You already touched on our first step in making it sustainable. "Most of the mn-related coins that I have encountered were abandoned by owners after quite some time.' When looking at the code of some of the mn-related coins to which you refer we found a common theme. Block reward. If there are large amounts of coins per block, would you expect the coin to be worth more or less than a coin with a similar block time with a far lesser block reward. Less coins in circulation could mean a higher value per coin simply due to scarcity alone.
Then we would see this stuff:
CAmount GetDevFundPayment(int nPrevHeight)
{
CAmount nPay = 0;
int rblock=0;
if (nPrevHeight>=SOFTFORK1_STARTBLOCK && nPrevHeight<=SOFTFORK1_STARTBLOCK+1200){
rblock=50;
}
if(rblock>0 && nPrevHeight % rblock == 0){
nPay = 50 * COIN;
}
return nPay;
}
Or this:
CAmount GetBlockSubsidy(int nPrevBits, int nPrevHeight, const Consensus::Params& consensusParams, bool fSuperblockPartOnly)
{
if (nPrevHeight == 0) {
return 795500 * COIN;
}
int64_t nSubsidy = nStartSubsidy;
nSubsidy >>= (nHeight / Params().SubsidyHalvingInterval());
if (nHeight < 10080 )
{
nSubsidy = 13373 * COIN;
My favorite is this, actually left in the documentation (sometimes)
WARNING
THIS IS DEVELOPMENT SOFTWARE. WE DON'T CERTIFY IT FOR PRODUCTION USE. WE ARE RELEASING THIS DEV VERSION FOR THE COMMUNITY TO EXAMINE, TEST AND (PROBABLY) BREAK. IF YOU SEE SOMETHING, SAY SOMETHING! IN THE COMING WEEKS WE WILL LIKELY MAKE CHANGES TO THE WIRE PROTOCOL THAT COULD BREAK CLIENT COMPATIBILITY. SEE HOW TO CONTRIBUTE FOR A LIST OF WAYS YOU CAN HELP US.
WARNING WARNING
NO, SERIOUSLY. THE ABOVE WARNING IS NOT JUST BOILERPLATE. THIS REALLY IS DEVELOPMENT CODE AND WE'RE STILL ACTIVELY LOOKING FOR THE THINGS WE'VE INEVITABLY DONE WRONG. PLEASE DON'T BE SURPRISED IF YOU FIND OUT WE MISSED SOMETHING FUNDAMENTAL. WE WILL BE TESTING AND IMPROVING IT OVER THE COMING WEEKS.
WARNING WARNING WARNING
WE'RE NOT JOKING. DON'T MAKE US PULL AN ADAM LANGLEY AND TAKE AWAY THE MAKEFILE.
What it looks like in the official github now:
WE WEREN'T JOKING. THERE WERE WARNINGS THAT THIS WAS BUGGY PROTOTYPE CODE AND YOU USED IT ANYWAY. SO WE'VE TAKEN AWAY THE MAKEFILE. THIS CODE IS ABONDONED (AND HAS BEEN SINCE 2014)
THIS CODE IS UNMAINTAINED AND HAS KNOWN EXPLOITS. DO NOT USE IT.
THERE ARE DOWNSTREAM COPIES THAT MIGHT HAVE BETTER SECURITY. THEN AGAIN, SOME PROJECTS COPIED THE CODE VERBATIM COMPLETE WITH THE BELOW WARNING, SO CAVEAT EMPTOR.
Not trying to bad mouth anyone, but with buggy code at best and lots of coins, and an exchange to dump their coins, no matter what the price. It was fairly obvious what was going on. Second day on block 985 with 100,000 coins already in the exchange.
We tried a different approach, low block reward only ~720 coins a day. Another difference is that we had no advertised presale or auction. We did no
active selling masternodes.
The core team have a few interesting ideas for use case scenarios, but we want our community to be a part of our coin so none of these cases are totally set in stone.
We will have more information in the near future.