The thing is, you do not need to seek consensus of the existing committee members, if you have an idea for a committee proposal. Just make the proposal and if there are some committee members who obstruct it but the majority of shareholders like your proposal, it will go through as those committee members blocking it will be voted out.

For that reason I do not understand why xeroc has decided to consult his initial ideas about the new fee schedule only with the current committee members. There is absolutely nothing special about them. They try to make it look like there is something special (e.g. BunkerChain making his mumble "announcement") but it's a myth I wanted to debunk.

The committee member position is extremely transient for a good reason: so that nobody holding this position feels important and has illusion of any power, including emotional power.

surely it's needed to seek consensus inside committee, and there is nothing strange for one committee member to consult other committee members before/after consulting the whole community.

committee members are similar to senators.

Quote from: bitcrab on February 06, 2016, 01:04:59 pm

transparency does not mean any discussion should happen in forum, inner discussion are also needed.

Please, give me an example where inner (i.e. non-public) discussion is needed between two committee members.

here the inner discussion refer to the discussion in committee telegram group, all the discussion is open to all the committee members and some proxies, it is "inner" but not "secret", committee also need communication efficiency. you are also in the telegram group and are not supposed to miss any discussion.

I feel the current auti-dilution emotion in China community mainly come from:

1. BTS's price keeps in low level for long time.
2. no exciting news that convince shareholders/users that BTS have a good future.

even so, I don't agree to reject all the worker proposals, from my own opinion, I still would like to support the worker proposals with high priority demand, efficient work and fair price, on the other hand, I will keep neutral to or even reject the worker proposals with low priority demand, inefficient work or overrated price.

a little more constrictive financial policy is suitable to such a tough time?

Quote from: bitcrab on February 05, 2016, 04:00:21 am

currently the account upgrade volume is too low, about 0.3 account
everyday, if the volume grow to high enough, the "CoinHoarder's machine"
will appear, just like surely speculators will appear for arbitrage if
there are big price gap between different exchanges.

If you take a look at
http://cryptofresh.com/charts
and display the account updates, you will see that they are way more
than 0.3 per day, more like 5-10.

oh sorry I made a mistake, even based on abit's data - network got 6k BTS revenue from account update everyday, there should be at least 1.5 accounts  update everyday.

Quote from: bitcrab on February 03, 2016, 01:53:09 pm

he may do not want to kill, but the referral program may be really killed by him.

Quote from: CoinHoarder on January 31, 2016, 10:33:40 pm

How to Kill Referral Businesses:
Charlie wants the referral business to die because he thinks the inflated fees are bad for the future of Bitshares. He sets up a business that works like the rakeback business in poker [1]. Anyone that signs up under him, he gives 100% of the fees back to them that he earns. It costs him very little to set this up. It mostly just costs him the time it takes to program an automated solution. Assuming everyone acts in their own self-interest, they would register for an account with Charlie as their referrer because they will save a lot of BTS on the fees. No one can compete with 100% rakeback, and all referral businesses that rely on the referral program for profit would die off.

Actually, this "Kill Referral Businesses" example proofs exactly the opposite than @CoinHoarder intended.

The facts are these:
- CoinHoarder's idea has not been executed by anyone so far.
- Not a single referral business demands protection from it.
Why is that?
Maybe because the referral businesses *believe* they are able to add some value for the user after all.

If they are wrong in this belief, the referral program will die eventually.
So why do you put so much effort into fighting the referral program, instead of simply getting rid of it (at least in your country) by executing CoinHoarder's machine?

currently the account upgrade volume is too low, about 0.3 account everyday, if the volume grow to high enough, the "CoinHoarder's machine" will appear, just like surely speculators will appear for arbitrage if there are big price gap between different exchanges.

Currently the network need to pay out 43k BTS to witnesses and 80k BTS to workers every day, but average daily income is only 8k BTS or so, among it about 900 come from transfers, 6k come from account upgrades.

no referral business demands protection from it perhaps because they are not aware of this. I believe their service provide some add-value, but the problem is, should/would they try to differentiate LTMs with different referrers? if not how can they defend their profit after the "CoinHoarder's machine" appear?

that is the flaw of the RP: it conflict with the "I pay to the service I use" principle, whether it is a continuable model is doubtful.

