In most PoW coins miners are permanent sellers: they pay for electricity or rented hashrate in fiat and sell their rewards. That puts constant sell pressure on the coin and gives miners no reason to care about it beyond the next payout.
I am testing the opposite on a small live Ethash chain:
- Your reward address must hold a minimum balance before the node hands out work. The threshold is 0.25% of the mined supply, so it grows with the network.
- Larger balances unlock higher reward tiers: 1x the threshold pays 50% of the block reward, 4x pays 60%, 8x pays 75%, 20x pays 100%.
The upsides I see:
- Miners become buyers first, and miners who want a better tier keep buying, so the coin creates some of its own demand.
- Hit-and-run hashrate becomes less attractive, because rented hashrate still needs a funded address.
The downsides I see:
- A higher entry barrier for small miners.
- Richer miners earn more per hash, which could push towards centralisation.
- It does not stop a large miner who already holds enough coins.
Is this a sound design, or a centralisation trap with extra steps? I would like to hear what experienced miners think, especially about the threshold size and the tier spread.
The live implementation is Pinch (rule "PINCH-STAKE-1"). The spec is at
https://pinch.network/docs.html and the current threshold and tiers are on
https://pinch.network/stats.html
