A marketing idea? Whitepaper? Strategy? request? Either way I think its is gold.

[bitmarket]

I would suggest in promoting this, that the tone should be noting the principal motivation is all about promoting BitShares and attracting those who understand its potential and become active users themselves, rather than this being considered just "the next big thing" for marketeers to leech dry.

The only way it could be leeched dry is if we use the delegate model you are suggesting which pays more in commissions than we take in in revenue.
We want this to be seen as the next big thing.  We want martketers to come from far and wide and use their skills promoting this because it is such a good opportunity.  I dont understand peoples mentality that it will attract the wrong type of use.  How can you be the wrong type of user of a currency?

Again I'll suggest, I wonder a short burst reward will drive this as hard as any MLM motivation. A short perhaps 1 year - 18 months time limit, will avoid unanticipated regret via compounding complexity etc; and will avoid new users resenting payments to a point they might just opt to start a new account and dodge that.

Users can't dodge anything.  Transaction fees are the same whether you are referred by someone or not. the only difference is who gets them?  100% network or 40/60 network referrer.

Lastly, I don't see why the reward for bringing new users could not be topped up from a delegate.. obviously, we want to avoid too much dilution and rewarding false accounts but where it is clear accounts were real and actively turning over transaction fees, the promoter who brought them in could claim their reward relative to that, after a time. Afterall, delegates get their profit from the transactions, so I don't see why a delegate couldn't be assigned to support this effort and perhaps other marketing, whatever else is seen to be making a positive contribution - though I can't think of any better atm than attracting active users. Just need to find the right balance that makes the effort worthwhile and yet see the benefits flow into BitShares rather than simply into the pockets of ambitious marketing types who adopt BitShares only for that $"opportunity".

It would be abused and people would bleed the system dry.

[davidpbrown]

So, .. pay from the transaction fee and not any overhead on new users; avoid the pyramid sharing of those fees for several generations or tiers; and pay a short term burst of real reward, rather than a long term commitment. 

We seem to be moving away from MLM, which is a good..

I would suggest in promoting this, that the tone should be noting the principal motivation is all about promoting BitShares and attracting those who understand its potential and become active users themselves, rather than this being considered just "the next big thing" for marketeers to leech dry.

Again I'll suggest, I wonder a short burst reward will drive this as hard as any MLM motivation. A short perhaps 1 year - 18 months time limit, will avoid unanticipated regret via compounding complexity etc; and will avoid new users resenting payments to a point they might just opt to start a new account and dodge that.

Lastly, I don't see why the reward for bringing new users could not be topped up from a delegate.. obviously, we want to avoid too much dilution and rewarding false accounts but where it is clear accounts were real and actively turning over transaction fees, the promoter who brought them in could claim their reward relative to that, after a time. Afterall, delegates get their profit from the transactions, so I don't see why a delegate couldn't be assigned to support this effort and perhaps other marketing, whatever else is seen to be making a positive contribution - though I can't think of any better atm than attracting active users. Just need to find the right balance that makes the effort worthwhile and yet see the benefits flow into BitShares rather than simply into the pockets of ambitious marketing types who adopt BitShares only for that $"opportunity".

[kenCode]

@BitcoinJesus2.0

[fav]

Ok so you mean the $20 signup fee?  Wasn't that needed for the multi-tier plan?  I think a signup fee would be a difficult sell.   Why not just have the transaction fee system without the $20 up front. 

the $20 is for affiliate account upgrade. it's not forced, and would work great in a 1 level referral program too. less attracting to marketers, but I think it would still be worth a shot.

[merivercap]

Why should upline members get so much for getting lucky and  having some superstars downline? 

Because without them, you (The person whose comms float up) would not be there.

But I think I am over the multi tier thing too.   We can move on.

Comms and fees in bts are very difficult to market and understand.  I prefer using bitUSD and any successful marketing push would need to do the same.

By the way at todays prices and fees., under the system proposed 2 posts up (The network gets $8 per sign up)   the network would only need to make 67 sales per today of signups to neutralize our current level of inflation.

Ok so you mean the $20 signup fee?  Wasn't that needed for the multi-tier plan?  I think a signup fee would be a difficult sell.   Why not just have the transaction fee system without the $20 up front. 

I think purchase transaction volume will be a lot lower.  5 transactions per day is too high.  Paypal users avg 26 transactions per year so at 1 penny it's 26 cents per year and over 20 yrs that's $5.20.  Taking 60% of that is around $3 without taking into consideration time value of money.  The incentive is not that great, but at least it's something. 

BTW on my previous post transaction fees remained the same in terms of BTS, but transaction fees in BTS would decrease significantly as market cap increases so it's better to use your 1 penny per tx numbers.... I was always curious what the plan was for transaction fees as market cap grew.   It would be great for referral 'miners' to capture the tremendous upside of growth, but it's hard to do when tx are pegged at about 1 penny.  I do like the idea that all excess revenue beyond development & maintenance should just simply go to the referral system. 

