Darkcoin reward schedule vote

[LimLims]

FWIW Evan said he's been thinking about this for the past few weeks, so despite the fact that this seems like a sudden thing, our Dear Leader has been mulling it over and created this thread to instigate discussion. I do need to teach that boy better PR management, typical programmer.  

Would you guys & gals like a re-vote with a few more options?

[TanteStefana]

The red line shows the theoretical max coins at minimum diff the blue is maximum diff.

It still assumes difficulty remains the same throughout which it shouldn't.  It should be more of a curve, and now my dang vocabulary is abandoning me... a ____ curve, ugh!

We will very soon, I suspect, hit the minimum reward of 5 coins.  That would set us at just over 1 mil new coins a year, which will be enough to keep people mining, which will keep the coin alive!

No reward = no reason to mine = death, not a mild inflation which will be absorbed by an increase in population!

don't be short sighted!  Think of the lifespan/usefulness of the coin, that's where the ultimate value is!

BTW, there is NO WAY the rewards would EVER follow that red line, it'll be pretty much the blue line, with mild varience, so that chart is just to scare! (Ok, you're not out to scare us, but the likelihood of that happening is slim to none)

Satoshi thought of the mine thing. Fees are the incentive.

DarkSend can generate plenty of fees for miners and in particular nodes. It should, in my view, be the primary source of revenue - gateway payments because all the other coins will use DarkSend.

Fees won't be enough.  Look at how hard it already is to mine bitcoin.  The rewards are ridiculous.  It is the first, so stores that have vision are accepting bitcoin to sell stuff, but when the prices start to  look  like 0.00000214 it's just gonna be annoying!  Bitcoin will soon stagnate.  It might keep it's value like you put value on gold, but it will have no usefulness.  I see darkcoin having usefulness.

[wonko86]

i have no nice graphic, but some solid numbers:

now we have ~ diff 300 for some days of mining:

diff 300 / block-reward 21 DRK / 12,096 DRK per day / 4,415,040 DRK per year
diff 600 / block-reward 18 DRK / 10,368 DRK per day / 3,784,320 DRK per year
diff 900 / block-reward 15 DRK / 8,640 DRK per day / 3,153,600 DRK per year
diff 1200 / block-reward 12 DRK / 6,912 DRK per day / 2,522,880 DRK per year
....
diff 3000 / block-reward 6 DRK / 3,456 DRK per day / 1,261,440 DRK per year
diff 3300 / block-reward 5 DRK / 2,880 DRK per day / 1,051,200 DRK per year

more diff means (>3300): block-reward 5 DRK / 2,880 DRK per day / 1,051,200 DRK per year

to have a real comparison you have to devide the DRK-diff with 3 to have the scrypt-diff
then you have "only" the scrypt-diff of doge-scrypt-coin: 1100

when DRK gets a bit more popular, then we will only see the 1 million new coins per year!

so a block-reduction is really not neccessary!
its a very good block-reward-formula - it should not be reduced!

+1

[TanteStefana]

FWIW Evan said he's been thinking about this for the past few weeks, so despite the fact that this seems like a sudden thing, our Dear Leader has been mulling it over and created this thread to instigate discussion. I do need to teach that boy better PR management, typical programmer.  

Would you guys & gals like a re-vote with a few more options?

LOL, or allow changing of the votes so as people think about it, they can change if they like 

[porcupine87]

So the former reward system was:

Code:

 nSubsidy = (1111.0 / (pow((dDiff+1.0),2.0)));
        if (nSubsidy > 500) nSubsidy = 500;
        if (nSubsidy < 1) nSubsidy = 1;

So the maximum reward was 500 and the minimum 1. The higher the difficulty, the higher the reward.

Then after block 5465 the formula was adjusted:

Code:

nSubsidy = (11111.0 / (pow((dDiff+51.0)/6.0,2.0)));
            if (nSubsidy > 500) nSubsidy = 500;
            if (nSubsidy < 25) nSubsidy = 25;

So  the reward between 500 and 25.

Then GPU-Mining came, and so the formula was adjusted(why?).

Code:

// 2222222/(((x+2600)/9)^2)
            nSubsidy = (2222222.0 / (pow((dDiff+2600.0)/9.0,2.0)));
            if (nSubsidy > 25) nSubsidy = 25;
            if (nSubsidy < 5) nSubsidy = 5;

So and now, what do you want to change? The min and max?

