First Organized Mutually Agreed Proposal

[tonyk]

Because bitshares didn't gain a flood of new users due to a buggy interface and lack of upgrades from exchanges, plus all the regular holders who were unable to import their wallets, we decided to butcher the fee structure on a reactionary whim.

All this based off one month of live data while still in beta testing mode... dumbest thing I have ever been around.  From what I have seen, these committee members have no business sense or patience whatsoever.

I agree with Donkeypong that we need stability, but this half ass rushed through shit compromise is terrible and now were stuck with it.

well, you say if you agree with me or if I agree with you?

Me, about 10 days ago

The general idea must be - we lower the fees to practically zero so they come in bunches, some of them start to trade and we earn trading fees from the volume traders. Do not get me wrong, the trading fees can and should be vastly improved as a design.

The problem with this logic is that this assume they have not come yet, because of the "high" fees. Which is totally not the reason why, im[not so]ho.
There are a  ton of other far more important factors - being way too yearly, hard to transfer accounts [why did  you not spend the time to have o.9.x export keys that take 30 sec to import, instead of days to move to 2.0???]; Not only poorly documented API but one missing essential functions for the simplest bot, and that when we needed one so powerful that everybody can as easily as possible make his version of a  wallet or integrate/move his exchange on the BTS blockchain ; I will not talk about the badly reinvented margin call rules, here... although they do no faviours to liquidity to such extend that having those rules mean never having liquidity; Having  an 'official' gui that is missing so much important functions - why for example one cannot yet claim his vested balances? It is a button and calling one api function, isn't it?

And after all this  and more essential stuff is missing, we will have a worker proposal, so we can jump and pivot and spend  6 mo. fighting the imaginary main cause of all ills?  Because after 3 days we discovered that the high fees are the main reason for no instant adoption?

Couldn't have said it better myself!

Neither could I, better than you.

[lil_jay890]

Because bitshares didn't gain a flood of new users due to a buggy interface and lack of upgrades from exchanges, plus all the regular holders who were unable to import their wallets, we decided to butcher the fee structure on a reactionary whim.

All this based off one month of live data while still in beta testing mode... dumbest thing I have ever been around.  From what I have seen, these committee members have no business sense or patience whatsoever.

I agree with Donkeypong that we need stability, but this half ass rushed through shit compromise is terrible and now were stuck with it.

well, you say if you agree with me or if I agree with you?

Me, about 10 days ago

The general idea must be - we lower the fees to practically zero so they come in bunches, some of them start to trade and we earn trading fees from the volume traders. Do not get me wrong, the trading fees can and should be vastly improved as a design.

The problem with this logic is that this assume they have not come yet, because of the "high" fees. Which is totally not the reason why, im[not so]ho.
There are a  ton of other far more important factors - being way too yearly, hard to transfer accounts [why did  you not spend the time to have o.9.x export keys that take 30 sec to import, instead of days to move to 2.0???]; Not only poorly documented API but one missing essential functions for the simplest bot, and that when we needed one so powerful that everybody can as easily as possible make his version of a  wallet or integrate/move his exchange on the BTS blockchain ; I will not talk about the badly reinvented margin call rules, here... although they do no faviours to liquidity to such extend that having those rules mean never having liquidity; Having  an 'official' gui that is missing so much important functions - why for example one cannot yet claim his vested balances? It is a button and calling one api function, isn't it?

And after all this  and more essential stuff is missing, we will have a worker proposal, so we can jump and pivot and spend  6 mo. fighting the imaginary main cause of all ills?  Because after 3 days we discovered that the high fees are the main reason for no instant adoption?

Couldn't have said it better myself!

[tonyk]

Because bitshares didn't gain a flood of new users due to a buggy interface and lack of upgrades from exchanges, plus all the regular holders who were unable to import their wallets, we decided to butcher the fee structure on a reactionary whim.

All this based off one month of live data while still in beta testing mode... dumbest thing I have ever been around.  From what I have seen, these committee members have no business sense or patience whatsoever.

I agree with Donkeypong that we need stability, but this half ass rushed through shit compromise is terrible and now were stuck with it.

well, you say if you agree with me or if I agree with you?

