios.

To date, we've had a huge hurdle to just set up a first account. Just something that makes that easier, a basic faucet, would be the place to start. You'd get way more than 200 users per delegate just by by doing that & some basic advertising rather than giving the $2000 to users directly.

If delegates did want to give away BitUSD I would suggest starting smaller like a few bucks, evaluate the effects and then raise it after a few weeks, if the results are positive but not generating enough interest.
« Last Edit: November 30, 2014, 06:43:57 pm by Empirical1.1 »

Offline donkeypong

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My main problem with referral programs is...well...I...I don't have any friends! :'(

You've got us but it won't help much to refer us!  ;)

Offline hadrian

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My main problem with referral programs is...well...I...I don't have any friends! :'(
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Offline islandking

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I feel like $10 is far to high. How about $0.50 or $1?

If somebody found out a way to abuse it though, they would abuse it. Especially if you plan on giving out 10 bit USD. They would find people on microworkers.com and pay people to do it for them, hire people in India etc. So just be careful. Fraud can get out of control with referral marketing with cash incentives.

This is where we need delegates - if you think that audience brought by some particular referral program is too expensive, just don't vote or vote the delegate out.
If you think there is a lot of abuse, talk to delegate, ask him or her to add more restrictions to campaign or vote the delegate out.
In both cases we need to know campaign KPIs, it can be tricky to get this data, in the UPDATE 2 I'm addressing this issue.

That seems like a good solution to the problem.
I've been working on a new electronic cash system that's fully peer-to-peer, with no trusted third party. - Satoshi

Offline valzav

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Speaking of delegates and referral programs... I need to find a smart way to implement a referral program through face to face meetups which I am organizing.  I am confident that any abuse of an 'in person' implementation will be extremely low.

I want to make it easy for folks to get their accounts activated, and reward them for doing so, and for referring their friends (who create accounts) to the meetup.  To the extent possible, track the numbers of people brought into the network in this manner. ie. Metrics to show the effectiveness of face to face marketing would be helpful.

I'm not a super technical delegate so I could use some help developing such a program.

What do you suppose would be the clean, accountable way of doing this?
Also assuming an n% paid delegate if that helps the implementation.  :)

Having what I've outlined above implemented will allow generating and printing coupons right from the BitShares client. And yes, everyone who gets coupon would have enough funds to register an account, whoever refers them also gets his/her piece of a pie, also metrics would be provided by a faucet that was used to generate coupons.
« Last Edit: November 26, 2014, 09:41:40 pm by valzav »

Offline lovejoy

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Speaking of delegates and referral programs... I need to find a smart way to implement a referral program through face to face meetups which I am organizing.  I am confident that any abuse of an 'in person' implementation will be extremely low.

I want to make it easy for folks to get their accounts activated, and reward them for doing so, and for referring their friends (who create accounts) to the meetup.  To the extent possible, track the numbers of people brought into the network in this manner. ie. Metrics to show the effectiveness of face to face marketing would be helpful.

I'm not a super technical delegate so I could use some help developing such a program.

What do you suppose would be the clean, accountable way of doing this?
Also assuming an n% paid delegate if that helps the implementation.  :)

Offline valzav

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I feel like $10 is far to high. How about $0.50 or $1?

If somebody found out a way to abuse it though, they would abuse it. Especially if you plan on giving out 10 bit USD. They would find people on microworkers.com and pay people to do it for them, hire people in India etc. So just be careful. Fraud can get out of control with referral marketing with cash incentives.

This is where we need delegates - if you think that audience brought by some particular referral program is too expensive, just don't vote or vote the delegate out.
If you think there is a lot of abuse, talk to delegate, ask him or her to add more restrictions to campaign or vote the delegate out.
In both cases we need to know campaign KPIs, it can be tricky to get this data, in the UPDATE 2 I'm addressing this issue.

Offline islandking

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The major issue with this is that people would download the client on several computers to abuse the $10 reward. They would claim the reward on tons of different computers and then transfer all the funds to their own wallet. People WILL find a way to abuse this.

This is not computer or wallet installation that counts, but account registration + unique coupon redemption, the only way to get a coupon is to pass proof of person process. I expect there would be some cheating, but the percentage should be small relative to overall network effect.

