[bisq-network/proposals] Change fee model to a more simple one? (#31)

[Chris Beams]

I just did some quick calculations on how such a change would impact trading fee revenue. With a simple 0.2% fee (paid by both maker and taker), trading fees would total 0.4% of total trade volume.

Bisq has done 720 BTC of volume since Jan 1st. At 0.4%, this would have produced 2.9 BTC in trading fees year-to-date.

In reality, though, I estimate we've produced 4.2 BTC in trading fees YTD. That's a difference of -1.3 BTC total, or roughly -0.19 BTC per month.

To keep trading fee revenue at current levels, we would need to raise the amount from 0.4% to 0.58% of total trade volume. This would mean that each party would pay 0.275% of trade volume. This is toward the upper end of what most exchanges charge these days, as far as I know. The Bitcoin Wiki's [Exchange comparison](https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Comparison_of_exchanges) seems to corroborate this.

Note that Hodl Hodl is charging between 0.5 and 0.6% on both sides of the trade (see [here](https://hodlhodl.com/pages/faq#how_much_does_it_cost_to_use) and [here](https://hodlhodl.com/pages/faq#how_do_fees_work)). This is certainly more than the norm, and they've defended the extra price on the basis of the extra difficulty of building such a service, and the extra value people get from it.

So let's step back for a moment and consider the reality of the situation we're in: We are currently realizing—on average—an effective fee schedule of 0.275% for maker and taker, or 0.58% of total trade volume. But that average is deceiving, because in fact, much of that overall revenue is paid by traders who are creating offers at higher percent distance from market price. I have always liked this aspect of our current model, because it's inherently fair: the more a trader profits from a given trade, the more trading fee revenue Bisq makes. And because traders pay that fee up front, they have a strong incentive not to try to be too greedy with sky-high distances from market price. I've always found this arrangement to be elegant.

If we eliminate the "% distance" factor from our fee schedule formula, either some traders will end up paying more per trade than they would have before, or Bisq will end up taking in less revenue overall. We've already lowered our minimum fee from 50K sat to 2K sat this year. Bisq is a valuable service; we should think carefully before continuing to (effectively) lower our prices.

In summary, I'm not closed to this idea, but like @chirhonul suggested above, I'm not sure the problem is the formula itself, but rather perhaps how it's explained. The FAQ entry is indeed very dense and cryptic. I'd like to start with a simple rewrite before changing the formula itself.

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