Bisq DAO Cycle 2

The figures on this page are compiled from data files generated by the Bisq software. You can verify everything yourself by running these scripts on GitHub.

Cycle Started17 May 2019 / Block 576427

Cycle Ended17 Jun 2019 / Block 581106

Supply Change+ 20,015

Governance17 of 18 proposals accepted

Network Funds Transfers

BSQ Amount # of transactions
Burn
 Trading fees² 2,791 2,056
 Blind vote fees 28 14
 Compensation request fees 28 14
 Proposal fees 8 4
Total Burn 2,855 2,238
Issuance
 Compensation³ 22,870
 Reimbursements⁴ 0
Total Issuance 22,870
Net BSQ Supply Change⁵ +20,015

¹ Proof-of-burn includes trading fees paid in BTC and disputed BTC deposits for trades that went to arbitration (see docs for more details). Funds may be accrued and burned in different cycles, so proof-of-burn figures do not map directly to activity in their cycles.

² BSQ trading fees only. BTC trading fees are included in proof-of-burn.

³ See more details on GitHub.

⁴ Over time, the net impact of reimbursement issuances on BSQ supply is close to zero, as corresponding amounts of BTC are burned through proof-of-burn (see docs for more details).

⁵ Decreases in BSQ supply are good.

Governance

Parameter change proposal for DEFAULT_MAKER_FEE_BSQ

Accepted

Parameter change proposal for DEFAULT_TAKER_FEE_BSQ

Accepted

Generic proposal

Accepted

This proposal seeks a slight increase in BSQ fees (to go from a 90% reduction over BTC fees to an 80% reduction over BTC fees). It resulted in 2 formal DAO proposals to change the BSQ trading fee parameters were made, one for the taker fee and the other for the maker fee.

DAO voting approved these increases (see them listed above).

This is how the BSQ fee schedule changed:

Fee increase for Cycle 2`

Couple of notes:

  1. Note the combined fee percentages. Calculations assume an 8 000 USD/BTC rate. The long-term target for combined fees is 0.4%.

    Also notice: BTC fees have been 0.4% combined for years. At this stage, despite the increase, BSQ fees are still far away from that target.
  2. BTC fees did not change.
  3. DAO voting takes place at the end of DAO cycles, so the fee changes above went into effect in Cycle 3. The sharp increase in BSQ burned in Cycle 2 was primarily the result of a sharp increase in Bisq network trading volume.
  4. BSQ fees are set manually, and are sensitive to the BSQ/BTC rate. As the BTC price increases, BSQ fees need to be adjusted to follow. In this case, the BTC price had increased from around 6 000 USD to 8 000 USD. So a BSQ fee increase was needed anyway to offset that increase.

    At a price of 8 000 USD, BTC trading fees to make a 1 BTC offer would be 1 * 0.001 * 8 000 = 8 USD. If the BSQ maker fee rate remained at 0.5, BSQ fees for that same offer would be 1 * 0.5 ≈ 0.5 USD. This would put BSQ fees at a 93.75% discount ([8 - 0.5] / 8 = 0.9375). The initial target was a 90% discount. So BSQ fees had to be increased anyway, but moving to an 80% discount meant a slightly bigger increase was needed.
Generic proposal

Accepted

This proposal was made to increase the maximum trade limit for new accounts to 0.02 BTC from 0.01 BTC. The limit was placed on new payment accounts created after March 01 2019 as a temporary measure against stolen bank account scammers while protection mechanisms are conceived and implemented.

Although DAO voting approved this proposal, the change was not ultimately implemented, presumably because of concerns over backward compatibility.

This outcome highlights an important distinction between DAO proposal types: proposals to change DAO parameters go into effect immediately upon approval (e.g., trading fees). Other proposals, like this 0.02 trade size increase request, require developers to manually make changes, which means there’s a chance an approved measure might not actually make it into the software. Of course, there are incentives to discourage developers from defying DAO vote results (e.g., voters could reject a rogue developer’s compensation requests, discouraging them from continuing to contribute altogether) but it’s interesting to note the dynamic. Even though it’s called a decentralized autonomous organization, humans can still be responsible for imposing the will of the DAO’s stakeholders.

Notes

This cycle started right after a couple key developers stepped back from the project—hence the lower issuance.

BSQ burned increased, not because of fee increases, but because of unbelievable volume. June volume almost hit 3 000 BTC, which was almost 3x May’s volume. Much of that volume was from the XMR/BTC trade, where 1 BTC and 2 BTC trades are relatively common. It seems those traders took full advantage of the ≈90% BSQ discount on trading fees!

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