[fav]

An interesting mental exercise.  Imagine John Q Public clones bitshares and builds bitsharesMLM. He honors 100% bitshares holders so you have the same stake. He has a built in marketing system as described in the OP and limits the number of 100% delegates to 5 as that is ample to support the tech requirements of the chain.  which chain are you more excited about?

the question is, which chain will have more users/publicity after a year. the answer is quite obvious

[bitmarket]

Why should upline members get so much for getting lucky and  having some superstars downline? 

Because without them, you (The person whose comms float up) would not be there.

But I think I am over the multi tier thing too.   We can move on.

Comms and fees in bts are very difficult to market and understand.  I prefer using bitUSD and any successful marketing push would need to do the same.

By the way at todays prices and fees., under the system proposed 2 posts up (The network gets $8 per sign up)   the network would only need to make 67 sales per today of signups to neutralize our current level of inflation.

[merivercap]

I would suggest a simplified and softened version with no protocol level enforcement.

Currently the minimum fee is 0.1 BTS and the default is 0.5.  Some of the light wallets are already boosting this fee slightly to pay for their development.  I suggest that some wallets could support defaulting to add an additional 0.1-0.5 BTS fee for every transaction, payed to the account that payed the registration fee for that wallet installations first account.  The idea here is that our grassroots marketers introduce people to BitShares, set up their wallets and register them, and receive transaction fees until the new user either stops using the network or changes the default settings.

This way there's no controversial protocol level enforcement pushed by the network as a whole, and marketers are incentivized to get legitimate users, because they're only rewarded if the user transacts.

I dont mind this option... Its a lot safer but a lot less powerful for a bunch of reasons.   But I am confused by this term "legitimate users"  What is a legitimate bitUSD user if it is not someone who holds bitUSD. Earns interest on bitUSD. Receives his income in bitUSD. Purchasers products with bitUSD, and trades in and out of bitUSD for fiat with his network of fellow bitUSD holders?   I don't think it gets any more legitimate than that.

An interesting mental exercise.  Imagine John Q Public clones bitshares and builds bitsharesMLM. He honors 100% bitshares holders so you have the same stake. He has a built in marketing system as described in the OP and limits the number of 100% delegates to 5 as that is ample to support the tech requirements of the chain.  which chain are you more excited about?

Yeah adding that functionality to the wallet is a good alternative.  You can even build a bisharesMLM wallet to see how it fares with other wallet providers that use a different approach.   It may be good to test with various wallet providers and see how it works and maybe consider a protocol change down the road.

bitmarket I think the idea of using transaction fees is brilliant because it is the main revenue source for the ecosystem and I think a referral system is the key to crypto success.  We'd effectively be turning users into miners who earn transaction fees by growing the network.   Transaction fees are also a fantastic proxy of value creation because you can't just create fake accounts and earn referrals.  People have to use the system.  Recruiting businesses that have much higher transaction volumes will be more valuable and a greater value-add to the network.  I definitely think a system like this could be amazing.

Note we can do a quick present value calculation of transactions fees (no inflation).  We can use Paypal as a comp and just sum the estimated transaction fees for 20 years.  Paypal has 162 million active users and they generate 11.5 million tx per day or .071 tx per person per day or roughly 26 transactions per year.  If you get 0.5 BTS in fees for 20yrs for each referral and the ecosystem grows to the size of Paypal, you'll get 13BTS per year or 260BTS over 20yrs for one referral.  Currently that's ~$1.68 per referral, but at a current market cap of $16 million.  At $160 million it would be $16.8, at $1.6B it would be $168.... not bad at all....the numbers work out pretty well.
https://www.paypal-media.com/about

The only thing I would avoid is the multi-level part of it... upline/downlines/matrices etc.  Not convinced this is any good and I've avoided MLM programs precisely because I thought simple referral programs were more properly aligned with people's value creation.  Why should upline members get so much for getting lucky and  having some superstars downline?  How does the upline generate it's excess returns?  It's either from his downline or future members and it gets skewed way too heavily towards the top of the pyramid at the expense of those below. 

Anyways I am a huge fan of referral programs in general so I'm glad you are leading the charge with this idea. 

[bitmarket]

Privacy is an issue. Is there no way to protect that privacy?

I have been speaking to a few people and have come around on the multi-tier aspect.   How do you guys feel about single tier. Flat 60% commission on all fees over 20 years. One time setup fee of $20 to help cover the cost of development and maintenance.   That is pretty powerful mathematics.

If I sign up 2 business owners i am in profit.  Great.  But lets say I dont sign up any.  Only free accounts.
lets say I get 60% of a fee that averages to be 1 penny per transaction over time. Lets say the average consumer over 20 years (remember bitUSD will be accepted in a lot of places by then) makes only 5 transactions per day with bitassets.

That is $11 per year average I make per signup. That is a pretty awesome ROI.  I work hard in my spare time and sign up 1 person per day on average. (maybe I run a meetup once a week)  On average that is $4,000 per year, I will earn.  Over the 20 years, for each year of part time work I do I make $80,000.

All that without signing up one single business operator($20 sale) The catch the average 5 spends per day relies on the last decade a lot.  The average is a lot less than 5 today. The $12 commission on the $20 sale gives me a little "today incentive". Or a budget to purchase clicks online.

