Now that Openledger has come clean to say they are no longer in service it is now time for Bitshares as an entity to explore other ways of bringing liquidity to the DEX especially for the remaining bridges, Openledgers reasons for closing is that they could no longer meet with the demands of their DEX projects for the customers and due to the current cryptocurrency climate in their host country they had to close shop. This means that at a point they were no longer making money from their investment,this is an exchange that has been existing since the beginning of bitshares which is pretty bad. This also means that the remaining bridges might probably close shop too if the situation continues.
This is why Bitshares as a whole must have some sort of frame work or regulation to forestall a repeat of such occurences in the future, a lack of change in approach may lead to loss of confidence in bitshares by DEX users and newbies who are considering a venture in bitshares and ultimately the death of bitshares DEX structure, there has to be a fail proof way of safeguarding the assets of DEX users, such that the closure of a bridge would not have much impact on the users afterall it is they who provide liquidity on the DEX. The Bitshares token is safe, however, what good is it if it can not deliver on its promise of decentralised trading for all crypto-asset class (Bitcoin and the others).
Bitshares has the solution to this problem already, yes there is already a form of exchange on the DEX that does not rely on  bridge exchanges, a trustless bridge in the form of Hash Time Locked Contracts (HTLC), where users use smart contracts to validate asset exchange without a third party, we also have many gateway services available.
The use of HTLC introduces another form of bridge exchange known as teller exchanges, these exchanges will no longer be custodians of users funds, but will act as an exchange terminal for the bitshares network helping users to have access to the DEX trading functionality without being worried of losing their funds.
How can this be achieved, firstly the bitshares network can create a pseudo asset, a form of security token or semi-fungible asset using the laid down parameters available on the network, say for example Bit.BTC (Must be UIA not a smart asset) which can be traded on the DEX, after issue, the asset ownership would be transfered to null-account so that no one else has control of it, and then the issued coins would be sold for BTS by the bitshares committee through an account set up for this (Current bridge exchanges may be given first right of purchase). This account would be the first seller and will sell the coins in batches according to the market demands and at exactly or almost thesame price as bitcoin, as it is committee owned it is immutable and trust will be guaranteed. Now this is where the tellers come in; holders of the psuedo asset can then post trades on their sites where they are matched with other users who are in need of the asset on the DEX (current bridge exchanges can also perform this service), another way is the use of gateways like blocktrade, atomicpay, gatehub, etc. that will exchange the asset 1:1 for bitcoin at a prescribed fee supposing the user doesnt want to use the HTLC teller method.
Using this pattern future bridge exchanges would no longer need to create their own assets but instead would be given first rights of purchase and special previleges to be able to sell and exchange the assets ( bitcoin for example) to users at reasonable costs. It also makes every user a potential exchange.

Most good traders know that historical support and resistance is one of the bed rocks of making money in trading, this is because those lines show us the point of distribution and the point of accumulation, ie demand and supply, last night I did a little digging into one of my analysis on the 0.016USD level for bitshares, guess what I discovered, it's actually an important level for bitshares, in one of my analysis I noted that below this price level BTS would lose its top 100 market cap spot, and so far it has not lost this level for months now except a few times when the market became very volatile. In conclusion the BTS buy range right now is between 0.017-0.012, it's pretty high but it's due to BTS volatility, the time to accumulate is now cos in the coming months we might not see BTS at this price anymore...

Currently BTS price is close to 0.018USD thesame levels it was at by this time last month, bitshares traded between 0.013 to 0.019USD  within that time. So far BTS has recovered by almost 30% from the lows of last month, however it currently trying to break the 0.018USD level which has become resistance, failure to breakout may lead to a retest of the 0.013USD support, it still all dependent on bitcoin's performance which has also been good so far. Bitshares has not had any new developments on the fundamental though it is good to know that a few Workers are on ground in terms of development and upgrades, the reduced support for the refund workers shows that there is now confidence in quality of workers being voted... Hopefully a few positive news may boost the price back to 0.04USD and beyond.

