poll for the "1 BTS for transfer" proposal

[onceuponatime]

20% go to network .. ALWAYS.

@xeroc , would you agree that if you are my referrer and after while I want to pay you off and become my own referrer, it's a deal between me and you. Nobody else is involved or affected, the income stream for the network is not affected.
Why on earth should the network be allowed to take a 20% cut in this private deal between me and you?
Just because somebody said "20% always goes to network"? It does not make sense in this case.
The network effectively steals 20% of the referrer's money.

IMO, it's logical error made by BM and it should be fixed.
As well as this absurd (so it seems) LTM 90-day vesting.

I, and many others, have been risking large amounts of capital and working our butts off for two years to get this network to where the referrers have their opportunity to make an income by using it. The network isn't  "stealing" anything. It is being compensated for the opportunity it has created at great cost.

I think you misunderstood me. You mix up the referrer's income with the BitShares network's income.
All I'm saying is that when I buy LTM, the network currently takes 20% of the referrer's income without any valid reason. The entire referral fee should go to the referrer.

The network should not be compensated for anything. Its situation does not change when I buy LTM.
It's the referrer who created the opportunity and risked his money for marketing efforts, not the network.

I don't think that I have misunderstood you.

I just think that the network has every right to get 20% of the referral fee brought in by small (or large) marketing businesses that are given the opportunity created by us. Think of it as franchise fees if you like.

Some marketer can come in tomorrow and take advantage of the two years of sweat, tears  and treasure that we have poured into creating this platform while they were off making money marketing something else.

Do you not place any value on the creation of our platform?  I sure do.

[abit]

@abit , have you got a rational explanation for the 90-day vesting period in case of LTM?
What kind of abuse is it supposed to prevent?

I have no idea..

Instead of 20cents, LTM's pay 4 cents to the network so it was a way to recoup the difference.

Not true, IMO.
Both non-LTM and LTM users always pay 6 BTS (=20% of 30 BTS) to the network.
So there is no difference to be recouped.

@abit , could you confirm this^?

Yes, I can confirm this.
But I think the network (read: stake holders) should get some from users.

Maybe the network should get something, but why on earth 20%?
This is pure profit, not a compensation for anything, as most people think.

And this is important because this unjustified 20% charge (by the network) is a financial barrier that prevents businesses to fully opt out from the referral program.
As we have it now, we make the referral program compulsory to a large degree (causing lots of conflicts within the community) while it could be fully optional.

I do think network should profit (maybe not now but sooner or later we need it).
Currently the network need to pay out 43k BTS to witnesses and 80k BTS to workers every day, but average daily income is only 8k BTS or so, among it about 900 come from transfers, 6k come from account upgrades. If we decrease transfer fee for LTM from 6 BTS to 1 BTS, it means we need at least 6x volume to keep same revenue. If we decrease account upgrade fee to 0, it means we need 54x transfer volume to keep same revenue.

[yvv]

@yvv , this is only illustrates that your flat rental example is quite inadequate to our situation.
We do not have any significant cost (the equivalent of mortgage) to pay for unoccupied space on the blockchain. 

You suggest the referral reward should be paid by the BitShares company. However, since the new user does not give us any savings in costs, this referral reward has to be financed by the expected future earnings the company makes on this new user. Which brings us to the referral scheme we have now.

A new user brings you new income (active user i mean). Giving away 80% of this income to referrer at the point when network expenses exceed network fees is unwise imo. Again, the fact that I need to pay to ccedk $80 minimum just for signing me up is ridiculous. Fees for using bitshares should go to bitshares. Fees for using ccedk services should go to ccedk. If I don't use ccedk, I should not pay fees to them.

P.S. Ok, ccedk provides a web wallet, they deserve some reward to support their effort (not 80% of steak of course). Substitute ccedk for any other referrer.

[jakub]

@abit , have you got a rational explanation for the 90-day vesting period in case of LTM?
What kind of abuse is it supposed to prevent?

[jakub]

Instead of 20cents, LTM's pay 4 cents to the network so it was a way to recoup the difference.

Not true, IMO.
Both non-LTM and LTM users always pay 6 BTS (=20% of 30 BTS) to the network.
So there is no difference to be recouped.

@abit , could you confirm this^?

Yes, I can confirm this.
But I think the network (read: stake holders) should get some from users.

Maybe the network should get something, but why on earth 20%?
This is pure profit, not a compensation for anything, as most people think.

And this is important because this unjustified 20% charge (by the network) is a financial barrier that prevents businesses to fully opt out from the referral program.
As we have it now, we make the referral program compulsory to a large degree (causing lots of conflicts within the community) while it could be fully optional.

[jakub]

20% go to network .. ALWAYS.

@xeroc , would you agree that if you are my referrer and after while I want to pay you off and become my own referrer, it's a deal between me and you. Nobody else is involved or affected, the income stream for the network is not affected.
Why on earth should the network be allowed to take a 20% cut in this private deal between me and you?
Just because somebody said "20% always goes to network"? It does not make sense in this case.
The network effectively steals 20% of the referrer's money.

