[XMR] Monero Speculation

[canth]

I somewhat now see some arguments for changing the emission - best would be if could change the emission and adapt the current amount of coins accordingly, but I think this is really impossible.

maybe I am wrong and the social contract is less important than the fixing - I am really really unsure about this.

We may need a new CN coin to implement the thoughts here.

Apologies if someone else has brought this up, but has the idea of re-launching a new Monero or other CN coin and then burning Monero to transfer value been floated?

The idea of burning coins to start a project is in general a bad idea, since it leaves the project without funding. However, for the purpose of transferring value aka, going from coin 1.0 to coin 2.0, it's a valid tool.

Launch XMR 2.0, allow a 30 day period of burn/conversion and then there's no need to mess with XMR 1.0.

[Come-In-Behind]

I somewhat now see some arguments for changing the emission - best would be if could change the emission and adapt the current amount of coins accordingly, but I think this is really impossible.

maybe I am wrong and the social contract is less important than the fixing - I am really really unsure about this.

We may need a new CN coin to implement the thoughts here.

Apologies if someone else has brought this up, but has the idea of re-launching a new Monero or other CN coin and then burning Monero to transfer value been floated?

The idea of burning coins to start a project is in general a bad idea, since it leaves the project without funding. However, for the purpose of transferring value aka, going from coin 1.0 to coin 2.0, it's a valid tool.

Launch XMR 2.0, allow a 30 day period of burn/conversion and then there's no need to mess with XMR 1.0.

This^ Monero is very  brandable and well known as an altcoin here. If there's a way to change the emission to something much more reasonable and have user's balances also converted into the new blockchain, then I say, Go for it. The current emission(especially given that Monero is tied to Bitcoin atm and Bitcoin's a bit bearish) is going to Kill this coin.

My opinion is that high adoption comes after a decent enough investor base. And investors don't come in when there investments are just going to fade away with continuous price dropping from high emission. As I think about it, the current emission entirely benefits selfish miners at this point, this can be fixed completely now as Monero is still very young and the coins already out give large enough liquidity to attract investors, but wait any longer(months from now) and this coin will be dead by then from the constant high emission.

[othe]

I somewhat now see some arguments for changing the emission - best would be if could change the emission and adapt the current amount of coins accordingly, but I think this is really impossible.

maybe I am wrong and the social contract is less important than the fixing - I am really really unsure about this.

We may need a new CN coin to implement the thoughts here.

Apologies if someone else has brought this up, but has the idea of re-launching a new Monero or other CN coin and then burning Monero to transfer value been floated?

The idea of burning coins to start a project is in general a bad idea, since it leaves the project without funding. However, for the purpose of transferring value aka, going from coin 1.0 to coin 2.0, it's a valid tool.

Launch XMR 2.0, allow a 30 day period of burn/conversion and then there's no need to mess with XMR 1.0.

This^ I think Monero is pretty "brandable" or at least well known as an altcoin. If there's a way to change the emission to something much more reasonable and have user's balances also converted into the new blockchain, then I say, Go for it. The current emission(especially given that Monero is tied to Bitcoin atm and Bitcoin's a bit bearish along with the high emission rate atm) is going to Kill this coin.

My opinion is that high adoption comes after a decent enough investor base. And investors don't come in where when they're investments are just going to fade away with continious price dropping from high emission. As I think about it, the current emission entirely benefits selfish miners at this point, this can be fixed completely now as Monero is still very young, but wait any longer(months from now) and this coin will be dead by then.

Wtf?

Whats the point of this... u guys really have some weird ass ideas, its unbelieveable

There´s no need to launch a new coin to just change the emission but i say it once again i want someone to proof to me that Emission XYZ is good for us and don´t come here and write 10 lines on a forum. If we change it we have to make it "perfect" or we cry in 1 year again. Feel free to fork Monero and do your own coin but then you can do the dev work the whole fucking day instead of us. Feel free to make fancy sidechains and whatever you had in mind but prepare to code that all alone.

