NOTE: Very preliminary ideas here. This is posted here to allow a few people to see these ideas, not really for general criticism. I welcome ideas from anyone though. (Comment section at end of this page.)
As this braindump developed, it went far beyond simple changes to The Goods into other possible market situations. (Stock markets with futures options anyone? ;-)
Abbreviations:
- TG = "The Goods"
- GS = GoodScrip
- Ex: = Example:
Broker idea and broker/trader accounts:
A broker is not a teller, but one who makes transactions with TG on behalf of traders.
- Less trust needed (can't access full TG inventory)
- Possible splitting of market by traders
- A group of traders handles all their trades through one broker
- Possible splitting of market by commodity
- All slate, wood, bricks, boards orders via specialized brokers
- Possible problem: different GS
- Multilevel brokers?
- A trader might post an order with the first broker, who might handle it by posting an order with the second one.
- Ex: One broker might handle accounts for a guild, while another handles bricks/boards trades.
- Alice wants bricks, and posts an order with the guild broker Bob for 8000 bricks.
- Bob doesn't have 8000 bricks at the moment, so he posts an order with Charles to buy (up to) 15K bricks for the guild at up to 0.8 GS/brick.
- Brokers keep accounts for each trader. Each account has:
- A GS balance (must be positive or zero in early phases).
- A balance of goods (positive only)
- Goods will be stored together, but the contributed amount per trader is kept separately.
- Ex: The JoeTrader account consists of:
- 697 GS balance
- 319 slate
- 450 boards
- 37 copper
- Brokers keep list of orders for each trader.
- Ex: JoeTrader has the following orders:
- Buy up to 100 copper (in inventory) at 1.7 (avg each over order)
- Sell 135 more slate for at least 4.5 per unit (next unit price)
- Sell all remaining slate for 15 per unit (next unit price)
- Buy up to 1000 boards (in inventory) at 2.3 (next unit price)
- Sell all boards at 6.7 (next unit price)
- The last 2 orders above provide an example of possible market-stabilization.
- "Matching" price concept:
- When buying, a "matching" price is the bid amount (greatest amount buyer is willing to pay) or less.
- When selling, a "matching" price is the ask amount (least amount seller will sell for) or more.
- Two possibilities for amount price matching:
- Not a problem with direct user/user transactions.
- Much bigger issue with high-value items like marble.
- Give users option of type of matching (average over order, or next item)?
- Average price per item (for full order) matches.
- Keep buying until (price / amount) > bid
- Example: Buying (up to) 100 slate at 3.0 (over whole order)
- Keep buying until 100 slate bought at <= 300, or max amount until the (price / amount) > 3.0
- Suppose TG slate price was 2.93, then after buying 100 slate it was 3.02. User paid average of (guessing) 2.97/slate.
- User gets more goods, but may pay more than bid for last items.
- Likely more popular with buyers who want to use the goods (and want quickly).
- Possibly OK with sellers who want to reward large purchases (should not be default).
- Price for next item matches:
- Keep trading in 1-unit increments (theoretically, batch in reality), until next unit price does *not* match.
- Example: Buying (up to) 100 slate at no more than 3.0 each
- Keep buying until the *next* unit price is greater than 3.0.
- Likely more popular with market traders.
- Consider that once the price reaches 3.0 in example above, someone else's sell bid might be triggered causing the price to drop again.
- Could have bad edge-effect where trading is done by 1-unit increments bouncing between 2 orders.
- Especially bad when involving different brokers.
- Possible commission/percentage fee?
- Storage fee? (say 1% of storage bulk in GS/month.)
- Delivery fees? (see below too)
Multi-phase:
1. Trader stock: manual sales to TG via broker
- Trader gives items to broker
- For each item type, trader tells broker minimum price per item to sell.
- Possible offline via chest labels?
- Possible via chat even if broker offline?
- Broker confirms receipt via chat.
