Ethereum's Block Reward might be reduced from 5 ETH to 1.5 ETH

[adaseb]

Very bad news for many miners.

EIP186 proposes to decrease ETH mining rewards.
https://www.reddit.com/r/ethereum/comments/5lb684/eip186_to_decrease_eth_issuance_by_3x/
https://github.com/ethereum/EIPs/issues/186

So far Buterin doesn't want to get involved in this issue, he wants the community to decide. Something such as voting like Carbonvote like during the forks.
https://www.reddit.com/r/ethereum/comments/5l9j59/december_roundup_ethereum_blog/dbub50d/?context=3

[HashZilla]

Seems to me this would be an incentive to buy ETH now, and hoard them.

If there is a coin vote, one could use the coins to vote for the reduction in block reward, thereby increasing the chance of supply constraint and an increase in the price.

So developers and speculators will like this idea, but miners will get shafted.

[adaseb]

Yeah basically the eth foundation is probably pissed off their ETH is worth less from the Summer and they are blaming it on the miners since probably 50% of all the eth mined daily is dumped daily.

[philipma1957]

Yeah basically the eth foundation is probably pissed off their ETH is worth less from the Summer and they are blaming it on the miners since probably 50% of all the eth mined daily is dumped daily.

risky move in my opinion.

http://coinmarketcap.com/


1    Bitcoin   $15,487,372,567   $963.38   16,076,162---- BTC   $76,229,300   1.02%   
2   Ethereum   $720,712,570---   $8.24   87,474,566---- ETH   $10,170,000   3.68%


18    Zcash   $16,729,309----   $48.42   345,506-------- ZEC   $503,671   -0.08%



87 million eth coins                   that = common


345 thousand  Zcash coins         that = rare


so a block size reduction   will not make eth rare

[adaseb]

Looks like they changed EIP 186 again and made the Block reward 2 ETH instead of 5 ETH.

Now it all boils down to a vote whether it gets accepted or not.

Majority of ETH holders are NOT miners so there is a good chance this might pass since it will at least temporarily create a price pump.

https://www.reddit.com/r/ethereum/comments/5lfugz/eip_186_modified/

[alucard20724]

Majority of ETH holders are NOT miners

I think that they're missing something important here.  The only coins that are of any interest, are the ones that are mined and sold by miners for others to buy/sell/trade.  Miners more or less give cash value to the coins, if no one mines them, then they start to become worthless... imho

[flekkelek]

Majority of ETH holders are NOT miners

I think that they're missing something important here.  The only coins that are of any interest, are the ones that are mined and sold by miners for others to buy/sell/trade.  Miners more or less give cash value to the coins, if no one mines them, then they start to become worthless... imho

but miners will keep on mining.

[Ambros]

I am a little bit disappointed since I am miner and all my rigs are currently mining ETH.
I hope in a massive price growth so that mining will be profitable even with block reduction

[Nikolaj]

they should be pissed of of his work as devs, vitalik buterin first (greedy and pretty shady, due his DAO hack interests).

With such a move ETH will have a huge daily volume drop, and probably etc will suffer too due the hashrate flow. Things COULD just stabilitze with a 2.5x uptrend of the ETH/BTC ratio, but we're talking about speculation, and if you add this term to volatility, greed and depreciation psicology mechanics the future of eth it's worrying. Frankly speaking the lack of trust of the users, due the DAO hack, made this project a partial fail. Whoever bought mining contracts for eth should be worried too.

[GabryRox]

As a miner of ETH (not currently due to XMR profitability) this is a bit disturbing, and I don't really even agree with the premise or impact of what they are proposing here. But, I also am holding a decent # of ETH coins in advance of the move to POS, so I am somewhat leveraged either way.  But... speaking of the move to POS... isn't that going to happen in about a month anyway?  I heard in several places they were expecting that to happen around Feb, which would render this whole block reward chopping almost useless if true, right? So, they want to kill the last month of ETH mining?  Not sure but maybe that POS move isn't happening that early after all.

[alucard20724]

Majority of ETH holders are NOT miners

I think that they're missing something important here.  The only coins that are of any interest, are the ones that are mined and sold by miners for others to buy/sell/trade.  Miners more or less give cash value to the coins, if no one mines them, then they start to become worthless... imho

but miners will keep on mining.

yes.. we will... we will always keep mining... mining something else that is of interest to us   

[QuintLeo]

Majority of ETH holders are NOT miners

I think that they're missing something important here.  The only coins that are of any interest, are the ones that are mined and sold by miners for others to buy/sell/trade.  Miners more or less give cash value to the coins, if no one mines them, then they start to become worthless... imho

but miners will keep on mining.

 Not if the profitability crashes, at least not at nearly the same rate.

 ETC should BENEFIT from such a change since they are unlikely to follow along like lemmings over the cliff.

[HashZilla]

As a miner of ETH (not currently due to XMR profitability) this is a bit disturbing, and I don't really even agree with the premise or impact of what they are proposing here. But, I also am holding a decent # of ETH coins in advance of the move to POS, so I am somewhat leveraged either way.  But... speaking of the move to POS... isn't that going to happen in about a month anyway?  I heard in several places they were expecting that to happen around Feb, which would render this whole block reward chopping almost useless if true, right? So, they want to kill the last month of ETH mining?  Not sure but maybe that POS move isn't happening that early after all.

