[bisq-network/proposals] Simplify trade fee model (#64)

[initCCG]

Since most of the trades for our group are as maker, we're naturally biased in favor of the maker's fee being fixed and much lower than the taker's fee.

Bisq advertises enhanced privacy as something that's worth the trouble and expense. So, privacy is worth something, and seems higher for the taker than the maker.

Right now, our node has several offers in different markets. So, any surveillance node can see all of them. If all our other offers remain online, and one offer disappears and appears under Market-Trades as taken, a surveillance node can assume that it was our trade.

Can the same surveillance node assume which node was the taker on that trade?
If not, than the makers are definitely giving up a lot of privacy in addition to making the  market, and should be compensated for that with fees much lower than the taker fees.

We also never know when we might have to work a trade, because the taker always picks the time of his convenience, but makers can't.

Since there's no reputation system yet, we can't even filter takers, until they create trouble for us, and we manually block them out. 
One of our associates tried bisq, and said he won't use it again until the makers have more control over who their takers are.

So, due to all of that, it seems that especially on a manual market that Bisq is, the maker should pay no more than half of what the taker pays, the way it is on Poloniex.

As far as whether it should be fixed fee or distance based, seems unfair to charge for distance, because the bisq network doesn't seem to incur any extra work or risk from distance.
The maker alone takes on all the risk and opportunity costs, and should profit or lose alone accordingly.

Regarding the fee level, seems too early to charge "the norm" among centralized exchanges, because Bisq is unique not only in its positive features, but also its current shortcomings and idiosyncrasies. Here is why:

We tried to poll  among Russian traders why they don't use Bisq. In almost 3 months, we've had only one response, and that from an associate whom we sent a link to it:
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5048815.msg46782197#msg46782197

So, most traders - much less regular users - in a large market with long Bitcoin roots are so not interested in Bisq  that they don't want to even click on a poll to say why, or to rag on it.
That's even after they got the full Russian interface, and were informed of that. 

We can say a little about at least some reasons why. We first tried to promote Bisq with typical users in Vietnam in winter/spring 2016/17. Back then, the complaint we got was that they didn't have the high deposit to trade the small amounts they wanted to trade. 

More recently, even with the latest versions of 2018, the percentage of our clients and associates who had problems even installing the Windows version of Bisq and needed extensive help with it was over 75%. In markets where Bisq is needed most, the majority have never even heard of Linux, and will not be able to afford Macs with 2GB of RAM to spare for 1 app for a long time...

When something is so different from its competitors, and they have problems even installing it or being able to afford the first small test trade, most users write it off as half baked and weird.
The worst part is it's not something they will try again for a long time with so many easier alternatives available, because most don't value privacy or decentralization yet, and mostly use cell phones as their main Bitcoin trading device.

So, in our experience, these kinds of basic obstacles have pushed away a significant number of users from Bisq in the past couple of years, which probably won't return soon unfortunately.

We'll keep trying and do the best we can, as always. The point of this long story is that, given the above, it's too early to charge "the norm" fees among centralized exchanges.

It seems to us more appropriate to charge promotional level fees just to get the makers in particular to try Bisq, and get others who wrote off Bisq earlier to come back.

The market will tell the Bisq DAO when to charge the norm, not the other way around. 
Sorry to write so much, because it came from several sources.


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