Although a very interesting looking project, 1,98% premine is a very substantial percentage of available supply for a very long time.
To me, a premine of less than 2% is very small, especially considering that multiple people were paid salaries during the four-year development period.
For the record, here's how some of the big names did it:
Ethereum:At genesis (2015): ~72 million ETH already existed, this represented ~60% of the initial supply.
Breakdown:
- 60 million ETH → sold in the 2014 public crowdsale (BTC → ETH)
- 12 million ETH → allocated to: Founders, Early developers, Ethereum Foundation
There was no mining before genesis, but the supply already existed at block 0.
Solana:When Solana was introduced, approximately 500 million SOL tokens were pre-mined. Breakdown:
- Seed Sale: Approximately 16.23% of the initial supply
- Founding Sale: Around 12.92% allocated
- Validator Rewards: Set aside 38.89% to incentivize network validators
- Community-Driven Initiatives: Approximately 1.88% reserved for community-based incentives, a strategy aimed at promoting widespread adoption
- Team and Founders: About 12.79% given to the core developers and founding team
- Solana Foundation: Holding a portion of 10.46% for future ecosystem development and governance
CardanoAt launch (2017): ~31.1 billion ADA existed at genesis
Max supply: 45 billion ADA
That means ~69% of the total supply was created before the network went live.
ZcashAt launch (2016), Zcash introduced the “Founder’s Reward”: 20% of all block rewards for the first 4 years
Redirected automatically from miners to:
- Founders
- Early investors
- Employees
- Electric Coin Company (ECC)
- Zcash Foundation
This amounted to ~2.1 million ZEC out of the first ~10.5 million ZEC issued. So 2.1/21 (max supply) = 10% "delayed premine".
There are several others I could list, where the (typically venture-capital backed coin has >20% premine or equivalent.
By any standard, Neptune Cash has extremely modest premine.
Dev, is Neptune cash really post-quantum secure?
It is, please read more here:
https://neptune.cash/articles/post-quantum
Also, hopefully the quote below from one of the founders and core team members, Thorkil Værge, fully alleviates any concerns there may have been regarding the marginal premine.
Neptune was launched with a premine of 831,488 NPT, 1.98 % of its total supply. Ideally I would have liked for the premine to be 0 % such that Neptune’s launch was completely egalitarian and fair as this legitimacy is needed to have a shot at becoming a global unit of account. But we needed the premine to fund development during the four years it took us to get to launch – and to fix unavoidable deficiencies after launch.
During those four years of development I sometimes fantasized about accumulating an amount equivalent to the premine and burn it, in order to wash away the taint of the premine. But After launch it became apparent that that would not be possible as professional miners were much better prepared for Neptune’s launch than we anticipated and difficulty quickly shot up. This made it impossible for us amateurs to mine anything substantial. So it seemed that the burning of the premine would forever be a pipe dream.
That was until five days ago where on November 27 a huge, intentional, burn was initiated by a 3rd party. In total, 1.5m NPT was burned. Nearly two times the total premine amount! This burn resets and relevels the playing field beyond what a burn of the premine amount would have achieved. It gives everyone a 2nd chance to enter Neptune with many of the early bags now gone.
I’m sure there are still people out would still criticize the existence of a premine, and somehow argue that the playing field is only completely leveled if the team and not a 3rd party had done the burn. Or that the issuance of Neptune coins should be either faster or slower than it is now. But in my perspective Neptune now has a considerably more egalitarian launch than I ever thought possible, and that makes me happy. In my eyes, Neptune can now boast of considerable technical innovation, extremely fair launch, and immutable supply rules.
Further reading:
Why a small, or zero, premine is important for legitimacy
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https://neptune.cash/articles/the-immaculate-conception-of-bitcoin-and-what-it-means-for-competitorsNeptune Tokenomics - Neptune
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https://neptune.cash/articles/tokenomicsList of known burns
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https://talk.neptune.cash/t/list-of-known-burns/187A blockchain's hierarchy of needs
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https://talk.neptune.cash/t/a-blockchains-hierarchy-of-needs/177Source:
https://talk.neptune.cash/t/neptune-a-fair-launch/190/1
