Reasons for Lowering Fees

[Tuck Fheman]

when pig is big, we can eat pork,but the premise is that the pig grew up.

But, you have to kill the pig first or is this a zombie pig?

[clayop]

We are refunding 99% of order creation fee if it is canceled.  So the cost to create/cancel is very small (just enough to prevent spam).

The end result is that the "order creation fee" becomes a "minimum fee" for filled orders which has the effect of preventing dust orders.

The minimum order fee will probably be similar to a transfer fee, $0.20 per filled order, $0.05 for lifetime members.

Do you really think we can compete with other exchanges and bitcoin with these high fees?

Yes. Although presception counts for a lot at 40bts a trade any trade over $60 in value is cheaper than the standard 0.2%. Add to that the safety of no counter party risk and it's a no brainer.

I'd rather see effort put to marketing the above points than changing to something that appears better.

We won't attract high frequency bots but they don't really fit on a blockchain based exchange anyway.

Also lifetime members get 80% of those fees back.

You're ignoring the percentage fee. IF the percentage fee exist, the order creation fee is always additional.

And who is we? People who believe high fees really work? We should listen shareholders voice.

[gunailei]

when pig is small, we have to feed it.
when pig is big, we can eat pork,pig feed us back. but the premise is that the pig grew up.

where is the pig?  just new users.

no new users, no profit;
no orders, no profit;

what's frequency bots? it's market catalyzer!!!

[Riverhead]

We are refunding 99% of order creation fee if it is canceled.  So the cost to create/cancel is very small (just enough to prevent spam).

The end result is that the "order creation fee" becomes a "minimum fee" for filled orders which has the effect of preventing dust orders.

The minimum order fee will probably be similar to a transfer fee, $0.20 per filled order, $0.05 for lifetime members.

Do you really think we can compete with other exchanges and bitcoin with these high fees?

Yes. Although presception counts for a lot at 40bts a trade any trade over $60 in value is cheaper than the standard 0.2%. Add to that the safety of no counter party risk and it's a no brainer.

I'd rather see effort put to marketing the above points than changing to something that appears better.

We won't attract high frequency bots but they don't really fit on a blockchain based exchange anyway.

Also lifetime members get 80% of those fees back.

[clayop]

We are refunding 99% of order creation fee if it is canceled.  So the cost to create/cancel is very small (just enough to prevent spam).

The end result is that the "order creation fee" becomes a "minimum fee" for filled orders which has the effect of preventing dust orders.

The minimum order fee will probably be similar to a transfer fee, $0.20 per filled order, $0.05 for lifetime members.

Do you really think we can compete with other exchanges and bitcoin with these high fees?

[bytemaster]

We are refunding 99% of order creation fee if it is canceled.  So the cost to create/cancel is very small (just enough to prevent spam).

The end result is that the "order creation fee" becomes a "minimum fee" for filled orders which has the effect of preventing dust orders.

The minimum order fee will probably be similar to a transfer fee, $0.20 per filled order, $0.05 for lifetime members.

[dirnet]

I agree 

[fahun]

 

[clayop]

BM's new proposal mentions that BitShares will reduce fees EXCEPT transfer, creating order, and account creation fees. This is somewhat disappointing to me because I have been arguing to lower transfer and order creation fees. In this post, I want to point out some reasons why BitShares has to lower its "core" fees.

1. We're in competition. It's the red ocean already.
Believe or not, we're not in the blue ocean. We now have two main products: value transfer service and exchange service.
Regarding transfer service, our main competitor is Bitcoin. Bitcoin transfer service uses a cryptocurrency, which hard to be hacked, and allows users to send money around the world.
Currently, Bitcoin's fee is about $0.03, and its ecosystem is incomparably huge than us. The only disadvantage of Bitcoin is its volatility, but there are many third party service trying to resolve or minimize this weak point.
So think about it, do people really want to use BitShares instead of Bitcoin to transfer money? I would say no.
To overcome Bitcoin, we have to play better than Bitcoin in many aspects. Yes, we have Smartcoins. But we also have higher transfer fees, four times higher than Bitcoin. One may say that BitShares is the premium service like Tesla or Apple. But they're commodities. Is there any premium financial service that only have rich people? Paypal? Chase? The key point in transfer (and even merchant) service is a large user-base. So our focus group in transfer service should be all kinds of people.
Then what should we do? I would suggest to lower the basic transfer fee to at least Bitcoin level (10 BTS, but 9 BTS is better). If we really want to incentivize to people to use our system, I would say 5 BTS. If we keep the transfer fee high, I'd rather use Bitcoin to purchase goods or transfer money.
For the exchange service, our main competitor is centralized exchange. My argument is simple. Which exchange charge order creation fee in addition to a percentage fee? The only exchange is BTS DEX. This is really annoying. Users may think that "BTS already took 0.2% of my money, and now asks me 20 cents more"
If we have percentage fees, order creation fee should be minimized. Thanks to ElMato's effort, we know that 1 BTS can be effective value to prevent spamming attack. So why don't we set the basic order creation fee at 1 BTS?

2. Fees can be increamental as our market cap grows.
Suppose we set our transfer fee at 5 BTS ($0.03). Of course it can be adjusted by committe proposal. But we can increase the fee as our market cap grows. Think about when Bitcoin was $1. Did it charge 0.03 BTC per transfer? As Bitcoin's market cap grows, it automatically increase its fee. If its price becomes $3,000, it will charge $0.3. But people may not care.
We can take the same strategy. I rather want to say, we should be humble. We only have 7.5 mil market cap, one out of tens of Bitcoin. Let's start with low fee and as market cap grows, fix the rate in terms of BTS.

3. A successful referrer in a loss
Someone say we should keep referring system with high fees. But if high fees prohibit our growth of user base and price, is it still important?
Which one do you prefer, doubled price of BTS with 10 refers, or 20 refers with halved price?
The key is the price now. If price goes up, it's easier to advertise BitShares. Then what makes price? Demands and user-base. I would recommend to remove all factors that drive out users. Bad UI? It's getting better. Low liquidity? Many are making market bots now. High fees? One may say lower fee is not the pulling factor. Right, lower fee does not guarantee more users. However, high fee is surely pushing factor. It makes people annoyed and drives out them.

4. Shareholders want lower fees
IMHO, BM's biggest mistake is listening some community members' voices with fluent English (Since my English is not good, I cannot persuade BM now). But see the voting result. Bitcrab and I have the largest votes, and we are both arguing for lowering fees. Shareholders show their opinion by votes. Why does BM keep ignoring shareholder's voice?


TL; DR
My suggestion is to lower the basic transfer fee to BTC level (9 BTS) and to lower the basic order creation fee just for preventing spammy attacks (1 BTS)