Author Topic: [hangout feedback] BitShares fees / Referral program (+ Fav interresting idea )  (Read 14292 times)

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Offline bitcrab

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if I can, I'll remove the referral program from the platform.

I am not only to push senseful change, but also to reject unnecessary/senseless/reluctant proposals.

in my view, the core point to run Bitshares platform is to attract more people to use the service, attract them to trade in DEX, to pay  with smartcoins or to issue UIAs.

I don't think to attract them by interest or dividends is the right way. however, maybe we can build some kind of service, with which A can borrow assets from B with paying interest(the planned bond market?).

I have some idea to let the non-LTM users enjoy the same transfer/trade fee schedule with LTM, but only LTM are authorized for issuing assets, shorting...etc...but seems referrers do not like this?

up to now this is what I think about this, surely you can continue to explain/persuade, maybe sometime I can change my idea.

 
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Offline tbone

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@bitcrab, I really hope you'll agree that the referral program is not inconsistent with your desire (and the desire of many others) to keep rates low while the platform gains traction.  And I hope you'll participate in some constructive discussion about what we can offer users that would incentivize them to pay a one-time membership fee, which would benefit everyone by making the referral program more powerful.   
 
To add my 2 cents to the original discussion, I like the idea of offering something like an interest bearing savings account or a CD (certificate of deposit).  We could entice people to lock their funds for periods of time in exchange for a rate of return.  Interest payments could be made in the form of bitUSD, bitCNY, bitEUR (or any BitAsset).  A program like this would have many benefits.  It would encourage people to get their shares off the exchanges.  It would encourage them to hold longer term.  It will help increase the supply of BitAssets.  And we could make LTM a requirement to participate, which would benefit the referral program.

One of the main points of contention with this idea (as it has been in the past with the LTM in general) may be that the LTM fee is too high for some countries.  I think this is a valid concern and we should come up with a solution to this problem in general if we want to use the LTM to help drive the up-front portion of referral rewards.   Thoughts, anyone?

Offline tbone

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Reading this thread, it appears there is total disagreement.  But there really isn't.  Everyone knows that referral marketing is one of the most basic and accepted concepts in business.   Not only can referral marketing grow your user base, but referred customers are higher margin and have a higher retention rate than non-referred customers.  This is fact. 

So I don't think what we're seeing here is disagreement.  But there's clearly some misunderstanding.  For example, although it seems @bitcrab argued against the concept of referral programs in general, I'm fairly sure he's really just against raising fees.  In fact, I'm pretty sure he is only against raising fees at this early stage.  And I don't really have a problem with that.  Of the other vocal participants in this thread, I don't think @EstefanTT, for example, has a problem with it either.  In fact, he said this about the referral program:

Quote from: EstefanTT
It is an amazing way to have people working on promoting Bitshares without paying them, just on the perpective to win money if BitShares takes off and their referred users start using it.

My point is, what @EstefanTT said here is NOT inconsistent with @bitcrab's desire to raise rates later.  The bottom line is that anyone currently referring users will initially reap the benefits only to a small extent  a) while they build their referral base, and b) while fees remain low during the time the platform is maturing.  But as their base of referred users grows, and once the platform is in a position where fees can be raised, referrers will reap the benefits to a much larger extent.  Again, where is the disagreement?

Even @fav's and @bitcrab's positions are not really at odds.  It appears to me @fav is NOT suggesting we raise fees as he has in the past.  He is suggesting we create something of value that would entice people to pay a membership fee so that as a referrer, he can have greater incentive with an up-front source of revenue, in addition to the more long-term, residual income stream previously discussed.  There is nothing wrong with this.  In fact, it would be in everyone's interest to see what we can come up with. Let's please have constructive dialog.  And before responding in a knee-jerk way, please remember that many people participating in this conversation are speaking English NOT as a first language.  And that we're all working toward the same goal (i.e. the long-term success of Bitshares).  Aside from our resident idiot troll, of course.
« Last Edit: January 15, 2017, 10:46:30 pm by tbone »

Offline fav

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So, to recap ... the problem is not that we can't find a solution to have the referral problem back, the problem is that part of the community think that the referral was a bad idea.