IMO, it's logical error made by BM and it should be fixed.
As well as this absurd (so it seems) LTM 90-day vesting.

I, and many others, have been risking large amounts of capital and working our butts off for two years to get this network to where the referrers have their opportunity to make an income by using it. The network isn't  "stealing" anything. It is being compensated for the opportunity it has created at great cost.

I think you misunderstood me. You mix up the referrer's income with the BitShares network's income.
All I'm saying is that when I buy LTM, the network currently takes 20% of the referrer's income without any valid reason. The entire referral fee should go to the referrer.

The network should not be compensated for anything. Its situation does not change when I buy LTM.
It's the referrer who created the opportunity and risked his money for marketing efforts, not the network.

[abit]

Instead of 20cents, LTM's pay 4 cents to the network so it was a way to recoup the difference.

Not true, IMO.
Both non-LTM and LTM users always pay 6 BTS (=20% of 30 BTS) to the network.
So there is no difference to be recouped.

@abit , could you confirm this^?

Yes, I can confirm this.
But I think the network (read: stake holders) should get some from users.

[abit]

Just reading the Membership page on OL right now.  50% is split between affiliate and Registrar.  I guess the annual membership is no longer available?  Hmm.. I thought that was originally a good idea. $20 is an easier sell for membership than $100.  Can we implement the annual membership? (We can just make annual members have the same low fees for a year to make it simple?) 

I don't want to comment on other things, but this.. annual membership is intended to be available, but there seems to be a bug so it's actually not available. See https://bitsharestalk.org/index.php/topic,21163.0.html

[jakub]

The danger there is then everyone would get free LTM wherever it is offered and no one would pay anywhere else.

Initially this is what I thought as well. But now I think this is the way it should be!
The referral business should bring some added value to the user (e.g. education materials or a nice mobile app) - if it's not able to do that but just wants earn profit for doing nothing useful, it should go out of business.

And by the way, that's how it works in any other business.
If there is a retail shop that wants to operate without any profit margin, who can stop it?
I'm a big supporter of the referral program, provided it can economically justify its existence. If it cannot do that and it does nothing but keeps the prices high, it should die.

Instead of 20cents, LTM's pay 4 cents to the network so it was a way to recoup the difference.

Not true, IMO.
Both non-LTM and LTM users always pay 6 BTS (=20% of 30 BTS) to the network.
So there is no difference to be recouped.

@abit , could you confirm this^?

[onceuponatime]

20% go to network .. ALWAYS.

@xeroc , would you agree that if you are my referrer and after while I want to pay you off and become my own referrer, it's a deal between me and you. Nobody else is involved or affected, the income stream for the network is not affected.
Why on earth should the network be allowed to take a 20% cut in this private deal between me and you?
Just because somebody said "20% always goes to network"? It does not make sense in this case.
The network effectively steals 20% of the referrer's money.

IMO, it's logical error made by BM and it should be fixed.
As well as this absurd (so it seems) LTM 90-day vesting.

I, and many others, have been risking large amounts of capital and working our butts off for two years to get this network to where the referrers have their opportunity to make an income by using it. The network isn't  "stealing" anything. It is being compensated for the opportunity it has created at great cost.

[merivercap]

I've proposed to settle this debate by making the referral program fully optional.

We need to sort out these two:
- why does there need to be vesting on LTM?
- why does 20% of LTM go to the network?

If both are unnecessary, they need to be removed.

*IF* the above is true, we effectively end up with a fully optional referral program which can satisfy every party involved:

- If you think the referral program is beneficial to your business: use it as it is now.
- If you think the referral program is hurting your business and you want to offer low transfer fees to your customers by default: offer LTM to your customers for free (i.e. while registering a new account for your customer, upgrade it to LTM by default)
- If you are somewhere in between: offer LTM to your customers at a discount (i.e. offer a partial refund of the LTM fee).

Simple. Am I missing something?

I agree that it should be fully optional.  If you are a faucet/LTM you can just pass referral income back to customers, but it will be more a 'cash-back' situation rather than an immediate low fee.  If you eliminate the network fee then you can upgrade all acounts to LTM by default.  The danger there is then everyone would get free LTM wherever it is offered and no one would pay anywhere else.  That's why a Mode A/B/C would work better.  If people chose Mode A they would still have to pay LTM to use other assets at low cost, not just CNY assets. 

 

20% go to network .. ALWAYS.

@xeroc , would you agree that if you are my referrer and after while I want to pay you off and become my own referrer, it's a deal between me and you. Nobody else is involved or affected, the income stream for the network is not affected.
Why on earth should the network be allowed to take a 20% cut in this private deal between me and you?
Just because somebody said "20% always goes to network"? It does not make sense in this case.
The network effectively steals 20% of the referrer's money.