[TanteStefana]

i have no nice graphic, but some solid numbers:

now we have ~ diff 300 for some days of mining:

diff 300 / block-reward 21 DRK / 12,096 DRK per day / 4,415,040 DRK per year
diff 600 / block-reward 18 DRK / 10,368 DRK per day / 3,784,320 DRK per year
diff 900 / block-reward 15 DRK / 8,640 DRK per day / 3,153,600 DRK per year
diff 1200 / block-reward 12 DRK / 6,912 DRK per day / 2,522,880 DRK per year
....
diff 3000 / block-reward 6 DRK / 3,456 DRK per day / 1,261,440 DRK per year
diff 3300 / block-reward 5 DRK / 2,880 DRK per day / 1,051,200 DRK per year

more diff means (>3300): block-reward 5 DRK / 2,880 DRK per day / 1,051,200 DRK per year

to have a real comparison you have to devide the DRK-diff with 3 to have the scrypt-diff
then you have "only" the scrypt-diff of doge-scrypt-coin: 1100

when DRK gets a bit more popular, then we will only see the 1 million new coins per year!

so a block-reduction is really not neccessary!
its a very good block-reward-formula - it should not be reduced!

+1

+1,051,200

[coastermonger]

I fully support the idea of gradually tapering off the generation of new coins.  

Long term, miners will absolutely be able to earn profit through the collection of transaction fees, and over time the price will adjust upwards to compensate for the scarcity and reduced supply.

Permanent inflation is something I'd rather avoid, because it means people won't want to have their money in darkcoin long term.  Making darkcoin a limited commodity will make it more valuable.  20% reward reduction per era is more gradual than the sharp 50% reduction seen in other coins, and doing this in no way reduces the usefulness of the coin.

[TanteStefana]

I fully support the idea of gradually tapering off the generation of new coins.  

Long term, miners will absolutely be able to earn profit through the collection of transaction fees, and over time the price will adjust upwards to compensate for the scarcity and reduced supply.

Permanent inflation is something I'd rather avoid, because it means people won't want to have their money in darkcoin long term.  Making darkcoin a limited commodity will make it more valuable.  20% reward reduction per era is more gradual than the sharp 50% reduction seen in other coins, and doing this in no way reduces the usefulness of the coin.

The quantity of coins IS limited.  Extremely limited actually.  It will take a freaking long time to get to the maximum.  That chart is wholly unrealistic!  We are on track to hug that blue line on the bottom!  There is no need for adjustment.

Making both of those lines, the red and the blue, sit half way fro where they are now, will  not guarantee anything anymore than what we have now.  What I mean by that, is it will still not answer the question for people who must know "but how many coins will there be in 5 years?  It will still depend on the mining power, and you still won't be able to guarantee an amount, and they will still complain.

the formula is incredibly good, and it's working  like a charm, and there Is no reason to suspect hash won't grow as it has been and we will soon hit that 5 coin minimum.  Don't mess with a good thing!

[Schwede65]

I fully support the idea of gradually tapering off the generation of new coins.  

Long term, miners will absolutely be able to earn profit through the collection of transaction fees, and over time the price will adjust upwards to compensate for the scarcity and reduced supply.

Permanent inflation is something I'd rather avoid, because it means people won't want to have their money in darkcoin long term.  Making darkcoin a limited commodity will make it more valuable.  20% reward reduction per era is more gradual than the sharp 50% reduction seen in other coins, and doing this in no way reduces the usefulness of the coin.

The quantity of coins IS limited.  Extremely limited actually.  It will take a freaking long time to get to the maximum.  That chart is wholly unrealistic!  We are on track to hug that blue line on the bottom!  There is no need for adjustment.

Making both of those lines, the red and the blue, sit half way fro where they are now, will  not guarantee anything anymore than what we have now.  What I mean by that, is it will still not answer the question for people who must know "but how many coins will there be in 5 years?  It will still depend on the mining power, and you still won't be able to guarantee an amount, and they will still complain.

the formula is incredibly good, and it's working  like a charm, and there Is no reason to suspect hash won't grow as it has been and we will soon hit that 5 coin minimum.  Don't mess with a good thing!

when we are going to reach the minimum-mining-reward of 5 DRK per 2.5 minutes
then we have compared to BTC the next halving-session from 25 BTC to 12.5 BTC per 6 minutes
so there is no high inflation with DRK
may be there are not enough DRK created - not bad for the price-level

[coastermonger]

Fees won't be enough.  Look at how hard it already is to mine bitcoin.  The rewards are ridiculous.  It is the first, so stores that have vision are accepting bitcoin to sell stuff, but when the prices start to  look  like 0.00000214 it's just gonna be annoying!  Bitcoin will soon stagnate.  It might keep it's value like you put value on gold, but it will have no usefulness.  I see darkcoin having usefulness.

Long term, mining will always gravitate towards more specialized, well financed powerhouses that can do better than the average joe with a graphics card.  The difference is that developing ASICS for bitcoin was relatively easy.  I'm still convinced that we won't see ASICS for X11 anytime soon.  

When reward adjustment is slow and gradual (20% instead of the 50% seen with other crypto's) it has a much more stable affect at gradually raising the value of the currency.

