Author Topic: Am I the only one that thinks referral system is Bitshares largest mistake ever?  (Read 13741 times)

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Offline luckybit

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1. Referral system is great, but fees should be lower.
2. 20 BTS is too scary number for people.
3. 10 cents now seem low, but with price increase it would be higher. In crypto 2x times price increase is nothing, we could jump 10x, but we won't, because nobody will use system when. Eventually we will be forced to lower it , why don't do this now?
4. By lowering the fees we could increase our marketcap, hence - more publicity.
5. By lowering the fees we could show everyone that our governance model superior than Bitcoin.
6. Maybe people in USA tolerate fees, other regions have different views. But they have difficulties articulate this.

We could debate for a long time or we can show the world our new feature: governance by voting.

My proposal:
Lets reduce all fees by the factor of 4. Our system very good, we should be able to grow by 4x in short time if there will be no such resistance as high fees for people to use Bitshares.


I think fees should remain high for now. The system is going to be used by people who need to use it because there is no alternative offering lower fees. Until a rival offers lower fees the fees should remain high or even be increased. You don't lower fees until competition forces you to.

And there is no competition right now. Would you rather take your chances with BitReserve aka Uphold?

If 20BTS is a scary number, hide the number so people don't see what the fee is without specifically looking. There is no reason to make the fee an obvious thing and perhaps for psychological reasons you have a point that people spend more when they don't see numbers but that doesn't mean the numbers should be based around their psychology when you can simply move the numbers to a part of the interface they wont see as much. It's a GUI/UX issue not a price issue.

I also think it's not time to add the percentages to the interface. People need to know what percentage of the Bitshares pie they hold. The fees spent could reflect by reducing their percentage of the pie, but they don't need to care how much they pay in fees as long as their percentage of the pie is increasing or staying the same.

The percentages are more accurate for what is really going on and is better for psychology. When your percentage of the pie gets too low you'll have to buy more to keep your percentage.
« Last Edit: October 16, 2015, 09:08:32 pm by luckybit »
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Offline luckybit

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The referral pattern is actually one of the best ideas ever. Other crypto will certainly copy Bitshares as they have with sharedropping and many other similar ideas.

Innovation is the only edge the Bitshares community has, and the fact that the Bitshares community will try different ideas to win. If the goal is to take Bitshares viral and bootstrap an industry having the referral program is probably the best thing you can do to help seed the process.

My opinion is the referral program didn't go far enough. It should have been multi-level, but I understand for PR purposes perhaps it couldn't be? So instead someone can create a multi-level referral program on top of the current referral program if they decentralize the referrer into a cooperative.
« Last Edit: October 16, 2015, 09:05:31 pm by luckybit »
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Offline pal

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1. Referral system is great, but fees should be lower.
2. 20 BTS is too scary number for people.
3. 10 cents now seem low, but with price increase it would be higher. In crypto 2x times price increase is nothing, we could jump 10x, but we won't, because nobody will use system when. Eventually we will be forced to lower it , why don't do this now?
4. By lowering the fees we could increase our marketcap, hence - more publicity.
5. By lowering the fees we could show everyone that our governance model superior than Bitcoin.
6. Maybe people in USA tolerate fees, other regions have different views. But they have difficulties articulate this.

We could debate for a long time or we can show the world our new feature: governance by voting.

My proposal:
Lets reduce all fees by the factor of 4. Our system very good, we should be able to grow by 4x in short time if there will be no such resistance as high fees for people to use Bitshares.
 
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https://bitshares.openledger.info?r=pal

Offline Akado

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1.  User issued assets can set any core-exchange-rate they like and lower the fees for users of the UIA to close to 0
2.  UIAs can charge market fees similar to exchanges

This^ When people trade on exchanges, they trade IOUs, it's exactly the same, here they could trade a UIA issued by the exchange like bitstamp.btc or btce.btc with low fees. However at the user-level of interface they wouldn't see any of this happening.


I think it's too early to say it's a mistake. I mean, we have the chance to create a network effect and that's priceless.
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Offline bytemaster

Look at it this way:

1.  User issued assets can set any core-exchange-rate they like and lower the fees for users of the UIA to close to 0
2.  UIAs can charge market fees similar to exchanges
3.  $0.10 for a normal user or $0.02 cents for a lifetime member are so close to $0 that few would even think about it for a transaction over $10
4.  BTS is not meant to be payment currency.  How many people buy less than $10 worth of stock in a company?  What is the transaction fee on that?

In other words, the ability of users to do "price discrimination" falls apart at values this low.   Unless you are executing 1000's of transactions there is almost no perceivable difference.  Most people won't even bend over to pick up a DIME on the ground.

In other words from a customer perspective  $0.01 and $0.10 are effectively the SAME in low volumes.   At high volumes the price approaches $0.02 for lifetime members which is cheaper than Bitcoin. 

While the difference in price is insignificant to individual users, it is HUGE for the network.   The network is a party to every transaction and thus sees a 5x increase in revenue while the user perceives almost no difference in cost.
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Offline roadscape

Regarding tx costs... bitcoin costs nearly $1,000,000 per day to operate, and each tx costs $7 to its holders.. I think we're ok..

https://blockchain.info/charts/miners-revenue
https://blockchain.info/charts/cost-per-transaction
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Offline fav

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Our competition is not other crypto. It's legacy payment processors like PayPal and on-line usage of debit cards.

This. Exactly this.

 +5% time to realize this for some of you.

