Gotts Proposal: Alternative units of Grin

Development and Technical Discussion
#1

Grin’s emission rate is constant and linear to time at a rate of 1 GRIN every second. This means circulating supply increases over time, and the ratio of 1 GRIN to circulating supply decreases at a logarithmic rate. This proposal describes how a unit of measurement could reflect this relationship between a X amount of GRIN and circulating supply using two new units: Gringott and Gott with the symbols Gg and g, respectively.

Given:

1Gg = total circulating supply
1g = 1Gg / Seconds in a year
(Seconds in a year = 31,557,600 = 365.25 * 24 * 60 * 60)

A constant of only 31,557,600g and 1Gg units in circulation at all times. This does nothing to affect account balances when measured in the standard unit (ツ), but it will have an effect on balances measured in these new units in a predictable way.

1Gg represents the total of all Grin created so far. While 1g will represent a single grin for every year passing.

Year Grin = Gotts Gotts = Grin
1 1 = 1 1 = 1
2 2 = 1 1 = 0.5
2 3 = 1 1 = 1/3
2 4 = 1 1 = 0.25

1g is a dynamic unit that will increase in size over time. Pricing in this unit will account for the changes in the size of 1Gg. It will increase less and less every year on a logarithmic curve that has been called the “monetary inflation rate”:

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By pricing in units of Gotts (g), the price of products and the exchange rates would remain consistent with the increasing supply circulation of Grin. This means a product priced as Xg will remain fixed to the overall market capitalization of the supply of grin (1Gg). As the market cap changes, the value of 1g will change at a fixed proportion.

Post-script:

Comments on implementing such unit measurements in user-facing interfaces and tools such as wallets? Could participants benefit from these measurements when pricing items in marketplaces online or rates on exchanges?

Requesting comments on the ratio between 1Gg and 1g; should the denominator be higher causing the unit of 1g to be in smaller proportion to 1Gg?.

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#2

Not logarithmic, just inversely proportional O(1/t).

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#3

Thanks for the correction! :wink:

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#4

I like the name. So you want to introduce an easy unit for people to understand the inflation rate. That itself is not a bad idea since many strugle with the unlimited supply concept even though it is the same as Bitcoin for the first 4 years. Just wondering what the smallest unit of Grin is. If it does not have a name yet, Gots would also be a nice name for the smallest unit of Grin with the bonus the name would make the origin of the name Grin more obvious. Possibly for the inflation another name could be found.

#5

On one hand, it’d be convenient to have a small unit that will remain stable for price (to avoid price inflation/deflation). The idea is that if price was measured by against total supply it’d be measured as a fraction of a the overall market cap: i.e. 1 gringotts = market cap. By pricing as a fraction of 1 gringotts, a merchant is able to account for monetary supply inflation.

The only other question is whether the denominator should be fixed at 31,557,600:1 ratio of gotts:gringotts. By having a fixed denomination, we don’t account for market cap volatility in price, but such volatility is not easily predictable if at all. If a general trend is identifiable, we could change the denominator from being fixed to something that changes over time to account for the trend. If no such trend is discoverable, perhaps a theoretical expectation is enough to account for market growth trends and therefore keep the unit relatively atomic.

Bitcoin’s supply cap of 21 million will mean smaller units of account will be used more readily over the current unit measurement; satoshi’s will become the standard form. Though in time, a satoshi could theoretically become too valuable for micro-payments, so a smaller unit would need to be invented. This could become a reoccurring tradition for Bitcoin. However, it seems as though if a variable unit accounted for such reoccurring changes, we could avoid the ongoing invention of new units with new names.

A single unit such as a “gott” could be that variable unit that is algorithmically designed to change via network consensus. No one’s balances would actually change, just the measurement of the balance.

#6

I think I get what you are getting at. I was also thinking about example transaction costs, that those should not be fixed but also be based on a theoretical prediction of what you expect the market cap would be at any moment. That could be for example be based on the ‘got’ unit at a given time (predicting by some function of Gringots. Quite hard to predict the market cap at any time though. My problem with using a variable unit for accounting as smallest denominator is that this would be rather complex when comparing or discussing such a value at different times. For simplicity a fixed unit works better even though the real market value of that unit can change dramatically over time such as is the case with Satoshi’s.
For understanding the relationship of the currency to the actual market vakye, a variable value for ‘gott’ would work better since basically it would be used to define a more fixed value. The question is if this would be used though on a day to day basis. For many people such a variable factor might actually make things more confusing. Try explaining Grin, grin and Gringot to a average person without him/her mixing things up or getting confused :sweat_smile:

I think inventing new names as you suggested is the best, simply go to mili and nano Gots at some point

#7

What’s the purpose? Pricing in Gotts still won’t be stable because the price of grin changes not only due to the circulating supply increasing.
Its a cool idea theoretically but doesn’t have any practical uses and bears too much complexity, so it seems.

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#8

I think using Gots similar to how Satoshi’s are used is meaningfull simply because it makes the origin of the name Grin more obvious.
So 1 Grin being 1000 000 000 Gots.
Making it variable on the total market value, Gringots, although insightfull is to complex for most daily uses I agree.