Me, about 10 days ago

The general idea must be - we lower the fees to practically zero so they come in bunches, some of them start to trade and we earn trading fees from the volume traders. Do not get me wrong, the trading fees can and should be vastly improved as a design.

The problem with this logic is that this assume they have not come yet, because of the "high" fees. Which is totally not the reason why, im[not so]ho.
There are a  ton of other far more important factors - being way too yearly, hard to transfer accounts [why did  you not spend the time to have o.9.x export keys that take 30 sec to import, instead of days to move to 2.0???]; Not only poorly documented API but one missing essential functions for the simplest bot, and that when we needed one so powerful that everybody can as easily as possible make his version of a  wallet or integrate/move his exchange on the BTS blockchain ; I will not talk about the badly reinvented margin call rules, here... although they do no faviours to liquidity to such extend that having those rules mean never having liquidity; Having  an 'official' gui that is missing so much important functions - why for example one cannot yet claim his vested balances? It is a button and calling one api function, isn't it?

And after all this  and more essential stuff is missing, we will have a worker proposal, so we can jump and pivot and spend  6 mo. fighting the imaginary main cause of all ills?  Because after 3 days we discovered that the high fees are the main reason for no instant adoption?

[lil_jay890]

Because bitshares didn't gain a flood of new users due to a buggy interface and lack of upgrades from exchanges, plus all the regular holders who were unable to import their wallets, we decided to butcher the fee structure on a reactionary whim.

All this based off one month of live data while still in beta testing mode... dumbest thing I have ever been around.  From what I have seen, these committee members have no business sense or patience whatsoever.

I agree with Donkeypong that we need stability, but this half ass rushed through shit compromise is terrible and now were stuck with it.

[donkeypong]

Okay, if committee members are listening (thank you), then here is how I would suggest you could please most parties.

--Largely keep the present fee structure, which supports referral fees and therefore enables marketing. To that default structure, make the following modifications.
--Lower trading fees as much as possible. (We need that business.)
--Direct the team to create a merchant identification process, perhaps at registration (Perhaps limit the monthly number of transfers by individuals; a higher number of transactions would trigger merchant pricing.). Resolve that once this has been created, merchants will be charged a percentage-based fee, while peer-to-peer transactions between individuals will be cheaper.
--In the meantime (while the merchant identification mechanism is being developed), run a short-term "sales price promotion" with extremely low transfer fees on bitCNY. On February 28, 2016, or as soon as the merchant mechanism is created and P2P fees lowered, the bitCNY promotion would expire. Until then, it's a way to bring us more users, and if they try it, hopefully they'll find much more here.

I'm open to other suggestions, but this is a distillation of everything I have heard so far that makes sense. Rather than a midpoint compromise that doesn't achieve anyone's aims, what these changes would do is to (1) salvage some funding for referral fees and marketing, (2) make the exchange more attractive to traders, and (3) give low-fee advocates both an immediate tool and the promise of longer term, lower transfer fees for individuals.

Finally, KEEP IT for a few months, making only urgent changes as needed. Let this thing develop and let us promote BitShares without continuously moving the goal posts and changing the expectations.

EDIT: Again, thanks for listening. I know you all have BitShares' best interests in mind, as do I, whether or not we always agree on everything.

[Bhuz]

So sorry to see everyone's complaining. Let me share my personal feeling.

Since the launch, we always have increasing fees, from 0.5 to 20, to 40, and now facing to 60 ($0.2). I think we need to see the opposite direction.

As a lower-fee advocate, I still prefer 5-10 BTS. But I don't want to destroy our growing business based on referral system. (While I still think that lower fee can bring more users and profit for referrers). In this dilemma, I had to decide to satisfy only one side with beating the other, or making a compromise.

Decreasing just 25% is obviously not satisfying to both sides. However, IMHO, it does not break this community into pieces. It maybe not a win-win solution, but better than zero-sum approach. I think it's not a final destination. We're still on the way, and if the community makes a consensus, we can move toward it.

