Fee models Bisq/Bisq 2.0

[chimp1984]

I think we have to reconsider a bit the way how we think about fee payments.

The simple model that each trade pays fee is challenged with the reality of high miner fees at least on the Bitcoin chain but as well with the way how to distribute it in a DAO conform way.

The problem for service payment is an old one and it seems most companies could not find good solutions for that as well.

Older models have been to sell the software which did not work well as many users did not use it sufficiently to justify the high one time cost. On the other hand pro users got it realtively cheap for the value they could get out of it.

Later they moved to time base models to pay for the duration of usage. Also here the problem with power users and casual users was not solved but became less of an issue as a casual user can pay for a short period a lower amount to get their task done. If they would need it permenantely they would not qualify as casual users anymore so the higher costs are justified.

This model might work in the context of Bisq conceptually but will have challenges how to verify it in a privacy protecting way.
But there are ways like burned BSQ which is valid for certain time as we do it for asset listing. E.g. Burn xxx BSQ/day usage.

Earning with tools and services might be partially applicable to Bisq specially in the context of mediation/arbitration. In fact for Bisq 2.0 we consider to chanrge fees directly for those service for the trade protocols where human arbitration is used.

Another model which has probably been used by some exchanges though its usually not public, is that market makers pay a fee to the platform and make money with price premiums. So the fee is invisible in form of a price premium. Or the platform is the market maker earning on price premiums.
This model would work partially in Bisq in case one trader pays the fees for both and get a better price, so the premium in the exchanged asset offsets the extra fee payment. Beside that I don't see a possible application for Bisq.

It is a bit of an irony that we in the blockchain space suffer that problem as one promising use case for cryptocurrencies have always been micro payments ;-). But its a Bitcoin and Ethereum only problem so far. So the micro payment model would still work in case the majority of trade volume happens on other low-fee chains.

But also on Bitcoin the problem is mainly an issue for low amount trades, so one option could be that we only charge fees above certain trade amounts. Cases ending up in arbitration can be used to collect a part of the lost fee.

For Bisq 2.0 there will likely be some different setup, adding new problems but reducing/solving existing ones:

• Trades on low fee blockchains can be paid as micro payments
• Wallets will be external so the scaling problem of BitcoinJ wallets with many small utxo is likely less of an issue
• Off-chain based protocols will likely be offered without fee payment as its would add lot of friction and as no or low security is provided
• Different blockchains will require different fee collector models. No clear idea how to deal with that atm.
• Conflict resolution should be modeles as a independent module and service and users who use it should pay directly for it.

How would we combine some of the above?

• Trade with low security (e.g. reputation based trades in Bisq 2.0) dont pay any fee
• Trades < 150 USD dont have to pay a fee
• Trades > 150 USD < 5000 USD can choose to pay the fee like now in BTC or BSQ or one or both of the traders burn BSQ for a time period in which it counts as fee replacement. That way a power trader making many small trades can burn BSQ and offer the peer to pay their fee as well in exchange to a price premium. The burned BSQ can serve as reputation as well as in case of larger amounts it shows some commitment to Bisq. In the context of small amount trades that might be sufficent as protection for new trade protocols as well.
• Trades > 5000 USD pay fee like now, for such amounts the miner fee is less relevant.
• Each arbitrated trade will lose a certain percentage as payment to arbitration service.