Its for me pretty simple: NO ONE HERE knows whats the best way to do, its all speculation and we will not find out until the years will pass by, its the same with bitcoins and mining only mining fees - NO ONE knows if that´s going to work out in 100 years or so.
And its pretty clear that the community can´t find a consensus so far?

Selfish miners wtf? They secure our fucking network and that´s why they get rewarded, mining is pretty much +-0 profit atm anyway...

monero's deflationary characteristic (~18M coins in short time) might cause miners gradualy to abandon the ship when the reward starts to get low (happening soon with current emission) and not enough adoption takes place.
Monero hashrate is trending lower for almost 3 months now and we are still in the inflationary stage!! What will happen in a year or two? Is the adoption going to be so big in a year to drive the price up even when there are so many coins mined already and compensate miners for low reward

And they wont just LEAVE NOW IF WE CUT THE EMISSION?!?!


There are shitton of PoS coins like NXT who don´t have inflation and still their marketcap shrinks and shrinks - can you explain me that??

Why do u think new users are worse off?! Please explain me that they can prolly buy cheap coins even in a year or two...Aren´t they worse off if we artificially higher the price now?

I throw something else in the round now: Maybe this bullshit ongoing emission talk is the real reason of the price decline?

PS: i am generally open to tweak the Emission if we reach a consensus.
PS2: This is my personal opinion and yeah, i am getting tired from this shit.

[jwinterm]

I agree with othe.

[rpietila]

Whats the point of this... u guys really have some weird ass ideas, its unbelieveable

The point is: something is wrong, and has been wrong all the time. The devs acknowledged it since the beginning. Nothing has changed. It does not go away by simply wishing.

Hell - if the characteristics of the problem are such, there is no way to make it go away but by fixing it!

If the issue could be lived with, considering how critical the sanctity of fixed emission speed is, surely the debate would have died out months ago! Is anyone proposing that Bitcoin change emission? I mean seriously. If this matter did not have the support of the majority of the Monero owners, the proponents of slower emission would have just sold and moved on.

That it is still ongoing, indicates that we love Monero, and want it to live, which, in our opinion can be secured by slower curve - foremost because that leaves more emission for the rapid adoption phase and thwarts the risk of a "fair fork" later on, but also because it contributes to the short term market situation, which is at the point where anyone with serious money does not want to invest and current community cannot find the rationale for spending time on the coin whose future is endangered.

[jwinterm]

Whats the point of this... u guys really have some weird ass ideas, its unbelieveable

The point is: something is wrong, and has been wrong all the time. The devs acknowledged it since the beginning. Nothing has changed. It does not go away by simply wishing.

Hell - if the characteristics of the problem are such, there is no way to make it go away but by fixing it!

If the issue could be lived with, considering how critical the sanctity of fixed emission speed is, surely the debate would have died out months ago! Is anyone proposing that Bitcoin change emission? I mean seriously. If this matter did not have the support of the majority of the Monero owners, the proponents of slower emission would have just sold and moved on.

That it is still ongoing, indicates that we love Monero, and want it to live, which, in our opinion can be secured by slower curve - foremost because that leaves more emission for the rapid adoption phase and thwarts the risk of a "fair fork" later on, but also because it contributes to the short term market situation, which is at the point where anyone with serious money does not want to invest and current community cannot find the rationale for spending time on the coin whose future is endangered.

If the emission is really such a terrible problem, then why isn't boolberry or another cryptonote with slower emission taking more of the total cryptonote market cap? Are you suggesting extending the emission by more than a factor of two (I believe boolberry is emitted twice as slowly as monero)?

[Come-In-Behind]

I somewhat now see some arguments for changing the emission - best would be if could change the emission and adapt the current amount of coins accordingly, but I think this is really impossible.

maybe I am wrong and the social contract is less important than the fixing - I am really really unsure about this.

We may need a new CN coin to implement the thoughts here.

Apologies if someone else has brought this up, but has the idea of re-launching a new Monero or other CN coin and then burning Monero to transfer value been floated?

