BitShares Forum
Main => General Discussion => Topic started by: luckybit on September 30, 2015, 01:46:42 pm
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Here is an idea, how about
1. An index of top referrers. This could be displayed in the wallet itself.
2. An ability to automatically subscribe voting power to the top referrers.
The idea being that voting power could be correlated with how successful a participant is at bringing new money into the ecosystem. Referrers bring new money into the ecosystem and it can be measured, so their good reputation could be rewarded with voting power.
Anyone who brings in new money increases the Bitshares market cap which benefits the whole ecosystem. So the top referrers are objectively providing benefit. If I could automatically through some checkbox reward the top referrers then it would give power to the people most successful at growing Bitshares.
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1. why not. but that can be done by blockchain sites.
2. we got proxy voting, and that's okay for me. the wallet shouldn't give recommendations on votes.
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1. why not. but that can be done by blockchain sites.
2. we got proxy voting, and that's okay for me. the wallet shouldn't give recommendations on votes.
Why shouldn't the wallet give recommendations as long as it's recommending criteria and not individuals?
I think for proxy voting, going by criteria makes plenty of sense. How do you know which individuals earned your vote if you don't have indexes? If you have indexes you can automate the whole process and simply subscribe to vote according to the list.
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1. why not. but that can be done by blockchain sites.
2. we got proxy voting, and that's okay for me. the wallet shouldn't give recommendations on votes.
Why shouldn't the wallet give recommendations as long as it's recommending criteria and not individuals?
I think for proxy voting, going by criteria makes plenty of sense. How do you know which individuals earned your vote if you don't have indexes? If you have indexes you can automate the whole process and simply subscribe to vote according to the list.
what's the main target for a successful marketer? - make even more money.
means, if I was top referrer and people would blindly vote for me because they see the recommendation and think I'm voting in their interest - well nope. I would vote for a higher refback percentage for example. more money for me, less money for every other worker (devs). it's too dangerous to make it too easy for voters.
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Referrers don't make money from voting power, they make money from bringing in referrals. Giving them voting power helps them to do what they need to do and rewards them.
When I'm talking about money I'm saying you might be able to quantify how much money each referrer is bringing into the ecosystem, give them a score, and subscribe votes to them based only on that.
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Fav's right. I can envision a scenario (over time) where the best referrers care about only 1 thing, getting more referrals. Then it becomes like so many social networking schemes - basically a pyramid scheme where all that matters is bringing new people in. Once the saturation point is reached it all collapses.
Thus would result in cycles of referrals and "referrer kings" vying for the top spot, become disillusioned and then move on.
Anyway, not too keen on the idea, but it does have a certain appeal. Perhaps it could be refined into something useful.
You're always coming up with something new luckybit (+5%), you're quite the forward thinker!
Incidentally, this is an example of where automation may not lead to the anticipated outcome. One way to limit this would be to have the voting weight given to the referrer adjusted by a parameter which is set by delegates or a shareholder vote at large.
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I need to think about this more but you may be onto something here. A referrer is like a miner, only they're doing actual work to grow the network without costing it anything. I would definitely give my vote to those provably growing the network. Also, the idea of a ledger to keep track of referrer performance is good. I don't think it should be in the wallet but bitsharesblocks.com (http://bitsharesblocks.com) could probably easily add it.
EDIT: I would also suggest that with POS, growing market cap is one of the best things you can do to secure the network. With POW, security is about computing power but with POS most attack vectors are based on market cap. The higher the cap, the more secure the network.
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Fav's right. I can envision a scenario (over time) where the best referrers care about only 1 thing, getting more referrals. Then it becomes like so many social networking schemes - basically a pyramid scheme where all that matters is bringing new people in. Once the saturation point is reached it all collapses.
A referral is only valuable if:
* The person being referred turns into a user who generates transactions, and therefore fees that the referrer gets part of.
and/or
* The person being referred purchases a membership, generating a large one time fee, that the referrer gets part of. (Anyone who pays for a membership will likely generate plenty of transactions in order to utilize it, but even if they dont, it was money for the network. I wouldnt expect many people to buy a membership and then do nothing).