First support is still holding at 0.016USD

simple solution:

BALLOTS:

chain offers ballots
ballots cost one bts per ballot

ballots are not transferable and non returnable; effectively proof of bts burn.

STAKE:

bts must be stake locked to vote

user specifies days of lock, machine counts down

user may add (but not take away) funds or duration to the countdown clock at any time.

during stake lock bts is non transfer / trade

POWER:

voting power = min(bts locked, ballots owned) * days of stake locked bts remaining





COLLATERAL:

add to that any bts held as collateral cannot be locked for voting.

PROXY:

add to that that proxy decays linearly over 365 days and requires user to vote stake lock their bts against owned ballots for proxy to have power.

RESULT:

Now you want to vote? first you burn a bts to buy a ballot.  It is difficult with custodial funds.
and you want to vote you stake lock on countdown timer. This is also difficult with custodial funds
and if you want to proxy your voting power you are held to same standard.
collateral bullshits occurring are patched 
legally bts is still a required "utility voting token" to fill ballots owned, purchased only with bts

now you want to gamble with the switches in bitshares voting box you have "bts futures" and "burnt bts" on the line, not just proof of momentary wealth. interests in promoting the bts core token price in the future are aligned with votes

you want to be an owner?  buy in and act like an owner.

problem solved


ps move everything to likert scales

That's a genius solution, however I'd prefer staking instead of outright burn, just my opinion though...

From my understanding, bridge exchanges are semi-centralized exchanges that make use of bitshares graphene technology, they are semi-centralized because the UIAs are created on the bitshares chain/network. Aside this advantage they have the features of other centralised exchanges and the owners can bail out with user funds at any time and because owning their UIAs is dependent on trust, thus even though the BTS chain is fully decentralized and trustless, it relies on these bridge exchanges which requires trust for liquidity and more functionality i.e ability to trade other cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin, ethereum etc. Unlike traditional CEX I think more should be done to licence or legalize these bridge exchanges, I mean most of the top exchanges like coinbase, binance, etc have some form of licence and legal framework with which they operate. For bitshares to attract more users it has to have some form of licence or legal framework or policy guiding the use of it's technology, this will also ensure to some extent the safety of users who entrust their funds to bridges, as well as improve the quality of exchanges that run on the bitshares network. There would also be improved accountability on the bridges. There's even nothing wrong in having licensed exchanges like binance and coinbase building a DEX on the bitshares network.

After the last bitshares rally that took BTS to approximately 0.04USD there has been an even sharper decline, which prompts me to ask this question, I did sell a little of my BTS but not to buy below, I sold them at that time to buy a few personal things, I never envisaged that BTS would go so low again, so I didn't prepare well enough, not that I regret it, it's just that I could have accumulated more BTS than I currently have, however we still have roughly 9-8 months before the year ends so there's still time to make amends, so did you sell? Did you see the future in February?...

Bitshares price has risen by over 120% since last month ranging between 0.016USD to 0.037USD currently following an impressive recovery from the harsh downtrend of last year, much of this rise is due to bitcoin's price. Currently we have two strong resistance levels at 0.04USD and 0.05USD, and bitshares is trending sideways between 0.04USD - 0.03USD, hopefully it maintains momentum to push up above 0.05USD in the coming month, to sustain the current rally.
Meanwhile I will touch on some positive news that might have led to the recent rally...
1. Bitshares trademark in Europe; this news came during the pump of BTS from 0.016USD to 0.04USD, the trademark is part of an effort by a non profit institute from Slovenia to make bitshares a recognized financial entity. There's ongoing work to make it global.
2. BTS listing on new exchanges, recently BTS has gathered a lot of interest from CEX exchanges, with the backing of these exchanges with promotional funds there is  now more liquidity for BTS especially now that BTS gateways are becoming unreliable.