Regarding the order creation fee, we haven't discussed yet because BM's proposal is in the pipeline. After the release, we will discuss about lowering the fee.

Thanks for your invaluable inputs and feedback. We're open to any opinions.

What was so urgent about making an immediate decision that no one likes? I definitely think the committee members could have suspended the meeting long enough to come back to the community and said "Here is what we're looking at; what do you think?" Or "There's not enough support for this proposal. What about a midway compromise instead?"

And we would have told you straight up that no, this was not a wise choice for any of the parties concerned.

Unless you think that the lower fee is now low enough that you can get some traction in your home country or in China. In which case, I say 'go for it'. You wanted the lower fees, you've got them (at least in a half-assed sort of way). The pricing structure does not work well in first world countries where we were trying to fund some marketing, so if this is what you wanted, it's now your turn to show us what you can do. Bring us some volume.

With all those threads about fees it seemed quite urgent for the community, but anyway.

Could we don't act like a decision was already made and, above all, like there is no way to change it back?

The proposal will take effect not before than another 24 hours, there is plenty of time to unvote it. And even if it will pass, we proved that finally the community has the power to make and vote proposals thanks to the committee, and so we could easily do another proposal to change the fee as were before.

We are now able to change things, and we are listening to you all.

[Bhuz]

...You can in the interim come up with a solution such as percentage payments/merchant identification process that allows you to charge more for payments but less for P2P transfers

This is basically the #1 BM's proposal that the community made him to retract.

That could solve all these problems imo

 

I would like to see that proposal. My understanding was BM's input was along the lines of percentage fees/merchant identification is hard to implement and rather than undersell the value of BTS, he was more in favour of maintaining the higher fee and building BitShares around the payments business.

If we can agree that...

BitShares needs a separate pricing solution for P2P transfers and payments, to be successful and that the payments business won't gain traction until competitive payment processor (automated crypto to bank) services are in place. Then we should be able to agree to price BitShares for the P2P transfer market and in the interim come up with a solution for the payments business that involves a higher fee.

That would be great.

I don't know if BM was really in favor of high fees or it was just caused by the fact that the community seemed really against #1

To me, #1 was pretty good. Low fee (if not 0) for user-to-user transfers, and high fee for user-to-merchant transfers.
That could bring to bigger user adoption, bigger user adoption could bring to more interest from merchant.
Referrers should change a bit tho, above all if the p2p transfer is 0; they should seek for merchant more than regolar users

Maybe we should think more about #1 and bring it back on the table of the discussion

 


Even a very low user-to-user transfer fee could still make the referral programme lucrative in China, considering many Chinese supporters were creating great BTS content & promoting it for free , getting tens of thousands of views in the process.
 



https://bitsharestalk.org/index.php/topic,13497.msg176293.html#msg176293

We can also then spread BTS via tipping/donating/sharing on social media using Sharebits.io to literally tens of thousands of libertarian and pro financial independence users & other possible demographics. Whereas the current transfer fee makes this use case cost prohibitive, both for this market and referrers seeking to exploit it.

Make a thread and propose to restore or at least think about #1 again, I will support that.

Here is very late, I need to hit the bed now

[donkeypong]

So sorry to see everyone's complaining. Let me share my personal feeling.

Since the launch, we always have increasing fees, from 0.5 to 20, to 40, and now facing to 60 ($0.2). I think we need to see the opposite direction.

As a lower-fee advocate, I still prefer 5-10 BTS. But I don't want to destroy our growing business based on referral system. (While I still think that lower fee can bring more users and profit for referrers). In this dilemma, I had to decide to satisfy only one side with beating the other, or making a compromise.

Decreasing just 25% is obviously not satisfying to both sides. However, IMHO, it does not break this community into pieces. It maybe not a win-win solution, but better than zero-sum approach. I think it's not a final destination. We're still on the way, and if the community makes a consensus, we can move toward it.

Regarding the order creation fee, we haven't discussed yet because BM's proposal is in the pipeline. After the release, we will discuss about lowering the fee.

Thanks for your invaluable inputs and feedback. We're open to any opinions.