My perspective is the next one. What would it cost to create a website like this one : www.bitsharesfcx.com and translated everything that it contains ? I can tell you ... a lot !!! I know the time we spent on it

Well, I did it for free because I strongly beleive that the referral program would pay me back some day if I kept my effort going and facilitate the french comlunity it's understanding of BitShares.

How can this kind on amazing motivationnal result can be a bad thing ?

I stopped 90% of my efforts on this dirrection because there is no incentive anymore.

I don't see how paying people with a promess to make money later is bad for BitShares. I think is brilliant and doesn't cost much now and will cost a little more later when BitShares will be able to affort it.

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i'm at a point where it makes more sense to just wait 1-2 years until bts dropped so much that current whales got out. then we can try to rebuild it, if it's not too late.

the lack of general business sense is just too overwhelming

Offline EstefanTT

So, to recap ... the problem is not that we can't find a solution to have the referral problem back, the problem is that part of the community think that the referral was a bad idea.

My perspective is the next one. What would it cost to create a website like this one : www.bitsharesfcx.com and translated everything that it contains ? I can tell you ... a lot !!! I know the time we spent on it

Well, I did it for free because I strongly beleive that the referral program would pay me back some day if I kept my effort going and facilitate the french comlunity it's understanding of BitShares.

How can this kind on amazing motivationnal result can be a bad thing ?

I stopped 90% of my efforts on this dirrection because there is no incentive anymore.

I don't see how paying people with a promess to make money later is bad for BitShares. I think is brilliant and doesn't cost much now and will cost a little more later when BitShares will be able to affort it.

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Offline fav

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referral program is not suitable to BTS business scene, and it has done bad to the whole ecosystem, we have paid great effort to minimize the bad effect. please do not go back.
as default, China community will reject all proposals for increasing fees if it is not a must. we need not to waste time on discussing these kind of issues.

Well you chose to criple fees to drive adoption (never happened) and killed referral program as a side effect now you come up and say it's not suitable? Oh my God.

Offline bitcrab

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referral program is not suitable to BTS business scene, and it has done bad to the whole ecosystem, we have paid great effort to minimize the bad effect. please do not go back.
as default, China community will reject all proposals for increasing fees if it is not a must. we need not to waste time on discussing these kind of issues.
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Offline Stan

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Lets think about why the referral program is dead... Is it really because the fee's are low?  No, it's because no one can figure out how to build an actual business that utilizes the BTS platform.  All that the BTS platform is good for is to create a UIA that you can easily and anonymously scam investors with.... wow, I cant believe the price of BTS hasn't exploded!

"But wait... we are a decentralized exchange and that is our product and its really cool!"... News flash, when you buy bitUSD or bitGLD or bitBTC you don't own any real dollars, gold or bitcoin.  You own a derivative that is backed by an ultra low cap and low liquidity crypto currency.  A crypto that you have to send to an exchange and pay a bunch of fee's in order to get actual usable currency.  BTS is decentralized on the surface... but to get in and out, most people have to go through some centralized entity.  Plus you can make the claim that proxies have way too much power and thus add additional centralization to the system.  If the exchanges got together, they could easily control all of BTS.  I feel most people here know that, but choose to sweep that massive bts design flaw under the rug.

Basically bts seems cool and useful on the outside but when you look deeper at it, you realize its just a complicated, low liquidity, faux-decentralized, scammers dream platform.  Having a well designed and robust referral system wont garner new users, when bts doesn't excel at filling any niche role.  It does a bunch of things in complicated clunky ways.


Half of these objections amount to saying that Muhammad Ali was a lousy boxer as a baby.

Decentralization is important for long term store of value.
It is far less important during the few seconds you are traversing an on/off ramp.