The idea of burning coins to start a project is in general a bad idea, since it leaves the project without funding. However, for the purpose of transferring value aka, going from coin 1.0 to coin 2.0, it's a valid tool.

Launch XMR 2.0, allow a 30 day period of burn/conversion and then there's no need to mess with XMR 1.0.

This^ I think Monero is pretty "brandable" or at least well known as an altcoin. If there's a way to change the emission to something much more reasonable and have user's balances also converted into the new blockchain, then I say, Go for it. The current emission(especially given that Monero is tied to Bitcoin atm and Bitcoin's a bit bearish along with the high emission rate atm) is going to Kill this coin.

My opinion is that high adoption comes after a decent enough investor base. And investors don't come in where when they're investments are just going to fade away with continious price dropping from high emission. As I think about it, the current emission entirely benefits selfish miners at this point, this can be fixed completely now as Monero is still very young, but wait any longer(months from now) and this coin will be dead by then.

Wtf?

Whats the point of this... u guys really have some weird ass ideas, its unbelieveable

There´s no need to launch a new coin to just change the emission but i say it once again i want someone to proof to me that Emission XYZ is good for us and don´t come here and write 10 lines on a forum. If we change it we have to make it "perfect" or we cry in 1 year again. Feel free to fork Monero and do your own coin but then you can do the dev work the whole fucking day instead of us. Feel free to make fancy sidechains and whatever you had in mind but prepare to code that all alone.

Its for me pretty simple: NO ONE HERE knows whats the best way to do, its all speculation and we will not find out until the years will pass by, its the same with bitcoins and mining only mining fees - NO ONE knows if that´s going to work out in 100 years or so.
And its pretty clear that the community can´t find a consensus so far?

Selfish miners wtf? They secure our fucking network and that´s why they get rewarded, mining is pretty much +-0 profit atm anyway...

monero's deflationary characteristic (~18M coins in short time) might cause miners gradualy to abandon the ship when the reward starts to get low (happening soon with current emission) and not enough adoption takes place.
Monero hashrate is trending lower for almost 3 months now and we are still in the inflationary stage!! What will happen in a year or two? Is the adoption going to be so big in a year to drive the price up even when there are so many coins mined already and compensate miners for low reward

And they wont just LEAVE NOW IF WE CUT THE EMISSION?!?!


There are shitton of PoS coins like NXT who don´t have inflation and still their marketcap shrinks and shrinks - can you explain me that??

Why do u think new users are worse off?! Please explain me that they can prolly buy cheap coins even in a year or two...Aren´t they worse off if we artificially higher the price now?

I throw something else in the round now: Maybe this bullshit ongoing emission talk is the real reason of the price decline?

PS: i am generally open to tweak the Emission if we reach a consensus.
PS2: This is my personal opinion and yeah, i am getting tired from this shit.

The problem isn't miners abandoning. Botnets mine a good proportion and sell their coins accordingly, contributing to the price decline. By launch a new coin, I mean something similar to what canth proposed and what I've seen other altcoins do. Create a new blockchain and have user's "transfer" their coins on the original blockchain to the new one based on the # of coins they hold in their wallet. So like starting a new beginning with a new, much better emission and keeping everything else that everyone loves(the logo, name, website, the ideals) and throwing away the thing that hurts the coin the most(the emission)

[othe]

Is anyone proposing that Bitcoin change emission? I mean seriously.

Well, actually a lot of people are awaiting the next halving, as clearly the market can´t take the sold coins per day; So we can rule out that the Bitcoin emission makes sense, because it doesn´t as we see from the price charts.
Everyone who invested in 2014 pretty much has lost money on Bitcoin.

BTC price is down 4x from the last high. BTC Emission is slower than ours.
Litecoin is down 10x from the high. Litecoin issues a lot more coins per day than us, but there shedule is like Bitcoin.

NXT, BTCD have been issued instantly, they are also down; they have no emission so to say.

Boolberry has half of our Emission and its down way more than us, so clearly that Emission is also wrong.