If somebody found out a way to abuse it though, they would abuse it. Especially if you plan on giving out 10 bit USD. They would find people on microworkers.com and pay people to do it for them, hire people in India etc. So just be careful. Fraud can get out of control with referral marketing with cash incentives.
I've been working on a new electronic cash system that's fully peer-to-peer, with no trusted third party. - Satoshi

Offline islandking

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I feel like $10 is far to high. How about $0.50 or $1?
I've been working on a new electronic cash system that's fully peer-to-peer, with no trusted third party. - Satoshi

Offline hpenvy

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NXTTY are already doing something like this, paying people 2500 NXTTY (worth 5 dollars atm), to whoever downloads their mobile wallet. https://bitsharestalk.org/index.php?topic=10589.msg150623#msg150623 In addition they are paying 5% each month on your holdings.

As you can see their market cap went down as this initiative started, but this might be deceptive,

Quote
It felt like things were working and not working at the same time [my emphasis]; 7 to 10% daily growth and 100 million users was good.

We should pay very close attention to how this works out. It sometimes frightens me that people on this forum are acting as if subsidizing a 5% yearly yield is a big deal, or giving 10% back on bitUSD purchases, etc. when our competition can do 5% monthly without hesitating. What I am afraid of is that we are too conservative, too myopic, too rational, too cowardly, too engaged in provincial details.

To be sure BM has the aptitude to see clearly to implement something outrageously daring and genius, something that others cannot even think before they shrink back in horror, but I am afraid he is too occupied, too distracted, too busy, or even lead astray by false hopes, false delegation of responsibility, hidden assumptions or ideological limiting thoughts.

Deep truth is often accompanied by a laugh, as if to defend against its terror. I think we should aim towards the same level of insanity with respect to marketing; unless we laugh in terror and excitement at an idea we are not digging our heels deep enough into ground zero launch site. The marketing push should fill us with frightful, trembling awe!

I have nothing to add, this sums up my feeling on our approach 100%.
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Tips appreciated for good work

Offline CLains

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NXTTY are already doing something like this, paying people 2500 NXTTY (worth 5 dollars atm), to whoever downloads their mobile wallet. https://bitsharestalk.org/index.php?topic=10589.msg150623#msg150623 In addition they are paying 5% each month on your holdings.

As you can see their market cap went down as this initiative started, but this might be deceptive,

Quote
It felt like things were working and not working at the same time [my emphasis]; 7 to 10% daily growth and 100 million users was good.

We should pay very close attention to how this works out. It sometimes frightens me that people on this forum are acting as if subsidizing a 5% yearly yield is a big deal, or giving 10% back on bitUSD purchases, etc. when our competition can do 5% monthly without hesitating. What I am afraid of is that we are too conservative, too myopic, too rational, too cowardly, too engaged in provincial details.

To be sure BM has the aptitude to see clearly to implement something outrageously daring and genius, something that others cannot even think before they shrink back in horror, but I am afraid he is too occupied, too distracted, too busy, or even lead astray by false hopes, false delegation of responsibility, hidden assumptions or ideological limiting thoughts.

Deep truth is often accompanied by a laugh, as if to defend against its terror. I think we should aim towards the same level of insanity with respect to marketing; unless we laugh in terror and excitement at an idea we are not digging our heels deep enough into ground zero launch site. The marketing push should fill us with frightful, trembling awe!

Offline valzav

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Worth reading http://blog.referralcandy.com/2014/01/23/paypal-referrals/ - here is how 7 to 10% daily growth in 2000 (PayPal acquired 1 million users by March 2000 and 5 million by summer 2000)

A small quote:
Quote
PayPal’s big challenge was to get new customers. They tried advertising. It was too expensive. They tried BD deals with big banks. Bureaucratic hilarity ensued. Over ice cream, the PayPal team reached an important conclusion: BD didn’t work. They needed organic, viral growth. They needed to give people money.
So that’s what they did. New customers got $10 for signing up, and existing ones got $10 for referrals. Growth went exponential, and PayPal wound up paying $20 for each new customer. It felt like things were working and not working at the same time; 7 to 10% daily growth and 100 million users was good.

Offline xeroc

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I like the idea ... and I'd love to seem many more useful proposals like this... So, once again, we need someone to "do it".. don,t we?

Offline lovejoy

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I think some sort of mechanism like this would be really beneficial for grassroots marketing efforts.

I'm making plans to run local BTS meetings in a few locations as a pilot project for national and international outreach, and something like this would really help people get started with BTS!

If i'm able to secure a paid marketing delegate position, I would love to help with implementation.

Marketing delegate pitch forthcoming.. ;)

Offline valzav

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I've edited OP and refined description a little bit and added more implementation details.