If you keep inflation forever, then you can expect the value of the currency to diminish long term.  This means darkcoin miners will be less likely to want to hold their darkcoin and will sell it for something else.  People will also be less likely to want to mine the currency in the first place if they think its value is diminishing.

Gradually reducing the reward rate offers a great incentive to miners.  I'd rather own a limited commodity than something that will only see its buying power reduced over time.

[Minotaur26]

FWIW Evan said he's been thinking about this for the past few weeks, so despite the fact that this seems like a sudden thing, our Dear Leader has been mulling it over and created this thread to instigate discussion. I do need to teach that boy better PR management, typical programmer.  

Would you guys & gals like a re-vote with a few more options?

LOL, or allow changing of the votes so as people think about it, they can change if they like 

Everyone is entitled to an opinion, but the community clearly prefers scarcity. 88%! What is this about changing votes? People don't agree with you so they should change their votes?

[Schwede65]

Dear developer,

please let us know where the 20-%-reduction should take place...

it can't be the minimum mining-reward of 5 DRK
thats only 1 milllion new coins this year
so we have 0.8 million new coins in 2015
and 0.64 million new coins in 2016
and 0.51 million new coins in 2017
and 0.41 million new coins in 2018
and 0.33 million new coins in 2019

then only a little baby will see the total amount of 84 million DRK - when the baby gets a very, very old grand-pa

this reduction is a very wrong idea, when its done as described!

Edit: this numbers will be fact, when we have a successful coin with diff > 3300

[TanteStefana]

FWIW Evan said he's been thinking about this for the past few weeks, so despite the fact that this seems like a sudden thing, our Dear Leader has been mulling it over and created this thread to instigate discussion. I do need to teach that boy better PR management, typical programmer.  

Would you guys & gals like a re-vote with a few more options?

LOL, or allow changing of the votes so as people think about it, they can change if they like 

Everyone is entitled to an opinion, but the community clearly prefers scarcity. 88%! What is this about changing votes? People don't agree with you so they should change their votes?

No!  You misunderstand.  We are debating, or I am trying to, so we make the right decision.  I fear people have voted before really thinking about it and feel they should be allowed to change their vote, if they changed their mind.  I know I'm giving it my all, because I care about this coin, but I think I've debated my point of view politely.  Nobody has to agree with me, I can be alone, but at least I brought up something to think about, and a few of my own opinions, which are just mine.  I see that my hope for this coin is not the same as everyone elses, but that's to be expected.  I'm glad if at least a few of you "heard" me even if you don't agree

I'm tired now, so that's all I got for this

[godzirra]

What does 84 theoretical max mean?

So currently we have 1 million newly mined coins every year? That's not so bad assuming it gains wide acceptance. What if it doesn't? What happens if it isn't adopted by many does that mean constant dilution?

I'm actually inclined to say to Evan do what you think is best and right for the coin. I don't know if votes are for the right reasons. I do believe that if Evan likes the way it's set up he should go with it. The investors are legitimately concerned as well about this project making it out of the gates but Evan seems to know his stuff.

If our goal is to go for #2 I don't see why a cap would stop us. Since both ltc and btc do as well. IF that's what we're going for. Seems like TanteStefana is out for even more!

Evan do you see a cap as a hindrance to transactional use in the future? Limiting usefulness and causing hoarding? When I do think about it TanteStefana does have a good point about cryptocurrencies being for hoarding. Why exactly do we not use them as we should? The cap on supply might be one factor.

Gold even has an inflationary rate. Albeit very low. The mining supply increases by 2% per year but the labor to get that is intense. And people hoard it big time. Bad driving out good. But mining coins is almost too easy for big players. Kind of different.

I think the discussion is about short v. long term. Short term the cap will be very healthy but very long term it might be hoarded and not spent. I can see that being a factor.  

The comment was made that supply will hug the blue line. I'm curious as to how we know that? Because if that's the case then I don't mind leaving it alone.

[fusecavator]

Changing the reward structure after launch just sets a really bad precedent, which will turn people away as they'll be worried about what you might change next time. This is one of those things that you just need to stick with, regardless of which is better.

I do prefer the constant 1M/year though over reduction. As more miners jump in the reward/MHs will go down anyway, so no need to make it even more top-loaded towards the early adopters than it already is.

Also, -20% each year is incredibly aggressive. It may be smoother than btc's drop, but after 4 years btc had 50% of starting reward, but -20% each year would be only 40% of the starting reward after 4 years. After 8 years, btc would have 25% of its starting reward, while -20% each year would have only 16.7% of the starting reward.

[Infectiphibian]

Reducing rewards seems to reduce the amount of miners, as I have seen from many other coins lately, and I think Darkcoin needs all of the network support it can get. If Darkcoin becomes successful, many will want to destroy it. Many in the forums have talked about wanting it destroyed already. Reward reduction needs to be subtle, like a reduction of every block, that is very small, and adds up to 20% per year.  This way, miners don't see a sharp drop in profit and run. The doge community is still crying that the block reduction didn't make everyone as rich as they thought.