- Broker updates list, ordered per-item and sorted by price (lowest first)
- Possibly use other ordering, like FIFO
- Possibly if multiple eligible, share sale among all traders?
- Ick! Lots of extra broker work, although fairest.
- Periodically broker checks TG market for prices below item min price
- Later auto: all trades announced in a channel?
- Possible format: ItemName quantity-change newprice-next
- Like: wood +100 2.8753
- Broker keeps list per-item sorted by price.
- Even if other trading-method used than lowest-first, this list will allow easy determination of whether there are eligible sales.
- Broker executes any sales with matching prices
- Broker updates trader inventories (in this phase subtracting only) and GS balances (increasing).
- Initially keep account GS balances low using GS notes (worth 1K GS each).
- This makes it easy for traders to get to their GS balances quickly
- All amounts above 1K GS will be given in GS notes (worth 1K GS each), deposited in a chest that only the trader can withdraw from.
- Brokers may want to have a supply of GS notes available for settlements.
2. Trader buy orders from TG via broker, pickup only
- Broker has per-trader chest to store bought items
- Chest allows storage by all, withdrawal by trader only
- Order: buy item x at maximum price y
- Possible: Buy up to x items total (including inventory)
- Possible: Buy x items (ignore inventory, broker updates when bought).
- Possible: Buy until broker GS balance exhausted (maybe initial implementation)
- Broker buys items when price is lower than amount, stores in trader's chest.
- Expand on this section later.
3. Trader buy orders, going back into trading inventory.
- Possible for trader to have both buy and sell orders on single item.
- Example:
- Buy 500 wood at 1.5 GS
- sell all wood at 4.7
- Possible multiple buy/sell orders for single product?
- Buy all slate (until GS exhausted) at 0.8
- Buy 3000 slate at 1.5
- Buy 1000 slate at 3.1
- Sell 1000 slate at 7.3
- Sell all slate at 10.5
- Complex order capabilities might have higher fees?
- Expand on this section later.
4. Manual matching buy/sell requests between traders without involving TG.
- This phase could be done first, but I don't think there would be a sufficient market in the beginning without involving TG.
- Example:
- Alice has sell offer for 3000 slate at 3.5
- Bob has buy offer for 1000 slate at 3.7
- Bob gets Alice's slate, and Alice gets GS from Bob
- How to bridge price gaps?
- Auto-correct gaps in pricing?
- Sell offer price: Alice gets 3500 GS from Bob
- Buy offer price: Alice gets 3700 GS from Bob
- Split difference: Alice gets 3600 GS from Bob
- Buy price, Broker gets full difference: Bob sends 3700 to Bob's broker, who pays 3500 to Alice and keeps 200.
- Bob may not be very happy with this, but maybe he would accept this as a cost of quick service.
- Higher buy prices would get priority in processing by brokers.
- Theory here is that Bob's broker could execute a sell of 1000 slate at 3.7 to Bob, instantly covering it with the buy of 1000 slate from Alice.
- Buy price, Seller/Broker split: Bob sends 3700 to Bob's broker, who pays 3600 to Alice and keeps 100.
- Effectively a gift to Alice, but this could help keep/get customers, especially if this split is only done for Bob's customers.
- Other possibilities could be explored as well.
- Idea: Sales tax/fees? (Gives selling brokers a share too.)
- Keep very low for simple transactions
- Allows trading beyond TG limits
- Ex: Selling rare but reproducible item for 30,000 GS
- Ex: Buying marble at 8000 GS (TG has price points of 10K and about 5.7K)
- Expand on this section later.
5. Beginning of automated trading.
Other possible phases:
- Integrating The DEA herb market
- Currency trading between the two markets
- Quality-item markets
- Cut gems high-value market
- A Sunstone Full Aidenn Mask might be sold for well over 1 million GS equivalent.
More phases to come?
Misc or later:
- Possible idea: keep some/all of brokerage account GS balance in GS notes (x1000 GS).
- If some kept in trader-withdrawable chests, then trader can use balance towards manual trades.