IMO, it's logical error made by BM and it should be fixed.
As well as this absurd (so it seems) LTM 90-day vesting.

The committee can change it to 0%/100%.  Vesting is unnecessary IMO.    We shouldn't be so loose with the word 'steal'.  The network can dictate what any of the fees are and for whatever purpose and most everyone here is a shareholder.    I think the original intent was to reimburse the network for the discounted fees for LTM members.  Instead of 20cents, LTM's pay 4 cents to the network so it was a way to recoup the difference.  However since the network ultimately controls basic network costs, I always thought it was unnecessary and we could create better incentives without it.   

Just reading the Membership page on OL right now.  50% is split between affiliate and Registrar.  I guess the annual membership is no longer available?  Hmm.. I thought that was originally a good idea. $20 is an easier sell for membership than $100.  Can we implement the annual membership? (We can just make annual members have the same low fees for a year to make it simple?) 

If the committee votes to move the network fee down to 0%, I guess the registrar/faucet decides how to split it up with affiliates.   We'll probably create a faucet that takes 0%, but we have to check to see if the referral account is a LTM member.  If not we'll probably put ourselves as LTM.  The rest of the 50% will go to the affiliate in the current setup.  If we move the network fee to 0% we can move 70% to the affiliate and 30% to LTM.  Hence if an LTM is the referrer he can get 100%. 

Bitcash setup:
20% network fee
30% LTM user referrer
50% affiliate referrer

If network fee is changed to 0%:
0% network fee
30% LTM user referrer
70% affiliate referrer

I think that's the way it would work. 

[merivercap]

A business should NEVER EVER be profitable out of the referral program alone. Especially if you are a gateway and only interested in one particular feature of the DAC, namely 'transfer_operation's

What do you mean by that?  Shouldn't 90%+ of businesses depend on the referral program?  All the blog/affiliate/marketing businesses should be the largest in number and should be the main focus for user growth.

Also we're a wallet/gateway business.  We can produce a great product, but we can't charge a fee on top of the network fee.  We can charge a monthly software-as-a-service (SaaS) fee, but that limits options.  (The easiest way is probably just to allow any business to add a fee on top of a basic network fee for any asset on the network.)   The referral revenue is actually a proxy for income.  We can take our product and sell it to people and merchants who are willing to pay 1% per tx.  However that entire 1% would normally go to the network the way it's set up and if we didn't have a referral program, but that doesn't make sense for any business.  Normally a network platform might charge 0.2% and the business would profit 0.8%.  Businesses should be able to charge as low as .21% and as high as 3%.  The whole Mode A/B/C options is a roundabout way of achieving this flexibility.   One way is probably just to allow businesses to add an extra fee layer on top of all assets (privatized/public Smartcoins, FBAs, UIAs)... might be complicated to link accounts to assets to add a fee layer, so right now the referral income is a sufficient proxy.

Since you are operating a wallet you can require whatever fee you want.  This can be over and above the fee required by the network. 

Lets say a user is making a transfer.  The user is non LTM and you are the referrer.  When your wallet builds the transaction it can add 30BTS rather than the 3bts required by the network.  In that case the network would take 6bts, and 24 bts would go to the referrer of the user. 

Hope that makes sense.

Hmm.  That makes sense.  Thanks.   I guess you can  build extra fees into the wallet and I guess any business can do that for any type of business (ie. exchange) as you described.  It's still a model that's influenced by the referral model at the moment.   It's ok for us since all the income we would have made would be poured back into a referral program anyways.  It may be better overall to just start with a low network fee and then allow businesses to add the current referral program or an extra layer of fees as add-ons.  Right now it's ok for us to use the referral model because any income we would earn would be used to fund a referral program anyways for the early years.

[jakub]

On the other hand, without the network, neither xeroc or you would be here at all!
Or anyone would have the ability to be a referrer.

I understand this.
The network should charge for being the intermediary in this deal something like 30 BTS, but definitely not 20% of the LTM's value.
Even Western Union doesn't charge like this.

I think the 20% cut was initially meant as a compensation to the network for the lost income from my fees in the future, but if I understand it correctly, network's income stream is not affected in any way by me upgrading to LTM.
After the upgrade (i.e. the deal between me and xeroc) is done, the network still gets 6 BTS on every transfer I make.

[Bhuz]

On the other hand, without the network, neither xeroc or you would be here at all!
Or anyone would have the ability to be a referrer.

[jakub]

20% go to network .. ALWAYS.

@xeroc , would you agree that if you are my referrer and after while I want to pay you off and become my own referrer, it's a deal between me and you. Nobody else is involved or affected, the income stream for the network is not affected.
Why on earth should the network be allowed to take a 20% cut in this private deal between me and you?
Just because somebody said "20% always goes to network"? It does not make sense in this case.
The network effectively steals 20% of the referrer's money.

IMO, it's logical error made by BM and it should be fixed.
As well as this absurd (so it seems) LTM 90-day vesting.