[DAC] Possible financial focus for the next few months

[kenCode]

I'll take what i can get when it comes to referral income but I think using bitassets or even a btsbasket of bitassets would be a solid way to handle the fees, bts is just so volatile.

IMO fees should range from 1 cent to 1%, accomodating every size POS purchase from gumballs to yachts charged as a stable mpa, an average across 5 or more mpa's including gold and other relatively stable assets so people don't get taken in fees by market fluctuations.
 
Yes, i need some income, but i see POS rewards rewarding us much more than referral income will in the long run. We need mass adoption, places to get smartcoins, spend smartcoins, and earn smartcoins.
 
And thank you @jakub for the kind words, this discussion has turned around nicely, great work!!

[jakub]

For me the 10/90 or 20/80 choice is a bit artificial and only hides the underlying problem.

And the underlying problem is this: if we reduce the transfer fees to something like 6 BTS, businesses like @kenCode or @merivercap get this:
- their customers are pleased because the default transfer fee becomes really low - so their mobile apps become more useful for small payments
- on the other hand the motivation to upgrade to LTM drops drastically for most of their customers - so their referral income is likely to drop

Therefore, if I put myself in kenCode's shoes, the switch from 20/80 to 10/90 split is less important than maintaining a healthy balance between the low transfer fee and the expected drop in LTM sales.
I guess it's a little consolation for kenCode to be on 10/90 split if there is a general drop in his referral income and this drop in LTM sales is much bigger than the benefits from the 10/90 split.

I'm not saying it's such a bad idea to rebrand LTM from a product for *frequent* users to a product for *advanced* users, and thus offer low transfer fees by default as a non-advanced feature.
But I think 6 BTS is too low, it should be more like 10 or 12 BTS to leave some space for LTM.

Paying 10 BTS per transfer is still very cheap but if I'm a frequent user I might still be tempted to lower it to 2 BTS by buying LTM.
Whereas if I pay 6 BTS by default, the temptation to reduce it further is almost non-existent.

[Zapply]

No. Make it opposite, 95% to network, 5% to referral.
 

[jakub]

No. Make it opposite, 95% to network, 5% to referral.

Imo, referrers should do some better job, to deserve to be payed.

Imo, it is a responsibility of referrer to reach them and figure out why.

That's funny how you insist to take away almost all revenue from the referrers and yet you expect them to do more.
They have no "responsibility" nor obligation to "do some better job".
Only the financial incentive can make them try harder.

Those people clearly showed interest in bitshares and spent efforts to create account, but something stopped them from using the network.

I guess this "something" is liquidity or lack of it.
A non-crypto & non-trader user has no reason to use BitShares at this stage.
Until we have liquidity, efficient fiat gateways and a cool mobile app, BitShares is almost impossible to sell to "normal" users.

EDIT: And we can expect that at least two of those (i.e. fiat gateways and mobile apps) will only come into existence thanks to the referral financial incentive.
So anyone who wants the referral income to be at 5%, please be serious and let us know this: What is the alternative way you suggest to incentivize the creation of an infrastructure around BitShares?

[Xeldal]

a user friendly system is our main target, the referal program is a plugin.
remember this point before you make a decition

I agree

I'd like to see the platform wide open and extremely efficient with little to no friction(cost)
Every function from there can be however you like, and in as many different forms. 
Let the market.
Referral program is one of many addons with its own characteristics.  A tool if you want to use it.

I think 100% should go to the network.  A wallet can add to this whatever amount they want for a referral program.
Ideally this referral addon would be turn key and as easy as creating an asset.

Logically, the network should just earn the amount it costs to set up a referral system so it should be closer to 0% in the long run.

If transfer fees are reduced to whatever people are deciding at the moment, lets say 6BTS or 2 cents, a  wallet/gateway business can charge 20 cents per transaction (or 1%) and earn a profit.   That business can implement it's own referral system that works exactly the same way it currently does and the network will get 0%.   The reason a business may not want to do that is because of the cost of implementing its own referral program.   Otherwise the program should just be looked at as purely an add-on for businesses to attract users and replace marketing costs. 

  on all points, if i understand you.