It's all about the risk integral over time of exposure.  Expose small amounts at a time for small amounts of time.






Anything said on these forums does not constitute an intent to create a legal obligation or contract of any kind.   These are merely my opinions which I reserve the right to change at any time.

Offline lil_jay890

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Lets think about why the referral program is dead... Is it really because the fee's are low?  No, it's because no one can figure out how to build an actual business that utilizes the BTS platform.  All that the BTS platform is good for is to create a UIA that you can easily and anonymously scam investors with.... wow, I cant believe the price of BTS hasn't exploded!

"But wait... we are a decentralized exchange and that is our product and its really cool!"... News flash, when you buy bitUSD or bitGLD or bitBTC you don't own any real dollars, gold or bitcoin.  You own a derivative that is backed by an ultra low cap and low liquidity crypto currency.  A crypto that you have to send to an exchange and pay a bunch of fee's in order to get actual usable currency.  BTS is decentralized on the surface... but to get in and out, most people have to go through some centralized entity.  Plus you can make the claim that proxies have way too much power and thus add additional centralization to the system.  If the exchanges got together, they could easily control all of BTS.  I feel most people here know that, but choose to sweep that massive bts design flaw under the rug.

Basically bts seems cool and useful on the outside but when you look deeper at it, you realize its just a complicated, low liquidity, faux-decentralized, scammers dream platform.  Having a well designed and robust referral system wont garner new users, when bts doesn't excel at filling any niche role.  It does a bunch of things in complicated clunky ways.

Offline EstefanTT

I'm not saying that without referral program we won't have any new users. Off course, new projects will bring new users  ;)

I just feel sad that we have a tool to create promotion on a decentralsied way (the referral prog) and we don't use it.

This tool works on fee, we have lower it a lot and thus broke it.

We have change it because of the Chinese sentiment about it beeing to high. It was suppose to be only while we were gaining traction or before we had an idea to get the referral program working with something else. Since then we have just sadly accept "the referral is dead".

It's not dead, we just need to figure out how to make it exiting again ! It is an amazing way to have people working on promoting Bitshares without paying them, just on the perpective to win money if BitShares takes off and their referred users start using it.

PS : Congratulation on JianJolly recent developpment with BitKapital !!!
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(BitShares French ConneXion - www.bitsharesfcx.com)

Offline xeroc

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Remind me again .. where do you get the numbers that we don't have new users?
Just because OpenLedger doesn't register new users, doesn't mean someone else isn't ...

this is a weekly chart:

Offline EstefanTT

If you don't change it, there is no incentive to use the referral program, thus no promotion, thus everybody think BitShares is dead, no new users, bad reputation, low MC ad no funds for workers to move forwards.

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Offline bitcrab

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bad idea, most users from China community will complain to pay 100BTS for transferring 100000BTS. forget this please.

Maybe we can have tranfers free whatever the quantity (Steem like) and have a cut of 0.1% on every trade on the dex. The dex could provide the money needed to get the referral program back on tracks.
Even in China, I guess you can't find exchanges with lower fee that 0.1% on trades.

huobi and okcoin charge 0 for trading bitcoin.
in my view the current status of DEX is OK,  BTS and committee issued smartcoins charge zero while the UIA have its own market fee,  in the future if the trading volume grow to much bigger, we can increase the fee for placing/canceling orders.
no need to change now.
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Offline EstefanTT

bad idea, most users from China community will complain to pay 100BTS for transferring 100000BTS. forget this please.

Maybe we can have tranfers free whatever the quantity (Steem like) and have a cut of 0.1% on every trade on the dex. The dex could provide the money needed to get the referral program back on tracks.
Even in China, I guess you can't find exchanges with lower fee that 0.1% on trades.
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Offline bitcrab

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bad idea, most users from China community will complain to pay 100BTS for transferring 100000BTS. forget this please.
Email:bitcrab@qq.com