With each iteration to the liquidity points system, abit has shown diligence and creativity in ensuring he maintains his monopoly on the lucrative 28,800 STEEM per day windfall he continues to accumulate.
While minimizing the actual liquidity he has to provide.
Now I am trying to fix this and willing to creating real liquidity at low spreads as the liquidity rewards are quite generous.I am willing to absorb market losses as a cost of doing business.
I imagine there are half a dozen to a two dozen others that would be willing to do the same.
So I propose that we allocate some percentage of the liquidity rewards to contracted market makers, who agree to provide liquidity for a monthly (weekly?) basis. Their contract would be subject to community review and approval before it is renewed. Just like it is hard to automate spam detection, but a person can easily tell, we can rely on human judgement as to which market makers are worth renewing.
As it is, if the rewards system isnt fixed, nobody else in their right mind would bother, which means abit will be very happy, but the community will be at his mercy for setting the conversion price of STEEM to Steem dollars.
By selecting a dozen contracted market makers and leaving half the rewards for fixing the incentives like I posted in https://steemit.com/trading/@jl777/steem-dollars-discount-why-is-it-always-below-open-market-price we can get a liquid STEEM <-> Steem Dollar conversion at current realtime market prices, have a dozen well funded market makers (the rewards they get will be plenty to fund their market making) and there is still the free for all points that people can battle against abit for.
Alternatively, we can ask abit to not actively sabotage the other market makers. Maybe if we said "please" he would agree?