Open anthony-gerrits opened 7 years ago
anthony-gerrits
commented
7 years ago 
zlatinov
commented
7 years ago Thank you very much for the detailed feedback, @anthony-gerrits !
Borrower choosing winner happens right away - he doesn't pre-lock the group as winner and wait for it's goal to be reached. When the borrower chooses a group as a winner, he immediately gets the group amount gather at this point and the invoice auction ends. He receives the gathered in the group so far amount.
On locking funds for long time - once a group has reached its goal or a borrower chooses a winner group, all groups, except the winner group, receive their money back right away. The invoice auction is for 24h, so bidders won't have their funds locked for longer than this, if they didn't win the auction.
I really liked your ideas for the bidding groups. One bidding group per investor and a required initial bid to create a group would solve the glaring issues with group spams. We'll further discuss this with the team.
Will also discuss the idea of private groups. We haven't though about it this way. Some great UX ideas too.
In regards to validation checks - they are mostly done in the smart contracts. Sometimes you'll get a positive confirmation about your action on the website, but the transaction would actually fail, because of the smart contracts restrictions. The alpha's focus was in the smart contracts and not much work was done in terms of UX really.
Thank you again, we'll be coming back to this with further comments down the line as most of these would be incorporated into the beta.
rahrens1
commented
7 years ago Some great idea's Anthony, I'd put an extra vote behind #7,#13, and #14 to see in the shorter term.
Create Groups / Interraction Feedback: based on Alpha testing…
Feedback from Anthony Gerrits
One of the biggest risks I see for Populous investors is too many bidding groups being created under one invoice sale. As an investor, I don’t want there to ever be a case that the bidding group I’m involved in doesn’t meet its goal - for groups that don’t meet their goal, you’ll have investors with their money tied up for 30 + days potentially not getting any return. You then also fall into the issue that if there are multiple bidding groups that meet the goal end up sitting there for quite some time before the seller chooses one group over the other - this then means the invoice bidding group that met the goal and have potentially waited some time may lose the bid and waste considerable time with no return.
(from your FAQ) During the invoice auction the borrower can decide to choose a winner group before the auction ends and before a group has reached its goal. This can be done from the invoice's auction page.
Wont the borrower automatically choose the lowest rate of interest possible and lock that in at a very early stage? If the borrower chooses a bidder group over the others, even if its at a very low interest rate with very little bidders in that group - does that automatically refund the bids from all other groups that have joined a bidding group at a higher %.
What penalties apply to the borrower if they choose a bidding group that has 2% interest as an example (clearly the best option for the seller), and that group doesn’t meet the total invoice sale goal - i.e. the contract falls through.
In my opinion you should lock in a lowest end rate for any bidding groups @ say 5% minimum rate of return, so bidder groups of 2% aren’t created/chosen without fulfilment. The platform will die a slow death if 1. investors don’t get decent returns and 2. sellers keep choosing bidder groups with low interest rates that don’t meet their goal.
Perhaps the Invoice seller has to state the % they want when entering the sale, rather than leaving it open - open bidding groups may cause a really messy experience for both sides.
Why would I as an investor, invest my money on Populous to get a lower rate of return than a standard bank down the road would give me as interest in a standard savings account…
(from your FAQ) Auction is successful, if a bidding group reaches its goal or the borrower chooses a winner group. If the auction time finishes without a winner group, all bidders are refunded and the auction is closed as unsuccessful.
The above statement means that an investors PPT/funds can be tied up in this process for 30+ days with no return. This is not good for investors and will turn people away if they have funds locked down for long periods of time with no taste of return.
(from an investor point of view) The FAQ states that “Create bidding groups in the invoice auctions. The bidding groups must be with goal amount larger or equal to the invoice sale price and lower than the total invoice amount.” - The Create Group box, currently allows you to create a group with a Goal less that the invoice sale price. It looks like it doesn’t show up - but you should create a warning dialogue box when creating the group that it cannot be submitted when less than the sale price.
(from an investor point of view) Users can create multiple Groups on the same invoice - This could become messy for the user interface. You should limit the amount of groups that a user can create against any one invoice sale to one.
Creating Groups for platform investors - Perhaps as an added bonus of being a PPT token holder, only PPT holders can create groups? At least flag / highlight groups created by Platform investors with PPT so the invoice seller knows they are an early platform supporter - preferred buyer or something along those lines.
When entering a bid in the bidding group, it does not currently check your wallet/account balance to ensure you have the valid funds available to make the bid. It allows you to submit the bid, but simply doesn’t show up coin the bidding history - You need to alert a user that they have insufficient funds to make the bid, and direct them to their wallet to add new funds.
Ability to have private groups - Can you enable the ability to have private bidding groups. i.e i have 20 friends that all own PPT, can you allow us to create a private group that only we can bid via - i.e not allow external people bid within the group we own?
Groups section of the platform - allow an area on the site for Group management. you may get to a point where groups, become like teams. It would be great if you built in the ability to save groups, give benefits and points to different groups for participating. Incentivise groups with Pokens based on their performance/good will.
A section in the market place that shows “Purchase Groups” nearing the Invoice sale price (that will become active) - that you can join to get it active quicker rather than waiting for people to randomly join the group.
What drives the decision of an invoice seller if there are 3 bidding groups all with the same goal? - Is it automatic for the group that reaches the goal first?
People can currently create a bidding group at 50% higher that the current goal, without having to commit any funding to it. You might end up with the situation of having 5 or 6 empty bidding groups associated to the invoice sale that are dummy groups - it should be compulsory for someone creating a bidding group, to place a bid in that group as part of the activation process to ensure bid groups are realistic.
Minimum sale price - Currently when creating a group your goal can be 100% matched with their invoice amount - i.e your paying them the exact amount and not receiving any % increase. what about applying a hard limit of minimum %5 so the system doesn’t allow users to enter an amount that matches the full invoice amount.
Visibility of Groups getting close to the expiry date that have not met the goal. You will potentially have peoples money tied up in groups that don’t meet their goals. you need to look at a way of reducing groups and filling minimal groups up first. As an investor - I don’t want to commit to a groups bid just to have it sit there and not meet the goal. That means I have invested my money into something for 30 days with no return.
What process will be put in place to stop invoice sellers, logging into the system as a invoice buyer and placing a dummy bidding group on their own invoice? They would then be able to lock that bidding group in as the winning group…therefore gaming the platform.
Borrowers rating and score - It would be really beneficial to see Prior history of invoice sellers for investors to look at previous engagements on the platform before investing and buying their invoice.
In the bidding groups - you should highlight the bidding group that you have made a bid on. If I make a bid in bidding group X, I don’t have any visuals that show in the “View Invoice” page under the borrower information that I have made a bid in that group.
UX improvement - If I add my bid into a bidding group - the new bid box should close after I’ve submitted my bid - the larger bidding history box stays in focus after I’ve made the bid, looks like it potentially didn’t accept the bid. UX should close the box after you enter the bid.
Bidder Name ?? - If I bid more than once on an invoice it does not show as multiple transactions from my view - I did a first bid under name XXX and the second bid on the same invoice under name YYY and they both show up under member name as “YOU” - Is this on purpose - what view does the invoice seller get - can they see my multiple transactions under the bidder name I entered on each bid, or is it rolled up into one transaction, similar to what I see as the purchaser? - What purpose does Bidder Name serve if the system rolls it up under the member name?