While obviously polarizing, I think the referral system is brilliant because you're giving people a business opportunity while simultaneously growing the network. At the very least it's worth a try.
I particularly like the analogy to PayPal, but has anyone else noticed that the actual way PayPal bootstrapped growth is being misremembered?
It wasn't primarily about the referral program, it was the fact that you got $10 free PayPal dollars when you opened an account. What would it take for Bitshares to do this? Obviously you'd have to protect against gaming the system somehow, possibly by *gasp* identity verification.
Obviously the other problem facing the referral system right now is that there isn't a clear use case for joining the network (yet).
Anyways kudos to the team for getting this thing shipped, but let's get it straight about PayPal: the free cash to join is what got things moving.