The main focus should not be individual coin value, but the total market cap. Think of all of the non-drug related markets that this coin would serve a purpose. The adult toy business is over $40 million per day, and Darkcoin currently has a market cap of under $3 million.



 

[Simcom]

I think the only reason to change is because people don't understand how it works.  In fact, if DarkCoin is successful, then there really would be no inflation.  Because more people would be using the coin which = more demand for the coin, which I suspect will out-number any inflation built in.  Besides, as more people mine, the rewards go down...

so the only real reason to do this is to reduce the total coin supply.  But I think a larger/longer coin supply gives the coin much more longevity.  It will work well into the future, deep into the future.  While still maintaining a very limited supply of yearly coins.  People don't understand that right now, but I think as more attention is focused on DarkCoin, more writers will explain this, and eventually it will be understood and accepted as a good thing.

I know it's one of the factors that people are mistakenly using to value the coin right now (remember it takes 70+ years to get to the maximum number of coins)  But it is one of the reasons I like this coin.  I think it keeps the coin accessible to people in the future, which makes it actually useful as a REAL currency.  I don't see bitcoin being more than a place to store your wealth, like buying gold, because it's becoming less and less accessible and less user friendly (buy a backpack, only 0.056875 btc!)  And it's only going to get crazier!  They say they can always go further down the decimal places, but really?

Mild inflation is good for a growing population, and believe me, it'll be more than absorbed!  Especially with the usefulness of this coin!  Please don't freak out because the price is currently stagnant!  Just because people don't understand yet, doesn't mean they won't when they're interested enough to focus a little more attention.  The coin is getting spread out and creating more users right now because the price is so low!  I'm guessing people who were able to mine a ton of 'em in the beginning are dumping, which is great!  I mined from the beginning but only had 2 computers with 2 core processors that would work, and a high learning curve, so those coins mean a lot more to me, but those who got them easily, they're taking profit and spreading the coin, it's a GOOD thing!

I think leaving it as it is, is the wise thing to do, for the usefulness and longevity of this coin

+1 

People seem to forget that there are actually tons of coins permanently taken out of circulation every year because of lost private keys, crashed HDDs etc etc.  A small 1-2% inflation per year is optimal to replace these lost coins. I agree with the majority here -> Leave the block rewards as-is.

[roton]

WE  HAVE inflation in order to build  up the supply of coins!  There would be NO coins without inflation!  With the number of people joining the crypto community, and the usefulness of the coin increasing, there will be a lot of demand, way out pacing the supply!  I see this coin as being here forever, not just a pump and dump with a lifespan of 5 years, it's still a pump and dump then!  Heck, 100,000,000 coins in a century when our current US deficit is 17 trillion?  It's nothing!  And Darkcoin is a world currency!

You cannot compare current currencies since none are divisible by 100,000,000 in the real world. So it would be 100,000,000 multiplied by the number of coins available at the end of the last block..... which is a lot.

[LazarusLong10]

I think that there are a couple of major problems with capping the supply of DarkCoin:

1. For a currency to succeed you need people to want to spend it and people who want to accept it. With hyper-deflationary currencies, everyone wants to accept it, but no one wants to spend it. This leads to hoarding, which could slow down or prevent widespread adoption.

2. Because mining is essential for the security of any cryptocurrency, when block rewards go away they need to be replaced by transaction fees. Block rewards and transaction fees are both like a tax on users of DRK, but block rewards tax everyone equally (through inflation), while transaction fees specifically punish people who spend their coin. 

3. Inevitably, DRK will get lost (people will loose their private keys to fire, water, hardware failure, death...). This will happen very slowly, but it will happen, meaning that the total supply of DRK will actually decrease with time. So DRK becomes a commodity more like oil than gold - once it gets burned up, it's gone forever.

IMO, the short-term goal for any Altcoin is to get people to want to start using it as a currency. Capping the currency leads to hyper-deflation and increased transaction fees, both of which discourage people from spending. Of course, inflation has the opposite effect - encouraging spending but discouraging people from wanting to accept the coin. Ideally I think you want a currency with a relatively constant value, so that there is no disincentive to spend or receive, and people adopt the currency based on its other merits (in this case, anonymity). I think that constant block rewards once the currency supply is built up - i.e. what we already have - will pretty much achieve this.

[qwizzie]

For those interested : current block reward schedule


Block reward schedule with current number of masternodes and current price of Bitcoin (mind you its an estimate, and its on the low side as it calculates minimum masternode returns) :

https://dashpay.atlassian.net/wiki/questions/12910621/how-much-is-the-roi-of-a-masternode


note :

- not including compounding future payments into building more masternodes
- masternodes get 50% & miners get 50% of each block reward