What was so urgent about making an immediate decision that no one likes? I definitely think the committee members could have suspended the meeting long enough to come back to the community and said "Here is what we're looking at; what do you think?" Or "There's not enough support for this proposal. What about a midway compromise instead?"

And we would have told you straight up that no, this was not a wise choice for any of the parties concerned.

Unless you think that the lower fee is now low enough that you can get some traction in your home country or in China. In which case, I say 'go for it'. You wanted the lower fees, you've got them (at least in a half-assed sort of way). The pricing structure does not work well in first world countries where we were trying to fund some marketing, so if this is what you wanted, it's now your turn to show us what you can do. Bring us some volume.

[Empirical1.2]

...You can in the interim come up with a solution such as percentage payments/merchant identification process that allows you to charge more for payments but less for P2P transfers

This is basically the #1 BM's proposal that the community made him to retract.

That could solve all these problems imo

 

I would like to see that proposal. My understanding was BM's input was along the lines of percentage fees/merchant identification is hard to implement and rather than undersell the value of BTS, he was more in favour of maintaining the higher fee and building BitShares around the payments business.

If we can agree that...

BitShares needs a separate pricing solution for P2P transfers and payments, to be successful and that the payments business won't gain traction until competitive payment processor (automated crypto to bank) services are in place. Then we should be able to agree to price BitShares for the P2P transfer market and in the interim come up with a solution for the payments business that involves a higher fee.

That would be great.

I don't know if BM was really in favor of high fees or it was just caused by the fact that the community seemed really against #1

To me, #1 was pretty good. Low fee (if not 0) for user-to-user transfers, and high fee for user-to-merchant transfers.
That could bring to bigger user adoption, bigger user adoption could bring to more interest from merchant.
Referrers should change a bit tho, above all if the p2p transfer is 0; they should seek for merchant more than regolar users

Maybe we should think more about #1 and bring it back on the table of the discussion

 


Even a very low user-to-user transfer fee could still make the referral programme lucrative in China, considering many Chinese supporters were creating great BTS content & promoting it for free , getting tens of thousands of views in the process.
 



https://bitsharestalk.org/index.php/topic,13497.msg176293.html#msg176293

We can also then spread BTS via tipping/donating/sharing on social media using Sharebits.io to literally tens of thousands of libertarian and pro financial independence users & other possible demographics. Whereas the current transfer fee makes this use case cost prohibitive, both for this market and referrers seeking to exploit it. 

[Bhuz]

Nope... I believe you pay this fee any time you create a vesting balance - aka one of the people you referred upgrades to LTM, or you register an asset and you are LTM 

If that was the case, I think fav would know.
He did not tell anything about it.

https://bitsharestalk.org/index.php/topic,19961.0.html

That is about vesting. (the reason why tried to set the Scale value back to the defaut value: 1)
That does not seem related.

Interesting take... 'vesting fee' is not related to vesting in your opinion.

Fav pointed out that there seems to be some bug with the amount he received/not received after a lifetime upgrade operation, that means some bug in calculating the right vested amount. This is not related with any fee imo.

[clayop]

So sorry to see everyone's complaining. Let me share my personal feeling.

Since the launch, we always have increasing fees, from 0.5 to 20, to 40, and now facing to 60 ($0.2). I think we need to see the opposite direction.

As a lower-fee advocate, I still prefer 5-10 BTS. But I don't want to destroy our growing business based on referral system. (While I still think that lower fee can bring more users and profit for referrers). In this dilemma, I had to decide to satisfy only one side with beating the other, or making a compromise.

Decreasing just 25% is obviously not satisfying to both sides. However, IMHO, it does not break this community into pieces. It maybe not a win-win solution, but better than zero-sum approach. I think it's not a final destination. We're still on the way, and if the community makes a consensus, we can move toward it.

Regarding the order creation fee, we haven't discussed yet because BM's proposal is in the pipeline. After the release, we will discuss about lowering the fee.

Thanks for your invaluable inputs and feedback. We're open to any opinions.

