@bitcrab , if you say the referral program is nothing but "a trouble maker" in countries like China, maybe this is a simple solution:
Create a special faucet in China that registers new users and offers them LTM for free (or almost for free to cover the network LTM fee).
This faucet will be a non-profit entity (or will have to be subsidized a little bit by businesses like yours) but in my eyes it makes perfect sense, if you say you are able to make profit elsewhere, i.e. outside the referral program.
The only drawback is that Chinese customers will have to be aware of the vesting aspect (i.e. they pay higher fee today but 80% of it gets refunded in the future).
It's so simple that I'm sure you must have thought about it already.
But what are the reasons (apart from vesting) that prevent you from solving the problem this way?
I do not get you.
now one LTM cost 20K BTS, how can a faucet offer free LTM? even I can make a little profit, I cannot offer free LTM.
and if there is a faucet that offer free LTM, new users all around the world will come to sign up, how will openledger attract users?
Some misunderstandings here..
I think what Jakub proposed about "free LTM" is: if you refer someone, when she upgrade to LTM (for example the cost for her is 20K BTS), you will get 16K BTS but it will vest after 90 days, so you CAN return that 16K BTS to her after 90 days. That's all. I think Jakub didn't mean that you should give the user 20K BTS to upgrade to LTM.
That's indeed what I meant.
Moreover, I think you can return 16k BTS to the user
immediately after s/he upgrades, as you'll be sure to be compensated in 90 days by the vesting process.
This way you loan 16k to the customer but this loan is absolutely safe.
It all makes sense if you have other ways to make profit on this customer.