[merivercap]

Also I was thinking about the spam aspect and the network doesn't have to worry about spam because faucets pay to create new accounts.  Faucets need to set a minimum amount either through the referral program or have some measures to prevent spam.  New accounts are roughly about $1 each so if someone spams a faucet for 100,000 accounts the faucet pays $100k.  The network doesn't care because it gets the money.

Also in terms of vesting and LTM 'farming'... it's also possible for someone to create massive amounts of LTMs and sell those at a discounted rate.  I think that's another reason why the vesting is there.  That's why it's better for the faucet to maintain some fee to prevent this. 

[merivercap]

No. Make it opposite, 95% to network, 5% to referral.

No. Make it opposite, 95% to network, 5% to referral.

personally I can accept less than 10% to referral.
if somebody have a great contribution to marketing, committee can award them from network's income

I agree. All it takes is one angry BTS shareholder to kill the referral system. Businesses should not rely on it, and we should not make decisions based off of catering to businesses that rely on it.

Logically, the network should just earn the amount it costs to set up a referral system so it should be closer to 0% in the long run.

If transfer fees are reduced to whatever people are deciding at the moment, lets say 6BTS or 2 cents, a  wallet/gateway business can charge 20 cents per transaction (or 1%) and earn a profit.   That business can implement it's own referral system that works exactly the same way it currently does and the network will get 0%.   The reason a business may not want to do that is because of the cost of implementing its own referral program.   Otherwise the program should just be looked at as purely an add-on for businesses to attract users and replace marketing costs. 

[freedom]

I support  network 0%/referrer0%/burn 100%

[alt]

If somebody really like a high transfer fees,
they can issue a private asset XEUR,
and set XEUR's rate much lower, such as 10 BTS/XEUR,
we can add a new option for asset, don't accept BTS as fees.
if people want to transfer XEUR, he will pay the transfer fees: 0.1 XEUR(equal 1BTS)

[yvv]

As one of the topics on this forum states, which I am too lazy to search, the most successful referrer in bitshares, excluding ccedk, brought in 100 accounts, 95 of which were never used. Imo, referrers should do some better job, to deserve to be payed. Those people clearly showed interest in bitshares and spent efforts to create account, but something stopped them from using the network. Imo, it is a responsibility of referrer to reach them and figure out why. Send them fee+0.00001 BTS with a message like "Thank you for signing up to bitshares. If you would like to share your opinion about using this wonderful network, please send 0.00001 BTS back to this address with your feedback in the transaction message". Or come up with other way to collect feedback.

[Empirical1.2]

No. Make it opposite, 95% to network, 5% to referral.

personally I can accept less than 10% to referral.
if somebody have a great contribution to marketing, committee can award them from network's income

Yes because the marketing delegates in BTS1 added so much value to BitShares.... 

(It is better to pay people only for the marketing results they achieve imo, which is what the referral programme does, this is why I like it, even though it can be improved.)

[CoinHoarder]

No. Make it opposite, 95% to network, 5% to referral.

personally I can accept less than 10% to referral.
if somebody have a great contribution to marketing, committee can award them from network's income

I agree. All it takes is one angry BTS shareholder to kill the referral system. Businesses should not rely on it, and we should not make decisions based off of catering to businesses that rely on it.

How to Kill Referral Businesses:
Charlie wants the referral business to die because he thinks the inflated fees are bad for the future of Bitshares. He sets up a business that works like the rakeback business in poker [1]. Anyone that signs up under him, he gives 100% of the fees back to them that he earns. It costs him very little to set this up. It mostly just costs him the time it takes to program an automated solution. Assuming everyone acts in their own self-interest, they would register for an account with Charlie as their referrer because they will save a lot of BTS on the fees. No one can compete with 100% rakeback, and all referral businesses that rely on the referral program for profit would die off.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rake_(poker)#Rakeback

[alt]

No. Make it opposite, 95% to network, 5% to referral.

personally I can accept less than 10% to referral.
if somebody have a great contribution to marketing, committee can award them from network's income

[yvv]

No. Make it opposite, 95% to network, 5% to referral.
 

[alt]

if we have low fee, we have a user friendly system,
there are tons of people who really love this system would like to be a free referral,
they don't need profit from referral indeed,
they care about BTS's price, and want to  get profit from shares

a user friendly system is our main target, the referal program is a plugin.
remember this point before you make a decition