According to the links posted by OP, the reward reduction would happen simultaneously or thereabouts with a change to the block time so that the ice age (difficulty bomb) won't force the change to POS as quick, as they are apparently not ready for POS.

I have a couple of problems with the reduction in reward.   

Firstly, they are justifying the reduction as a result of the drop in ETH value which has resulted in difficulty paying developers.  Well, from what I can tell they have about twice as many developers are they should have, in that all of the software is duplicated in two programming languages.  You have Eth and Geth, then Mist and GUI wallet, etc.,   IMHO they would have better quality software if they focused efforts on 1 version of each tool, and they would also be faster to achieve a switch to POS.

Secondly, is it acceptable for the EF to actually attempt to manipulate the value of the currency?   It seems somewhat of a conflict of interest in that their contribution to the value of the currency is supposed to be the network and tools, as opposed to speculative endeavors that favor a portion of coin holders, that being themselves.     Shouldn't the value of the coin be determined by market forces which respond to demand (or lack thereof) created by the perceived value and utility of the coin/network?

Lastly, Vitalik Buterin stated he didn't believe in democracy when "tramples the rights of the minority" (my paraphrase) so if there is a vote on this I would hope that more than a simple majority would be needed to pass.

In the case it does pass, there will be a number of specific blocks/dates where the value will change, making this a dream for speculators.

Fundamentally I don't beleive miners would be dumping this or any other coin if the value was increasing, and if miners hold a minority of the coins, doesn't that suggest there is not enough "utility demand" to sustain the value?   

[Tasty Potato]

Good God block reward not reduced to -1.5 ETH...
It is all so sad to see: DAO hack, HFs, price drop and now this idea... with PoS in the sight. 

[kemo6600]

Assuming that they voted for reward reduction , first reduction with the current block time should be approximately 3-4 months form now  and reward will be 4 ETH , few weeks later (3-4) it will get reduced to 3 ETH then to 2 ETH .

if we get price increase proportional to reward reduction then difficultly will keep rising and mining will be the same , other wise we will move to other coin , the current trend for the past few months is that there is 3-4 coin with profitability close to each other (10% UP and down ) and that trend will continue . When zec came in Ether lost 40% difficulty , then it gained back 20%.

Some people where happy for getting more Ether , we might be making the same or less money but we get more tokens to be saved for the future .

Personally i made my calculations that ETH will be dead by March , the only conclusion from that vote is there is at least 6 months before POS.

[adaseb]

They have proposed another EIP.

https://github.com/ethereum/EIPs/issues/189

Basically we will get the 5 ETH block reward however we won't be able to sell it until after ETH goes POS. Seems nobody likes miners anymore. And will do anything to promote a price pump.

[adaseb]

Lots of controversary in this subject. There are many that disagree which is good news and things might be left the way they are. Especially since ETH is finally starting to rally.

However keep in mind the original ICE AGE still stands, here is the projections

Block 3000000, approx ETH supply 87962556, time '2017-01-16 00:38:33.067775' blocktime 14.86
Block 3500000, approx ETH supply 90612556, time '2017-04-11 18:09:34.273529' blocktime 15.27
Block 4000000, approx ETH supply 93262556, time '2017-08-15 18:20:24.642729' blocktime 30.01
Block 4500000, approx ETH supply 95912556, time '2018-11-03 05:55:48.912370' blocktime 136.71
Block 5000000, approx ETH supply 98562556, time '2025-10-02 11:47:30.658317' blocktime 835.81
Block 5500000, approx ETH supply 101212556, time '2128-03-20 09:14:16.483692' blocktime 17183.83
Block 6000000, approx ETH supply 103862556, time '5189-09-26 20:57:59.367004' blocktime 520901.19

So keep in mind that we will most likely only be able to mine until mid 2017 and then, the block times will increase so its no longer worth mining.

So most of your new RX GPUs should be ROI'd by then.

[HashZilla]

They have proposed another EIP.

https://github.com/ethereum/EIPs/issues/189

Basically we will get the 5 ETH block reward however we won't be able to sell it until after ETH goes POS. Seems nobody likes miners anymore. And will do anything to promote a price pump.

Mine now, get paid later?

BUWAHAHAHA!!!!

Do they propose to pay their developers salaries in non-vested Ether as well?

[Nikolaj]

They have proposed another EIP.

https://github.com/ethereum/EIPs/issues/189

Basically we will get the 5 ETH block reward however we won't be able to sell it until after ETH goes POS. Seems nobody likes miners anymore. And will do anything to promote a price pump.

Mine now, get paid later?

BUWAHAHAHA!!!!

Do they propose to pay their developers salaries in non-vested Ether as well?

I've got a proposal for them..

work hard now, get paid in 2020.

[Amph]

They have proposed another EIP.

https://github.com/ethereum/EIPs/issues/189

Basically we will get the 5 ETH block reward however we won't be able to sell it until after ETH goes POS. Seems nobody likes miners anymore. And will do anything to promote a price pump.

but apparently they were fine when vitalik dumped is 1M in etheruem, good grief the etheruem comunity is retarded, any coin without pow will die eventually

pow work good Bitcoin is the best example you have...although the block reward/time was kinda off on ethereum form the start, there is indeed too much daily production