Offline topcandle

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Offline donkeypong

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Our competition is not other crypto. It's legacy payment processors like PayPal and on-line usage of debit cards.

This. Exactly this.

I fully agree. My post referenced other coins because the OP mentioned them, but we're aiming far beyond cryptos with this. Most Fortune 1000 companies use a referral system of some sort in the marketing. That's our turf now.

Offline botfund

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I think the fee for placing/cancel of an order and transaction should be very cheap. But the fee for trade success should be more, such as 0.0005 of the    liquild.
People are willing to pay when trade success, because both seller and buyer feel earn something at the moment they trade.

I think that the current market fee should be split into maker fee and taker fee. So we have order placing fee, cancel fee, maker fee and taker fee where [maker fee percentage]+[taker fee percentage] >= 0. The order placing/cancel fee should be as low as possible just to avoid spamming. To improve the liquidity, we can set the maker fee to -0.2% and taker fee to 0.2%, or maybe -0.1% and 0.2% to get some profit from trades like normal exchanges.

Offline Riverhead

Our competition is not other crypto. It's legacy payment processors like PayPal and on-line usage of debit cards.

This. Exactly this.

Offline donkeypong

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I strongly believe that this referral system can incentivize people to help BitShares grow. It is also something that partners can plug into and fund the system's growth in ways that you and I cannot yet imagine. Once this technology is fully ready for prime time (getting much closer), then the referral system can power a ground-up marketing push. Time will tell, but I'm guessing it will be well worth the cost. 500 other coins, and eventually Bitcoin itself, may agree when we leave them in our dust.

Offline xiahui135

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I think the fee for placing/cancel of an order and transaction should be very cheap. But the fee for trade success should be more, such as 0.0005 of the    liquild.
People are willing to pay when trade success, because both seller and buyer feel earn something at the moment they trade.

Offline Empirical1.2

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Your argument that other users will use alternatives is not backed up by the facts. Most including BTS have had very low fees for nearly two years and new user growth is stagnant. One of the reasons new user growth is stagnant is because there's no incentive to market and promote it.

Bitcoin is backed by the odds of the legacy financial system collapsing because systems tend towards homeostasis and people aren't going to change from one pyramid scheme they're familiar with to a new pyramid where risks are unknown.  Having low fees isn't a benefit when 500 other coins exist with low fees.  Having high fees when 500 other coins don't is a problem though.  Eventually there will be many PoS coins with deterministic node selection using things like the collateral bid system I proposed, or a Tendermint type solution, or transparent forging, or what Darkcoin is doing.  They will all have lower fees and high TPS and it will definitely be a problem.  You can't simply choose to not compete in the fee market.

Bitcoin is slightly different as it was the first mover & already has 90% market share which is why I excluded it in my response. 

if non BTC alt-coins were actually gaining adoption on the basis of low fees and no marketing (Which hasn't happened yet) BTS can adjust the programme.

Unfortunately if you're not the first mover, you need a lot of marketing to gain market share and that costs money.

Quote
Having high fees when 500 other coins don't is a problem though.

I'm surprised you can't see the answer lies in your own statement.

500+ coins are out there have already tried low fees. Many of these 500 coins improve considerably on Bitcoin and offer a range of services. None of those 500 coins with low fees & limited/no marketing and no third party incentives have made consistent inroads into Bitcoin's market share or experienced strong growth or user adoption.

A new product or services requires marketing and incentives for middleman to promote it. At least give what's been proven to work for hundred of years a chance instead of hanging onto the idea that the cheapest wins when clearly we have enough evidence from the alt-coin market that it's not the case.



« Last Edit: October 16, 2015, 03:52:36 pm by Empirical1.2 »
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Offline BTSdac

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I've seen lots of "hooray referral system" posts like it's the new cure for cancer.  I have the exact opposite thoughts about it.  Before any pro-referral people post in opposition, let's define exactly what the referral system is.  It's an artificial increase in transaction fees to subsidize the equivalent of a bunch of Avon ladies. 

Artificially increasing transaction fees is the last thing you would ever want to do in a cryptocurrency.  One of Bitcoin's main selling points was low transaction fees.  Now people are suddenly pretending like transaction fees don't matter.  Sure, you may now end up with some additional people trying to spread Bitshares, but most people view cryptocurrency as a zero sum game where the act of using it is just making someone else rich at their own expense.  This isn't far from the truth since any currency that exists whether it's fiat, gold, or crypto is all a pyramid scheme in nature.

Dan talks about how he doesn't like coercion, but the referral system obviously is where you're trying to swoop up people under your influence into a system to enrich yourself.  An example would be an employer forcing employees into Bitshares as a payment processor.  The employee now has to pay some arbitrary fee to become "a member" or pay large transaction fees instead.  Currency doesn't need any more pyramid scheme aspects than it already has.  Besides the fact that it's philosophically an abomination, it makes Bitshares less competitive in the free market vs other coins that will have lower fees.

Unless Bitshares became huge, it's not like many people are even going to pay the member fee anyway.  It just drives people to other coins due to big transaction fees.  If Bitshares became world reserve currency, probably everyone on earth would pay it, but the only function it serves then is an additional pyramid scheme aspect on top of the already pyramid nature of all currencies.   Whether you're trying to make a profitable business or a more "fair" world, it's probably bad on both fronts.
I think  referral system is not bad , but  the translation fee should decrease , it is too difficult to understand  send fee is 20 bts , but exhcang fee is only 5BTS,
I think the fee should  send fee < exchange fee 
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