My concern is that I think that the referral program should not be open-ended. There could be a fixed period of time set for it to operate to generate viral growth (which could be extended if necessary).

Then should come a point at which BitShares will grow on its own merits as the best system available (ie., once there is a critical mass of users), and then ALL of the transaction fees should go to the blockchain (be burned) to grow the value of our investments. After all, the DAC is meant to be profitable for the shareholders, not just for marketers (referrers), especially after they are no longer needed.

For example, I don't think that anyone is still be paid to refer new users to paypal, are they?

Referrals create demand for BTS. Demand means an increasing market cap. We don't have to be the most profitable DAC, only the most viral.

Overall I think this is many shades of awesome.

But the high transaction fees concern me too. If you think about average Joe potentially using it to do his shopping, then saying it compares well to traditional electronic payment methods is irrelevant - because average joe doesn't pay those fees, the merchant does.Convincing someone to pay $0.20 per transaction or buy a subscription and still pay fees on every purchase is a hard sell compared to something which appears to them to be completely free. Since this hypothetical average Joe probably doesn't care about decentralization or disintermediating the banks and won't use things like the bond market or dynamic account permissions, there is very little benefit to this person to make up for the high fees.

This update potentially has everything in place for Bitshares to be used as a financial services platform by businesses and investors, but as a payment platform (which price stable currencies should be ideal for) I don't see any target market. Crypto-enthusiasts won't flock to it en masse because they like the idea of a coin possibly appreciating in value over time and don't like perceived centralization. But non crypto-enthusiasts don't have any real reason to want to use it either.

What are the benefits for somebody using BitUSD over Paypal and real USD, or bank account and debit card?

There needs to be enough advantages to overcome the fees and lack of convenient things like ATMs in every neighbourhood, or it doesn't matter how many people are trying to market it, people won't be interested.

BitUSD and other market pegged assets will likely be used in the same ways bitcoin is currently used. Prediction markets, gambling, buying "alternative" items, etc. It won't spread to mom and dad until a decade of more out. Please note that I'm not encouraging these activities, I'm just being brutally logical.

  Awesome post. Become a financial platform, let natural selection take over and see what evolves. I'm pretty sure this is exactly where Dan wants to go, based on comments he's made in mumble hangouts.

My only suggestion would be to drop the acronym DAC. Nobody besides us knows what that acronym means.

I'm sure someone has already given this more thought, but i was wondering if BitShares have given any thought how we could keep the system up in the event of trouble in the US or Europe or China. I'm just wondering, given our core devs are in the US, what if there are some type of unforeseen event that caused disruption, how could we keep this distributed system afloat. Is it something that would take care of itself as the system grows and matures and adoption increases or do we need to make concerted efforts later to make sure not too many of our delegates are located in one country? Im trying to understand the robustness of the system that i'm sure will be there once we reach the size of BTC for example.

Be interested to hear what peoples opinions.

Keep in mind there is a difference between the location of the physical person and the location of the server. For example, when setting up my (now defunct) delegate marketing.methodx, I chose Singapore as the servers location because of their favourable legal system.

So what do you think about "platform"? In a lot of cases it's used as synonym to OS.

Platform works. That's what ethereum is calling themselves and I just wanted to differentiate bitshares a little. I would suggest sticking to finance though. I see no point in trying to be a better version of ethereum. The trick seems to be specializing to get initial market share. In the 80s, Microsoft focused on businesses while Apple focused on the individual consumer. Microsoft destroyed Apple because the end user wasn't ready for personal computing (sound familiar?). Businesses were eating up Microsoft's tech because it saved money and gave them a competitive edge.

In our case, Bitshares can be the Microsoft of blockchains and laser focus on solving the financial sector's problems. Let Etherium [try to] appeal to the common user. They will fail until much later, when this tech is maturure and people are actually ready to use it on their own. Until then, solving the financial industry's problems will take us to where we need to be. We can appeal to "everybody" when the time is appropriate.

Edit: Same dynamic was true for Blackberry. They went straight for businesses and became massively popular in their day. Only problem with both Blackberry and Microsoft is they failed (are failing) at appealing to average users when the time came.

The only solution I can see is some degree of banking integration.

  Definitely. If you're in a river with a strong current and swim against it, you'll quickly get tired and drown. Instead, swim with the current until you become the current.