(2) Set the flat transfer fee at a level that is considered acceptable by China but still allows some space for %-based fees. IMO, this level is something around 10 BTS or $0.03. If we don't leave this space for %-based fees, no issuer (except the committee) will have any incentive to switch to the %-based scheme. Another advantage of maintaining this slightly higher level, is that this way there is still some incentive left to buy LTM for users who don't need any advanced features but just do a lot of transfers.

as discussed in committee, $0.018 is an acceptable flat fee.
committee can set all public smartcoins to percent fee scheme.

Quote from: bitcrab on February 03, 2016, 03:04:44 pm

it's possible for me to build such a machine, but before doing it I need to do some more detailed evaluation and preparation.
if I really release such a machine, when you refer your friend to be a LTM, will you suggest him to set you  or me as referrer?

Assuming we are talking about a friend of mine about whom I care:
- I'd suggest myself, provided I can somehow justify that. And the justification can be e.g. educational. I could help her/him to find out how the GUI works and what is the best fiat gateway etc.
- On the other hand, if I felt could not offer any added value, I'd refer her/him to you.

This applies to a friend only. Any other customer would be refereed to me. If the customer finds out about you, that's tough luck for me.
But there will be a small chance for that as you'll have no money to advertise. So I'll feel be quite assured that most people don't find out about your machine.

Once you start advertising, you'll have costs and you'll no longer be able to run your machine.

really? I think if I just leave one sentence in my forum signature, users will pass the info one by one. no ad needed.
people like to save money and help others to save money.

agree

Is the referral system built on top of the network as an additional feature to be used for *maximize and generate an *additional stream of profit, OR is the network built on top of the referral system to steal people's money from their "hard" work in making others people join a ponzi scheme?

I was pretty sure the first case was the one we were working on... But now that people seem to treat the referral system as the *real, *only, *major income for their business's revenue... I am lost.

Or maybe those people think bts can't do and offer nothing better then that?
If so, why are you here in the first place?

This! raised a valuable problem.

I think the whole referral implementation is flawed and we're trying to tweak the wrong things.
I think the problem is we're trying to build a public mandatory referral system and tax, when it should be left to private business, private interest to offer these thing if they are useful.

I am interested in exploring options that completely reduce the friction for users, reducing the fees, reducing the tax.  Where you've got a wide open ridiculously efficient platform with little to no cost at the core and offering innumerable optional features with many incentives to participate or utilize, like a variety of optional referral programs, built into privately created assets like FBAs or smart contracts, or just webservices etc. that might be completely separate from bitshares core. 

Could we not have many different (optional)referral programs built on top of bitshares?  User can choose the one they like, or none at all. 
Does the referral program need to be centralized as a core universal unavoidable feature/tax?
Couldn't businesses develop their own referral programs, incentives for using their wallet, their service, etc that don't rely on a core design mechanism that has a significant measurable effect on every user and every use case?

If a referral system has merit people will voluntarily use it.  I think business should design their own programs with their own source of income from their own services and not rely on a core tax on bitshares system wide.  It's a burden and inefficient.

A business might create a bitshares smart contract or a new type of transaction or feature or process or game or service etc that they design to collect a tax/fee that feeds their particular referral program.  But they would be subject to competition from competing services or competing referral programs and no one would be forced to fund them or participate in them while using the bitshares platform.

I don't like that this referral tax is unavoidable.  I think referral programs are a great idea but they should be built on top of, and in addition to bitshares, maybe not baked in the core.

Anyway, that is the direction of my thoughts lately.  I could be wrong.

I think some day the below described service will appear, the provider may do not want to kill referrer program, but just want to make profit, he do not need to pay 100% back, about 70% - 80% is attractive enough, and then he can make profit.

he may do not want to kill, but the referral program may be really killed by him.

How to Kill Referral Businesses:
Charlie wants the referral business to die because he thinks the inflated fees are bad for the future of Bitshares. He sets up a business that works like the rakeback business in poker [1]. Anyone that signs up under him, he gives 100% of the fees back to them that he earns. It costs him very little to set this up. It mostly just costs him the time it takes to program an automated solution. Assuming everyone acts in their own self-interest, they would register for an account with Charlie as their referrer because they will save a lot of BTS on the fees. No one can compete with 100% rakeback, and all referral businesses that rely on the referral program for profit would die off.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rake_(poker)#Rakeback