- Trader-accessible GS would not be available for further trades.
- Broker order: buy GS notes (to deposit in chest).
- Ability to give GS balances (or partial balances) would make some steps easier.
- Possibly good to keep broker accounts relatively separate
- Possible broker order to deposit X GS into trader-withdrawable chest.
- Broker delivery options
- Extra fee options
- Multi-level broker opportunity
- Buy cheap wood in Karnak, deliver for 10% fee to LE.
- Eventually when tellers get sick of doing lots of orders with a particular broker, they might make them a teller so they can process their own orders.
- Possibilities for abuse here:
- Preferential buying/selling
- Can avoid some abuses by limiting (by custom) brokers to only being tellers for own brokerage accounts, not in general.
Wilder ideas:
- Long-term: Margin trading
- Possible negative GS balances in trader accounts
- Backed by goods for sale in trader accounts
- Ex: Bob will buy 300 cut stone at 100 each, backed by 17 Oyster Shell Marble in escrow.
- Futures trading
- At start only by reputable suppliers
- Backed by supply?
- Option trading
- Probably need some escrow system.
- Either complete trade or option seller loses escrowed backing.
- Abstract notes trade
- Allow trading in almost any currency or notes
- Allows people to set up markets quickly and easily.
- Likely largish fee to establish market, possible ongoing fees
- Ongoing fees could mean delisting if fees not paid.
- Possible to sell a "currency package", including notes and market listing.
- Abstract notes trade can be very close to a stock market for corporations.
- Possible "backed notes" pool, where limited qty of notes are shares in (hopefully growing) pool of assets.
- Services notes:
- Currencies that can be sold, traded, and exchanged for services
- Examples:
- Expert assistance in areas
- Tutorial services
- Would benefit from mediation being available in cases of conflicts.
- Possible sale/fee of brokerage service packages.
- Could include own URL on website for broker services.
- Allows software/system creators to step out of trust issue of actually being the ones to handle goods and currency.
- Brokers could do currency trading if other currencies develop.
- Brokers could trade in quality items like carpentry blades.
- Multi-tier system probably: 3000-3999, 4000-4999, etc...
- Guild creation possibilities:
- Escrow services guild
- Provides escrow: holds set of goods, and will release to specific persons under clearly defined conditions.
- Ex: Bob's Broker Guild escrows 200,000 GS to be paid up to 50,000 per avatar if directed to by the Kush Mediation Guild.
- Could be multi-level, with small escrowers themselves being escrowed by bigger ones.
- Might not have to be 100% backed with enough reputation (reinsurance market)
- Mediation Guilds
- Provides mediation services in disputes, usually part of a contract.
- Could be the start of court systems, with one or a few generally-accepted "Supreme Mediators".
- In the end, the devs and GMs are the ultimate mediators.
- Contract services
- Provides contract services beyond mediation. Might include escrow services.
- Broker associations
- Provide services to brokers, chat/socializing
- Enforce standards on members (or expelled).
- Associations could have a list of members with "last inspected" date or something like that.
- Even more wild: Consider if gameplay months could be shared/traded.
- Possible feature: represent by physical tokens?
- People could effectively buy massive amounts of resources by paying for the accounts of others.
- If the pay for a friend option can be used repeatedly, possible to escrow (if trusted escrow-broker needs more game time and is willing to pay for it):
- Ex: Alice buys time for Bob (the broker), who then buys time for Charles and gives Alice the goods from Charles.
- Alternately, if the brokers had access to a command saying how many months are left, they could verify and give the goods when the account is paid.
- See: Eve Online trading in Eve Time Codes
- Allows effective free play by hard workers if enough buyers want resources
- Likely *very* destructive social elements given competitions.
- Ex: LazyRichGuy builds a *HUGE* Obelisk using materials paid for with $300 worth of account time.
- The people involved in the transaction are happy, but not others who now have a tougher test to pass.
Visitor comments: (might be moved to another page later)