Thoughts? Does it motivate you?  Are you running meetups?  Telling people about it?

Or do you get smart and stand out the front of a western union for 30 minutes each day and sign up 20 people per day?  DO you act as their gateway and the profits from the gateway spread and the signups makes it very nice supplement to your income.  Now income from your remittance business pays your rent year in year out and you are building an empire that should make you filthy rich in years 10-20?

[NewMine]

This will create spamming..... association with spamming is not good.

[sschechter]

   I'm with Ander on this.  Although I am not opposed to MLM programs in theory and they can be effective, I was never sold on MLM benefits over simple referral systems.  The complex structures/tiers and negative associations that come with MLM is something I'd avoid.  Simple referral systems are great.  I'm not sold on multi-tiers.  If I'm a downline person.  Why should an upline be compensated so much for what I do.  It's like just being first is of ultimate importance and then you wait for everyone else to actually do work.  That's how I always felt and that's how MLM is often sold to people.  Shouldn't this be something the NXTers should be doing?  Or maybe give the idea to Paycoiners so they can last a bit longer before going to zero. 

I'm 100% behind simple referral systems and designing an appropriate % is crucial to balancing the incentives of referrers with perceptions of referrals.

 

[fuzzy]

The bad thing about any change is that if/when the change upsets some existing users, then they may leave. this happens immediately. Any benefit that may accrue from an action does so in the future.  This is true of all actions we can choose to take.  The assessment of the benefits and risks are important and this thread is doing a great job of it so far.

This is precisely why I still own and support PTS/AGS.  Even if BitShares' first DAC goes the "wrong direction" to gain traction, those users who are dissappointed can simply move the majority of their hodlings to PTS and wait for someone to clone BitShares and add significantly stronger privacy features (or any other aspects which adhere to their philosophical beliefs).  Who knows, maybe even an already-announced token like Ron Paul Coin would step in to fulfill this role, knowing that the user base is already primed to support privacy features. 

If BitShares becomes a huge success by taking a path that many are against, it still promotes Delegated Proof of Stake itself and that means that a DPoS token that more closely adheres to our founding principles will do far better than if BitShares had taken that role and continued suffering the media blackout it largely does today. 

[fuzzy]

Does no one think it will cause problems when your account is permanently flagged as being affiliated with a different 'introduction' account?

In general this can be very powerful and I think Max is totally right, but you're going to add a whole new layer of data that can be analyzed.  Maybe it isn't a big deal to know that you were introduced to BTS through person X, but it really is getting away from the ideals. 

And if you guys don't think anonymity is important, you have not been paying attention to the crypto-space. 

Dark/Dash passed up BTS because of 2 things, having a mined coin which provides a group of retards to be your fanboys.  The second is that people really want their crypto-coins untraceable.  Well a third one is they may have had a large premine which incentivized the early guys to keep at it ... and they did it properly.

100% correct imho.  Have to give it to you gamey.  Spot on brother...

[gamey]

Does no one think it will cause problems when your account is permanently flagged as being affiliated with a different 'introduction' account?

In general this can be very powerful and I think Max is totally right, but you're going to add a whole new layer of data that can be analyzed.  Maybe it isn't a big deal to know that you were introduced to BTS through person X, but it really is getting away from the ideals. 

And if you guys don't think anonymity is important, you have not been paying attention to the crypto-space. 

Dark/Dash passed up BTS because of 2 things, having a mined coin which provides a group of retards to be your fanboys.  The second is that people really want their crypto-coins untraceable.  Well a third one is they may have had a large premine which incentivized the early guys to keep at it ... and they did it properly.

 

[bitmarket]

I would suggest a simplified and softened version with no protocol level enforcement.

Currently the minimum fee is 0.1 BTS and the default is 0.5.  Some of the light wallets are already boosting this fee slightly to pay for their development.  I suggest that some wallets could support defaulting to add an additional 0.1-0.5 BTS fee for every transaction, payed to the account that payed the registration fee for that wallet installations first account.  The idea here is that our grassroots marketers introduce people to BitShares, set up their wallets and register them, and receive transaction fees until the new user either stops using the network or changes the default settings.

This way there's no controversial protocol level enforcement pushed by the network as a whole, and marketers are incentivized to get legitimate users, because they're only rewarded if the user transacts.

I dont mind this option... Its a lot safer but a lot less powerful for a bunch of reasons.   But I am confused by this term "legitimate users"  What is a legitimate bitUSD user if it is not someone who holds bitUSD. Earns interest on bitUSD. Receives his income in bitUSD. Purchasers products with bitUSD, and trades in and out of bitUSD for fiat with his network of fellow bitUSD holders?   I don't think it gets any more legitimate than that.

An interesting mental exercise.  Imagine John Q Public clones bitshares and builds bitsharesMLM. He honors 100% bitshares holders so you have the same stake. He has a built in marketing system as described in the OP and limits the number of 100% delegates to 5 as that is ample to support the tech requirements of the chain.  which chain are you more excited about?