Market Proposal
People are always complaining about market prices, the reason prices get so low is because people who were playing posted resources for high prices then quit. This allows them to permanently be undercut and this cycle continues until prices get down to the 0.03 and lower that you see.
It's a bit of a rip from other games but I believe market trades should work a little like this:
When a person goes to trade there will be another option for the duration of the trade.
Durations:
12 hours - 24 hours - 72 hours
When a person goes to post their trade they will choose one of these options. Once the trade has been posted it will remain up for that time period, once that time is up the trade ends.
The second part of this would be deposits when trading. Most will be against this but it will help a lot with pointless trades, people hoarding resources in the market and the like.
Based on the duration of the trade the player will need to pay a deposit fee when posting the trade. Deposit WILL be returned upon successful completion of the trade. If the trade is unsuccessful the deposit will NOT be returned.
• 12 Hour Trade - Deposit is 0.05 per 100 of the resource. If the player posts 100 of a resource his deposit will be 5 gold.
• 24 Hour Trade - Deposit is 0.10 per 100 of the resource. If the player posts 100 of a resource his deposit will be 10 gold.
• 72 Hour Trade - Deposit is 0.15 per 100 resource. If the player posts 100 of a resource his deposit will be 15 gold.
• Treasures will be 5%/10%/15% of the minimum sales price for each respective duration.
While the prices seem high you must also take into consideration the fact this will drive market prices up and that you will have the deposit returned if you have a successful trade.
If you cancel the trade or the timer runs out you won't have it back. This will cause people to stop hoarding mass amounts of resources in the marketplace.
I'm sure the point that people already have trades up will be brought to surface. While there's no way to implement this without initial issues or complaints at first giving everyone 1 week before inactive trades are cleared is ample opportunity to do so.
I'm sure there are better ways to deal with the issue but I'll leave that to you.
Feedback?