Referrers who generate useless referrals that dont meet one of these conditions will gain nothing, therefore their goal will be to get real users and/or sell memberships to people.
The incentives work. Referrers are incentivized to bring real users into the network, not to refer people who end up not using it at all.
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Instead of number of referrals, I think actual amount of referral fees earned would be a good measure of how much they are benefiting Bitshares.
Speaking of referral fees, my understanding is that there will be a vesting period. Can anyone explain why this would be necessary? Maybe I'm being really dense here, but I just can't think of a scenario where a referral system in which referral fees are paid out of funds collected from the referred user can be gamed.
On the other hand, if Bitshares was to pay a referral fee for each new user regardless of whether they buy a membership or transact on the network, then yes, in that case I can see the system getting gamed left and right. But not the way it's currently proposed. What am I missing here?
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Instead of number of referrals, I think actual amount of referral fees earned would be a good measure of how much they are benefiting Bitshares.
make sense!
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Instead of number of referrals, I think actual amount of referral fees earned would be a good measure of how much they are benefiting Bitshares.
Speaking of referral fees, my understanding is that there will be a vesting period. Can anyone explain why this would be necessary? Maybe I'm being really dense here, but I just can't think of a scenario where a referral system in which referral fees are paid out of funds collected from the referred user can be gamed.
On the other hand, if Bitshares was to pay a referral fee for each new user regardless of whether they buy a membership or transact on the network, then yes, in that case I can see the system getting gamed left and right. But not the way it's currently proposed. What am I missing here?
Only account upgrades do vest for 90 days. Fees are paid within 20 minutes I think
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Instead of number of referrals, I think actual amount of referral fees earned would be a good measure of how much they are benefiting Bitshares.
Yup, that's what Lucky means. I think the reason there is so much confusion around this program is because very few people here understand how an actual referral program works. It's 100% performance based just like most every other referral program in existence.
Speaking of referral fees, my understanding is that there will be a vesting period. Can anyone explain why this would be necessary? Maybe I'm being really dense here, but I just can't think of a scenario where a referral system in which referral fees are paid out of funds collected from the referred user can be gamed.
Yeah exactly. Originally they wanted to set vesting to a year so I don't know what the final number will be. If it's a year the referral program is DOA. I say go for two months vesting MAX. Instant payouts if possible.
On the other hand, if Bitshares was to pay a referral fee for each new user regardless of whether they buy a membership or transact on the network, then yes, in that case I can see the system getting gamed left and right. But not the way it's currently proposed. What am I missing here?
Nothing. I've been pushing for this model (https://bitsharestalk.org/index.php/topic,9024.msg116871.html) for over a year.
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Fav's right. I can envision a scenario (over time) where the best referrers care about only 1 thing, getting more referrals. Then it becomes like so many social networking schemes - basically a pyramid scheme where all that matters is bringing new people in. Once the saturation point is reached it all collapses.
A referral is only valuable if:
* The person being referred turns into a user who generates transactions, and therefore fees that the referrer gets part of.
and/or
* The person being referred purchases a membership, generating a large one time fee, that the referrer gets part of. (Anyone who pays for a membership will likely generate plenty of transactions in order to utilize it, but even if they dont, it was money for the network. I wouldnt expect many people to buy a membership and then do nothing).
Referrers who generate useless referrals that dont meet one of these conditions will gain nothing, therefore their goal will be to get real users and/or sell memberships to people.
The incentives work. Referrers are incentivized to bring real users into the network, not to refer people who end up not using it at all.
Thanks for that Ander, I had completely forgotten about that. Point well taken.
Instead of number of referrals, I think actual amount of referral fees earned would be a good measure of how much they are benefiting Bitshares.
However, that is a more direct and better metric IMO. If that were used I could see luckybit's approach working in a fully automated manor. Even in that case I still think a weighting factor parameter would be a wise addition, so the impact of this particular incentive can be adjusted as necessary.