Offline valzav

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The major issue with this is that people would download the client on several computers to abuse the $10 reward. They would claim the reward on tons of different computers and then transfer all the funds to their own wallet. People WILL find a way to abuse this.

This is not computer or wallet installation that counts, but account registration + unique coupon redemption, the only way to get a coupon is to pass proof of person process. I expect there would be some cheating, but the percentage should be small relative to overall network effect.

Offline islandking

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Here is the high-level description:

Delegates can campaign to run faucet/proof of person software on their websites and spend a part of the delegate payroll on bringing new users into the system by running a facet and paying some amount of BitUSD per identified user that registers account.
E.g. it can be 80% of the payroll and 10 BitUSD per user/account.
The faucet would work as described below:
1. Somebody visits faucet website
2. There would be a clear call to action (CTA) “Download BitShares client and register an account and get 10 BitUSD for free”
3. Visitor clicks CTA link a goes over proof of person/identity verification process
4a. After finishing step 3 visitor is suggested to download the client and install it
4b. Also visitor gets a ’10 BitUSD coupon link’ to his email address (this link is supported by BitShares client, I’ll elaborate more on this)
5. User (let’s call him or her user from this point) installs BitShares client and clicks on coupon link
6. BitShares client/wallet opens coupon redemption page suggesting user to choose his/her account name
7. After user submits account name, BitShares client communicates with faucet website checking the coupon's validity, if coupon valid the faucet registers user’s account and credits it with 10 BitUSD
8. Faucet generates new coupon, passes it into the client and client suggests user to share it with friends on Facebook, Twitter, forums, etc, each friend that registers account brings additional 5-10 BitUSD to the user, also friend starting from step #1 gets his 10 BitUSD.

Please note that this process solves initial account registration issue - user installs the client only after he or she is proven to have funds to pay account registration fee.


Spending 80% allows each delegate to register no more than 200 users each month within the current market cap, if there would be more users willing to register an account, the faucet can put them on a waiting list.
Having a waiting list makes BitShares looks like something scarce which is good factor for successful marketing campaign, also this process resembles “invitations only” campaigns that were proven to be very successful (think gmail)


Implementation.
1. We need open source faucet/proof of person software that anybody can download and run as a website.
2. This software should be able to generate coupons and have json api to communicate with BitShares client/wallet
3. faucet software should be able to track referral links posted by users
4. BitShares client/wallet should be able to communicate (via JSONP AJAX) with faucet to check and redeem coupons and making faucet to register user’s account.
5. Delegates running this service need make all the records public so the community can audit referral links, coupons generated, etc and vote out non-effective delegates.

Probably it’s too early to run full scale campaigns before we have stable network 1.0, simple lightweight client and on/off ramp services, but we need to try this on a smaller scale sooner rather than later, let’s have a single delegate running this and watch the results, if this would work I’m sure community vote in more delegates running campaigns like this. Also voting in/out delegates may help us to figure out how much we want to pay for user acquisition and how much delegates can collect as compensation.

The major issue with this is that people would download the client on several computers to abuse the $10 reward. They would claim the reward on tons of different computers and then transfer all the funds to their own wallet. People WILL find a way to abuse this.
I've been working on a new electronic cash system that's fully peer-to-peer, with no trusted third party. - Satoshi

Offline valzav

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High-level description:
We can have marketing delegates that run faucet and finance referral program out of their payroll. The referral program pays some amount of BitAsset to identified unique users that download BitShares client and create account. For instance delegate can spend 80% of the payroll to fund referral program and pay 10 BitUSD per user/account created.
There would be also an initiative for users to invite their friends, e.g. each user referred a friend can get additional 10 BitUSD if friend installs client software and registers account.

The faucet would work as described below:
1. Somebody visits faucet website
2. There would be a clear call to action (CTA) “Download BitShares client, register account and get 10 BitUSD”.
3. Visitor clicks CTA link a goes over proof of person/identity verification process.
4a. After finishing step 3 visitor is suggested to download the client and install it.
4b. Also visitor gets a ’10 BitUSD coupon’ to his email address.
5. User installs BitShares client and clicks on a coupon link or just copies coupon code as text.
6. BitShares client/wallet opens coupon redemption page suggesting user to choose his/her account name and enter coupon code (if coupon linked clicked the coupon would be inserted automatically).
7. After user submits account name, BitShares client communicates with faucet website checking the coupon's validity, if coupon valid the faucet registers user’s account and credits it with 10 BitUSD.
8. Faucet generates new coupon, passes it back to client and client suggests user to share it with friends on Facebook, Twitter, forums, etc, if friend registers account, user gets 10 BitUSD and also friend going over identification process (steps #1-#7) gets his 10 BitUSD.

