In my view, the Referral Program(RP) is currently a "for the greater good" (socialized) tax. I think we can easily and safely correct this.
A simple solution that conceivably retains all/most referral incentives and income while opening the door to a great deal more opportunities, and reducing psychological and actual friction. As well, this may be fairly easy to implement(IDK), requiring few changes.
set referral fee to 0% by default.
Lower base fee to spam prevention level that supports network cost only.
Allow, in constructing any transaction, to designate what the referral fee will be.
A business that wants to use the referral system can then, within their app, simply turn key and charge whatever fee they want.
The split and distribution will happen automatically based on that users Membership status etc.
No 'building it themselves' is necessary.
Benefits:
Current LTM retain their benefits while using services that participate in referral program
Current LTM continue to earn from referrals and upgrades
Services that don't want referral program need not use it.
Services that can't operate with high fees can now use bitshares.
Psychological turn-offs of high fees, high friction eliminated.
Every business can easily and specifically tailor the referral program to their needs.
BitShares is more Capitalist and less Socialist
Drawbacks:
Power users will be able to avoid some fees without upgrade by using CLI or other low budget service.
tl;dr :
Less socialism, more capitalism.
fewer taxes, more freedom
less grub grub grub, more pew pew pew
I think bitshares operating as a for profit business is a turn off to other business as it adds to baseline cost.
Instead I think bitshares should operate as a non-profit neutral platform
for business to make
their own profit.
Collect what is necessary to pay operating cost and that is it. IMO.
Get the committee out of the business of defining profits(taxes) and limit to defining network costs.