On other topics
- The rates in the orderbook are really low now. Maybe this is where the market will end up but I also suspect some people are offering really low rates because they believe in Joinmarket and want to provide early-on liquidity. This is counterproductive though because it discourages investors from joining. When a prospective investor sees that there is 140 BTC at 0.03% there is no reason for them to offer 100 BTC at a higher (normal?) rate.
Bear in mind that the advertised rates are per transaction. If you average one transaction per day at 0.03%, that's a monthly return closer to 1%. It's not yet clear what frequency individual investors can expect, but we've started working on a tool for detecting likely Joinmarket activity in the blockchain, and guessing the earned fees.
I agree; after the first few weeks, it was clear that this was the dynamic. A significant steady flow of 'users' (liquidity takers) is almost certainly going to require some kind of wallet integration, and that's a big project. Meanwhile, tech savvy people try it out by setting up yieldgenerator bots and are surprised when there isn't a constant flow of free money
And they reduce fees presumably out of impatience.There are users, even today; but the number is small (and to be honest I may not have a realistic picture, since I am not constantly reducing my fees like it seems others are, so I am probably not seeing almost any of the activity. This is one of the curious things about thinking of JoinMarket as a "service" - it is difficult to see it happening (although with some effort you can get a good idea)).
What "should" the fees be? It has been discussed but I'm of the opinion it's impossible to come up with a model that isn't dominated by its assumptions, so it's probably not worth bothering with.
I think almost zero fees are unavoidable. Since this project is, by definition, a market, there will be competition. And since the cost involved for makers is not very high (a little risk for putting your coins on a server, but not too much since you don't have to trust anyone), I believe that the eventual fee you can earn as investor is tiny. (Even an inflow of more takers when the project is more mature won't help here, since there will also be an inflow of makers.) But I don't think this is a problem. It will help make coinjoins more used in the ecosystem, which is a good thing. And if too small fees turn out to be a problem (i. e., not enough makers willing to provide liquidity), the fees will increase themselves due to market pressure until an equilibrium is reached again.