Will linear emission change grin into a SOV like bitcoin?

That’s correct.

Whatever we say today is unlikely to be exact, so I’ll simply wait and see what people use it for in 10, 20 or 50 years.

It’s a good philosophy, but we probably should have an answer for people at least regarding diminishing mining rewards.

People make the same argument about Monero. If the tail emission is the same forever now, it eventually won’t be rewarding enough to actually secure the network.

Just thinking out loud, but maybe we can look to Gold for precedent. It is being unearthed at the same rate, but theoretically you get diminishing returns the more of it you unearth. How has this affected the gold mining industry?

I’m not familiar with the gold mining industry. You’re right that the inflation rate becomes lower and lower, but I’m not worried about the long term Grin security. We’ll have 1% inflation in 100 years. Bitcoin will have 0.9% next year. I also believe adoption will play a bigger role in security than the inflation rate as security is proportional to price.

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My goodness, my own logic is completely flawed I realize :upside_down_face: The whole point of having a loss rate of 2% for Grin, or perhaps lower, means that there is no increase in the amount of available Grin in 50 years or so. So yes, when the loss rate per year equals the mining reward per year, there will be no inflation at all and as such Grin will become a good SOV even better than gold for which the loss rate is unlikely to become equal to the amount of gold being mined.

These arguments make Grin IMO superior both as SOV and as digital cash/money. I do think that in 10-20 years from now everyone will applaud Grin’s interactivity and all the benefits that come with it.
Most importantly, everyone is free to use Grin for whatever purpose they like. I am more interested in its properties as digital cash, but sure, other might hoard it as a long term SOV. The whole point is that no one can dictate the use of a decentralized project like Grin

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One of the ways that people critique Bitcoin is thus:

In order to be a good SOV, the network has to be secure longterm. The network cannot be secure longterm if the mining reward drops to zero.

Is Grin immune to this criticism? in 100 years, the mining reward will effectively be zero because it will stay exactly the same but the total coins will be massive. The mining reward will be a drop of water instead of a bucket of water.

Definitely not immune. I would consider it the primary criticism.

The counter argument is that lost and dormant coins will result in the reward not being effectively zero. It will be as compared to all coins ever mined, but coins in circulation will certainly be less than that. How much less? We can only speculate, and with hidden amounts we will never know either. We will only be able to make assumptions based on the market.

The alternative would’ve been rising block reward, and there’s just no hope that we would’ve convinced anybody of the sustaining value in that. It’s hard enough with constant. Constant is the conservative compromise.

What we can say for sure is that “arguably effectively zero” is a lot better than actually zero.

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Don’t some projects use a dynamic block reward based on the volume? I know monero uses dynamic block sizes but that is different

i doubt since it can be easily gamed

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It’s not as different as you might think. Monero allows the size to grow (slowly) if the miner accepts a (growing) penalty on the reward.
There is no penalty for block sizes up to 300KB (correct me if I got some details wrong).

For me the wording of being more fair, doesn’t make sense, because fairness is not measurable or gradable. I think Unfairness could measurable or gradable. But being less unfair in a specific dimension does not mean being more fair.

I expect the loss-rate and the demand being unstable and depended. Dis-inflationary coins like bitcoin and grin will probably suffer the problem, that the fraction of lost coins becomes more and more unknown. At some point users will question whether the fraction of lost coins is 1% or 99% and can not answer it.

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I think this is a different discussion, but I do agree. It’s a bit of a childish selling point.

Really, this thread is trying to figure out some better ways to explain what Grin actually provides in terms of emission strategy

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I would say that if unfairness is measurable then so is fairness (it’s just the inverse). It’s true that there are many dimensions where one could measure (un)fairness, but when people say that it’s more fair they usually mean that early adopters have less of an advantage, so in that regards i think it’s fair to say that it’s more fair in this dimension - and this dimension is probably the most important one. So i applaud anyone who says that grin is the most fair coin out there :slight_smile:

You applaud. I roll my eyes. Fairness is such a silly marketing point. I think childish marketing like that actually undermines the project more than it helps.

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I think it’s childish to assume all people are saying that for marketing purpose. If you would follow chats on keybase you would have known that i’ve never cared about grin’s marketing. Sometimes people just have different opinions and that’s fine

Infinite or capped supply lost its meaning if a capped supply Bitcoin can be mined until 2140

Equality is a widely accepted value that promotes fairness among all individuals. Throughout history, there have been instances where unequal treatment has been challenged and efforts have been made to correct it. Examples include promoting education for women and ending slavery for Black people. This is not a marketing point, but a fundamental aspect of creating a just society.

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@axon7
I can only speak for myself, but for me grin being fair is indeed about fundamental values. I would not call this a marketing point since being “fair” does not make Grin more attractive, maybe even the opposite. The more unfair a system is, the more it can be exploited. Take for example a project with premine with a super high staking reward for large share holders. It promises high returns but clearly is meant to implode within a few months or years after the initial creators and investors have cashed out. Very unfair, but very profitable if you know how to play the market.

It is similar to living in a ‘social’ society’, you chose to live in it because you know that overall everyone will have a better life since there is more equality and shared access to facilities such as health care. However, if you are a high potential, you would earn far more though if you would live in a liberal county where wealth is divided more unequally and you would be among the few super rich. So it is choice made based on your fundamental values as well maybe based on your attitude towards risk.

more equal :grinning:
Whats more equal 2 and 3 or 4 and 5?

I think linear emission will not change grin into a SOV. And if bitcoin is a store of value is very questionable. But also i think grin might become a store of value, if it gives value by being good medium of exchange. But that depends on many Components. The emission model of a coin might turn out as a problem, that’s not easy to perceive. So like other emission models linear emission might turn out as problematic as well.

(ps edit: this post contains my first First Emoji(?))

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To go back to my original point of this thread: The value proposition of Grin’s fairnness dwindles over time. Unless the emission rate scales dynamically with the total supply, after the soft cap is reached, the fairness is essentially over with.

It seems impossible to create a perfectly fair scheme. If you had a 1% emission, then how do you reach the 1% inflation rate? You need to have asymmetry at the start until you reach that 1% which itself isn’t fair. That said, I think both models would be fair enough.