#9

Gringotts would not be used for average use-cases. It’s only to be used at a macro-economic level (similar to how the term market cap is used). We can do away with the notion of the single Gringotts all together, and we can keep the Gotts unit.

How would a variable unit be an issue for historical purposes?

#10

For the use on a macro-economic level, sure it is no problem. But to have a subunit that is variable and dependent on many factors is to complex for an average user. E.g. you are discussing and mention the variable Got unit. Half a year later someone reads about it and has to think back or calculate back what that value means half ayear later. I is a bit similar to discussing the price when spending Grin, you always would subconciously think back to what the price was in your native currency, so:
Grin -> dollar
Now if you would have some variable uniit which you would use to expres payments this would be another step your mind would have to make:
Gots -> Grin - > dollar (Either this or you mind would just simply think in how much Grin you would have spend and skipp Gots altogether).

#11

Could not the same be said for any unit of measure that is alternative to the unit used for exchange rates (e.g. Satoshi -> Bitcoin -> Dollar)?

#12

Yes, I agree, the same can be said for other units. Using Gots that are 10^-9 Grin is as simple as using Satoshi’s since it is a fixed unit, while having it as a variable unit/function dependent on Gringots would be to complex for daily use and more usefull for understanding yhe macro-economics as u sugested.

#13

Hmm. I’m having trouble understanding why a variable unit would be any more difficult for conversion than fixed units? At any given point in time, there is X amount of grin. This amount is trivially calculated based on number of seconds from the grin epoch. To calculate the ratio of grin to gotts, you’d need to divide the number of seconds from the epoch by 31,557,600 and that would give you the number of gotts.

This conversation could be made automatic with the correct software.

The size of a gott changes every second, but we can ignore this change. The value of a grin (or dollar) changes every second too, and we ignore this. Though with a gott, the theoretical trade-off by ignoring the unit size change rate is more value stability; on the axiom that currency value is effected negatively as monetary supply increases without an equal increase in market adoption (quantity theory).

Even more interesting would be to average transaction volume into the equation. With volume included, we’ve stabilized the unit size even further. The more I think about it, the more I think that creating a stable unit would be the goal.

#14

What i mean is that to use the value in Gots (which is a function) for daily payments to express the value is maybe not as intuitive as having a fixed constant unit such as 10^-9 Grin. It would be trivial to calculate by for example your wallet, but not something you would do from to top of your head, especially if you incorporate more variable in the function, e.g. Gots(Grincots, transaction_volume, market_cap).

So you are considering to put something like the moving average of the transaction volume in its calculation. I am wondering if what you end up with would be a very stable unit, or maybe a rather stable indicator for the feature price trend of Grin :thinking:.
If you think about marketcap and transaction volume as well as their ratio, basicaly these are some of the important indicators used to predict cryptocurrencies future price. E.g. a low, and especially decreasing transaction volume with a high market cap is an indication the price might go down.
I expect a few properties such as the number of wallets, number of transactions, market cap and consumer sentiment are enought to build a reasonable accurate predictor for the price of Grin. Of course there are still other factors such as the Bitcoin price that hevily influence the price of Grin. If I would have some more time I would build one and see how well it could predict the historic and near feature price of Grin. Unfortunately I have very little time. Keep us posted on you Gots idear. I am curious to see how the graph of Gots would look like if you would incorporate something like a 30 days a moving average for the transaction volume.

#15

Just to be clear, when I say transaction volume I mean the volume of money moved on chain (not data from exchanges).

On the note about calculation, why would you need to be doing the conversion in your head? When I pay you 10 Gotts, the wallet will do the conversion into a grin and the transaction would be completed on chain. Over time, the balance measured in Gotts would appear to decrease, but that’s only due to the nature that new grin are emitted into circulation. What’s interesting is that by pricing items in Gotts, the price is not effected by monetary inflation (emissions) alone. Sure, there will be USD to Gott fluctuations, but I imagining for a unit of currency that is stable in the actual sense, not stable in the measure to USD or some other bullshit fiat currency.

The only reason I added the notion of transaction volume, is that even with a fixed monetary supply, price inflation can happen do to money volume; if more people are spending money in the market, then prices inflate (ever spend is a market sell order). So, perhaps measuring transaction volume on-chain (somehow) could be another variable in the equation for consenting on the measurement of a single Gott. However, I spit-balled the idea, and the more I think about it, the more I worry about manipulation (how do we know a transaction is a market spend for goods vs just moving money from one wallet to another?).

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#16

So true!, transaction volumes are widely used to manipulate the price. Take Bitcion Satoshi Vision (best shitcoin example) as example:


I understand this would be the case since Gots = dGrin/Gringots. However, I wonder if this would be a good representation of value on the long run. The longer you wait, the lower the inflation will be and as such you would expect the value of Grin to increase once increased adoption starts to outpace the inflation rate. Gots, which you want to use to represent value would therefore also have to increase. To conclude, I think your Gots idea is interesting but the more I think about it, the more I see it is rather complex. I agree with @Paouky opinion on this.

#17

@shush One post I red at the Grin HuB Telegram group by Commander Keen rekindled my interest in your proposal. Or basically one of the more fascinating aspects of it, time. Since Grin has a linear emission rate, expressing value in time is very intuitive. I need to think a bit more about it.

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