I've been saying from the start that we have too many versions of BTC, which is killing liquidity and adding to another problem i.e. a dizzying array of trading pairs. So unifying the BTC tokens will solve more than one problem. More on that below.
Regarding BitAssets, I don't think we need to abandon any, but perhaps the only BitAssets that should trade against BTS, at least for now, are BTC, CNY and USD. Further, aside from unifying the BTC tokens, we should focus on supporting the creation of (and providing liquidity for)
only one BItAsset, USD. In addition to that, all other BitAssets aside from CNY (e.g. BitEUR, BitGold, BitSilver, BitOIL, etc.) should trade against USD only. I'm 99% sure
@bytemaster made a suggestion similar to this during a mumble session, so maybe he can talk about what it would take to make this happen.
Back to unifying BTC. This is critical. But our hands have been tied because gateways all want their own tokens so they can capture the trading fees. On one hand, I can't really blame them. On the other hand, it defeats one of the purposes of the DEX -- pooled liquidity. And since we desperately need liquidity, we MUST unify the BTC tokens into one main BTC asset that everything else trades against (aside from the BitAssets that trade only against BitUSD, as mentioned above).
So how can we satisfy these seemingly conflicting interests? I have an idea. What if the fees generated by trades against the unified BTC asset were split among the gateways based on the % of BTC each is responsible for getting onto the DEX? So let's say 10% of the BTC is on the DEX due to gateway services provided by metaexchange, 10% due to blocktrades, 20% due to OL, and the remaining 60% was purchased directly on the DEX. So any trade against BTC would then be split based on those percentages. I'm not sure how this would be implemented, but I'm sure it's possible and
we need to do something!
By the way, keep in mind that the measures I'm proposing above must be done in conjunction with some of the other liquidity-building measures, as proposed by
@JonnyBitcoin and others. Thoughts?