Advantages of this kind of referral program are:
- It's simple in terms of UX - user just goes over proof of person process, downloads and installs BitShares client, redeems coupon and chooses an account name, account name gets registered immediately.
- It's easy to implement - this doesn't require any toolkit changes or hard forks.
- It's self-sustaining - delegates compete to run the faucet - so stake holders voting for delegates, vote for some parameters of the campaign, such as niche served, marketing message, price per acquisition, so if stake holders think the dilution caused by the campaign not worse the value that new users bring it, stake holders vote out the delegate.
- This kind of campaign creates scarcity - spending 80% allows each delegate to register no more than 200 users each month within the current market cap, if there would be more users willing to register an account, the faucet can put them on a waiting list. Having a waiting list makes BitShares looks like something scarce which is good factor for successful marketing campaign, also this process resembles “invitations only” campaigns that were proven to be very successful (think gmail).

Implementation.
1. We need open source faucet/proof of person software that anybody can download and run as a website.
2. This software should be able to generate coupons and have json api, so BitShares client/wallet would be able to communicate with faucet.
3. Faucet software should be able issue and redeem coupons.
4. BitShares client/wallet should be able to communicate (via JSONP AJAX) with faucet to check and redeem coupons and making faucet to register user’s account.
5. Delegates running this service have to make all the records public so the community can audit referral links, coupons generated, etc and vote out non-effective delegates.

In order to BitShares client to find which faucet it needs to talk to redeem a coupon, delegates running faucets needs to publish faucet endpoint urls.
In general delegates can run not only faucet software, but provide some other services, so they can publish a list of services, e.g.:

Code: [Select]
"services": [
        {
            "name": "faucet",
            "version": "1.0",
            "coupon-prefix": "A123", // this is need for client to figure out what faucet to user to redeem coupon
            "url": "http://delegate-faucet.com/api/faucet/1.0"
        },
        {
            "name": "exchange",
            "version": "1.0",
            "url": "http://delegate-faucet.com/api/exchange/1.0",
            "app": {
                "url": "http://github.com/somedelegate/exchangeapp",
                "version": "0.1.2",
                "checksum": "1232142343243242"
            }
        },
        {
            "name": "escrow",
            "version": "1.0",
            "url": "http://delegate-faucet.com/api/escrow/1.0"
        }
    ]
Some of the services can be supported by the client out of the box like faucet or escrow service, some of them may require installation of angular module - delegates publish github link and client downloads and installs it, when delegates update app's version, client will automatically update it. If delegates removes this application from a list of provided services, client can uninstall the application. When delegate is voted out, the application would be no longer available.

Probably it’s too early to run full scale campaigns before we have stable network, simple lightweight client and on/off ramp services, but we before we get there we try this on a smaller scale, let’s have a single delegate running this and watch the results, if this would work, I'm sure stake holders would vote in more delegates running referral programs like this for different niches. Also voting in/out delegates may help us to figure out how much we want to pay for user acquisition and how much delegates can collect as compensation.

UPDATE 2
To prevent delegates from cheating and to have a single delegate efficiency metric (KPI) I suggest to remember first used faucet name or id somewhere in on the client/wallet side and make it to pass it to some centralized location each time the client is started, we can have a http callback address on bitshares.org for this, all the data gathered should be made pulicly available so everybody can see how many users opened the client multiple times and what faucets or referral programs have aquired those users.
Probably instead of a centralized location, we can find a way for clients to pass this data to all delegates on chain or off chain.

UPDATE 3
Some more features can be implemented on top of this, e.g. sending BitUSD to any email address directly from the wallet. Faucet operator just needs to have BitShares account so all the transfers to this account that include email address in the memo field would be forwarded to specified email address. There is no need for sender to create faucet account. Receiver needs to login to faucet via OAuth and verify email address.

UPDATE 4
This approach doesn't require a delegate position. It only requires a faucet with some funds that would be used to pay up referrals, it can be as low as 0.5BTS per user - just amount needed to register an account. Having a delegate running this kind of campaign just makes things simple.

« Last Edit: November 25, 2014, 08:13:46 pm by valzav »