[Bhuz]

...You can in the interim come up with a solution such as percentage payments/merchant identification process that allows you to charge more for payments but less for P2P transfers

This is basically the #1 BM's proposal that the community made him to retract.

That could solve all these problems imo

 

I would like to see that proposal. My understanding was BM's input was along the lines of percentage fees/merchant identification is hard to implement and rather than undersell the value of BTS, he was more in favour of maintaining the higher fee and building BitShares around the payments business.

If we can agree that...

BitShares needs a separate pricing solution for P2P transfers and payments, to be successful and that the payments business won't gain traction until competitive payment processor (automated crypto to bank) services are in place. Then we should be able to agree to price BitShares for the P2P transfer market and in the interim come up with a solution for the payments business that involves a higher fee.

That would be great.

I don't know if BM was really in favor of high fees or it was just caused by the fact that the community seemed really against #1

To me, #1 was pretty good. Low fee (if not 0) for user-to-user transfers, and high fee for user-to-merchant transfers.
That could bring to bigger user adoption, bigger user adoption could bring to more interest from merchant.
Referrers should change a bit tho, above all if the p2p transfer is 0; they should seek for merchant more than regolar users

Maybe we should think more about #1 and bring it back on the table of the discussion

[jakub]

When I mentioned different regions, I just meant the currency pairs that would be most logical in those regions. No geo-locating needed.

It wouldn't bother me at all if certain currency pairs got more business than others due to lower fees. This happens when a store puts items on sale; they usually sell more sale items than non-sale items. It's just smart business: You make money from a higher volume of business or you use the sale for a period of time to attract more customers who hopefully find other things they like and don't mind paying a bit more after a while.

If the lower fee thing really works, we'll find out by trying it, either across the board or in these limited "sales". If the lower fee doesn't attract added business, then we'll be confident that we could go forward with a system that's built for more profitability.

@donkeypong , why are you taking about currency pairs when the issue here is about transfer fees? The fee for transferring e.g. 100 bitCNY from person A to B. Why would I need a currency pair for that?
Am I missing something?

If bitCNY has 0 fee (just saying) on transfer, people instead of make bitUSD transfers could change their bitUSD to bitCNY and then make the transfer

I don't think this is going to happen.
If I regularly spend my money in bitEUR I won't bother to convert it back & forth to bitCNY just to save $0.10 on transfer fees - it's just not worth the effort and trading fees.

[Empirical1.2]

...You can in the interim come up with a solution such as percentage payments/merchant identification process that allows you to charge more for payments but less for P2P transfers

This is basically the #1 BM's proposal that the community made him to retract.

That could solve all these problems imo

 

I would like to see that proposal. My understanding was BM's input was along the lines of percentage fees/merchant identification is hard to implement and rather than undersell the value of BTS, he was more in favour of maintaining the higher fee and building BitShares around the payments business.

If we can agree that...

BitShares needs a separate pricing solution for P2P transfers and payments, to be successful and that the payments business won't gain traction until competitive payment processor (automated crypto to bank) services are in place. Then we should be able to agree to price BitShares for the P2P transfer market and in the interim come up with a solution for the payments business that involves a higher fee.

That would be great.

[merivercap]

When I mentioned different regions, I just meant the currency pairs that would be most logical in those regions. No geo-locating needed.

It wouldn't bother me at all if certain currency pairs got more business than others due to lower fees. This happens when a store puts items on sale; they usually sell more sale items than non-sale items. It's just smart business: You make money from a higher volume of business or you use the sale for a period of time to attract more customers who hopefully find other things they like and don't mind paying a bit more after a while.

If the lower fee thing really works, we'll find out by trying it, either across the board or in these limited "sales". If the lower fee doesn't attract added business, then we'll be confident that we could go forward with a system that's built for more profitability.

@donkeypong , why are you taking about currency pairs when the issue here is about transfer fees? The fee for transferring e.g. 100 bitCNY from person A to B. Why would I need a currency pair for that?
Am I missing something?

If bitCNY has 0 fee (just saying) on transfer, people instead of make bitUSD transfers could change their bitUSD to bitCNY and then make the transfer

That would be fine because you would have to pay a market trading fee.