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Only account upgrades do vest for 90 days. Fees are paid within 20 minutes I think
I don't see why referral fees for upgraded accounts would need to vest either. Assuming I'm not missing something, any vesting will diminish the effectiveness of the program, so I hope the concept is completely removed so we can start it off on the right foot instead of generating negative buzz and having to vote to fix it later anyway.
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Only account upgrades do vest for 90 days. Fees are paid within 20 minutes I think
I don't see why referral fees for upgraded accounts would need to vest either. Assuming I'm not missing something, any vesting will diminish the effectiveness of the program, so I hope the concept is completely removed so we can start it off on the right foot instead of generating negative buzz and having to vote to fix it later anyway.
I believe the reasoning had something to do with a sybil attack. Not sure.
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Fav's right. I can envision a scenario (over time) where the best referrers care about only 1 thing, getting more referrals. Then it becomes like so many social networking schemes - basically a pyramid scheme where all that matters is bringing new people in. Once the saturation point is reached it all collapses.
A referral is only valuable if:
* The person being referred turns into a user who generates transactions, and therefore fees that the referrer gets part of.
and/or
* The person being referred purchases a membership, generating a large one time fee, that the referrer gets part of. (Anyone who pays for a membership will likely generate plenty of transactions in order to utilize it, but even if they dont, it was money for the network. I wouldnt expect many people to buy a membership and then do nothing).
Referrers who generate useless referrals that dont meet one of these conditions will gain nothing, therefore their goal will be to get real users and/or sell memberships to people.
The incentives work. Referrers are incentivized to bring real users into the network, not to refer people who end up not using it at all.
Thanks for that Ander, I had completely forgotten about that. Point well taken.
Instead of number of referrals, I think actual amount of referral fees earned would be a good measure of how much they are benefiting Bitshares.
However, that is a more direct and better metric IMO. If that were used I could see luckybit's approach working in a fully automated manor. Even in that case I still think a weighting factor parameter would be a wise addition, so the impact of this particular incentive can be adjusted as necessary.
It's actually in the referrer's best interest to continue to make information available to her referees that encourage them to use the system more and to eventually become members. Getting the initial sign-up is of little value without such follow-through to produce a happy, informed and therefore active user.
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Only account upgrades do vest for 90 days. Fees are paid within 20 minutes I think
I don't see why referral fees for upgraded accounts would need to vest either. Assuming I'm not missing something, any vesting will diminish the effectiveness of the program, so I hope the concept is completely removed so we can start it off on the right foot instead of generating negative buzz and having to vote to fix it later anyway.
What's the sybil attack here? If someone wants to create tons of fake accounts, pay the membership fees, and then get back 80% of his own money with the other 20% going to the network, I say be my guest!
I still can't see any reason to introduce vesting into this.
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Only account upgrades do vest for 90 days. Fees are paid within 20 minutes I think
I don't see why referral fees for upgraded accounts would need to vest either. Assuming I'm not missing something, any vesting will diminish the effectiveness of the program, so I hope the concept is completely removed so we can start it off on the right foot instead of generating negative buzz and having to vote to fix it later anyway.
What's the sybil attack here? If someone wants to create tons of fake accounts, pay the membership fees, and then get back 80% of his own money with the other 20% going to the network, I say be my guest!
I still can't see any reason to introduce vesting into this.
I couldn't agree more. It would be a different story if the referrer was getting 100% commissions and free transactions thereafter but with 20% going to the network, I can't think of any way this could be exploited. In fact, I'm a vendor myself and have many affiliates. I do payouts every 30 - 60 days depending on my refund policy. Once the transactions passes the refund threshold I cut their cheque. With a blockchain, refunds and chargebacks are a non-issue. If anything, that unique feature should be utilized to its full extent in the form of "instant" payouts. Making a sale would be like finding a block when mining.
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I think the argument behind vesting the upgrade referral income was that if it's instant someone will undercut the other referrers by giving the new users refunds. I don't think that's a good argument, but I think that's what the argument was.