After discussing it with
@Xeldal , I now think
his solution is the ultimate solution for BitShares in the long run.
Xeldal's proposal turns upside down the whole referral program:
- the current approach is this: we charge high fees by default and then offer discounts.
- his approach is this: we charge low fees by default and facilitate adding profit margins for businesses on top of that.
Xeldal's proposal looks very elegant and efficient.
However, it has one fundamental difficulty: IMO it will require a major code-base upgrade (possibly similar to the migration from BitShares 0.9.x to BitShares 2.0).
(I'm not an expert in this area, so this is just my speculation, that needs to be confirmed by someone more competent.)
Whereas my solution achieves a similar result for both businesses and users, but requires only subtle changes in the code-base, so it should be doable within a simple worker proposal.
The downside is this: it's not as elegant and generic as Xeldal's proposal.
Therefore I suggest using my solution as a quick patch to the referral program. In the long run, however, we should aim at Xeldal's proposal IMO.
One more thing:
this proposal has been revised and no longer LTM is involved in it.
I now think that LTM should stay as it is, as the same goal can be achieved with AM (Annual Membership) and/or shorter memberships.
AM (and/or any other shorter membership scheme) is better for our purpose than LTM due to these reasons:
- AM does not allow users to create subsequent accounts (this would be a loophole if LTM was used).
- AM only offers what we actually need for our purpose: a price discount. This way we do not end up giving away access to advanced features when it's not needed.
- AM costs significantly less, so it is easier to sell it at a relatively good price.
- *if* there are any cases of lost revenue for the network, they will be on a much smaller scale.
I do maintain my position that a revenue can be considered as lost *only* when a user ends up paying less than s/he was willing to pay.
I don't think there will be any significant number of such cases, at least until competition on the hosted wallet market grows substantially, as only strong competition can push the AM to a level that is lower than the level users are willing to pay.
So until that happens, we are sure to preserve the network's income or increase it.