Whats the conclusion from this? I don´t know, i can´t seem to find a conclusion from looking at other coins which again brings me to the point that no one really knows what makes sense.

The problem isn't miners abandoning. Botnets mine a good proportion and sell their coins accordingly, contributing to the price decline. By launch a new coin, I mean something similar to what canth proposed and what I've seen other altcoins do. Create a new blockchain and have user's "transfer" their coins on the original blockchain to the new one based on the # of coins they hold in their wallet. So like starting a new beginning with a new, much better emission and keeping everything else that everyone loves(the logo, name, website, the ideals) and throwing away the thing that hurts the coin the most(the emission)

Buhh oh god, to change the emission we need maybe 10 lines of code why the fuck do we need to move coins to a new blockchain?!?!?!
Till block XXXX use Emission_old
if above block XXXX use Emission_new.

DONE.

It doesnt matter if Botnets or GPU Farms or ASIC Farms sell their coins, its simply no difference, i would even argue that botnet guys can hold their coins as they dont have a lot of costs like electricity.

You want us to waste another month just to code something fancy that allows us moving coins to a new blockchain for no reason?!

[Come-In-Behind]

Is anyone proposing that Bitcoin change emission? I mean seriously.

Well, actually a lot of people are awaiting the next halving, as clearly the market can´t take the sold coins per day; So we can rule out that the Bitcoin emission makes sense, because it doesn´t as we see from the price charts.
Everyone who invested in 2014 pretty much has lost money on Bitcoin.

BTC price is down 4x from the last high. BTC Emission is slower than ours.
Litecoin is down 10x from the high. Litecoin issues a lot more coins per day than us, but there shedule is like Bitcoin.

NXT, BTCD have been issued instantly, they are also down; they have no emission so to say.

Boolberry has half of our Emission and its down way more than us, so clearly that Emission is also wrong.

The problem isn't miners abandoning. Botnets mine a good proportion and sell their coins accordingly, contributing to the price decline. By launch a new coin, I mean something similar to what canth proposed and what I've seen other altcoins do. Create a new blockchain and have user's "transfer" their coins on the original blockchain to the new one based on the # of coins they hold in their wallet. So like starting a new beginning with a new, much better emission and keeping everything else that everyone loves(the logo, name, website, the ideals) and throwing away the thing that hurts the coin the most(the emission)

Buhh oh god, to change the emission we need maybe 10 lines of code why the fuck do we need to move coins to a new blockchain?!?!?!
Till block XXXX use Emission_old
if above block XXXX use Emission_new.

DONE.


You want us to waste another month just to code something fancy that allows us moving coins to a new blockchain for no reason?!

I was thinking aesthetically and how a new blockchain with the emission change might look better but yea I see your point lol.

[BanditryAndLoot]

If the emission is really such a terrible problem, then why isn't boolberry or another cryptonote with slower emission taking more of the total cryptonote market cap? Are you suggesting extending the emission by more than a factor of two (I believe boolberry is emitted twice as slowly as monero)?

While I admire the efforts of every other CN coin quite a bit, they've really been mostly socially eclipsed by this one since the first day. One, maybe two, of them slipped out for a little while, and have recently returned to being little more than a whisper. Saying this now doesn't exclude from these facts changing in the future, only that right this day, we can't compare social issues of a coin with a community to social issues of a coin with a negligible community.

My point here is that the 'social contract' of these other coins can't really be used as a comparison for the other ones right now, because there's not many people around to hold them to it - the communities are too small, and attention has been mostly from a pump group that's recently departed for the time being.

This is through and through a uniquely Monero issue at this point in time.

The problem isn't miners abandoning. Botnets mine a good proportion and sell their coins accordingly, contributing to the price decline. By launch a new coin, I mean something similar to what canth proposed and what I've seen other altcoins do. Create a new blockchain and have user's "transfer" their coins on the original blockchain to the new one based on the # of coins they hold in their wallet. So like starting a new beginning with a new, much better emission and keeping everything else that everyone loves(the logo, name, website, the ideals) and throwing away the thing that hurts the coin the most(the emission)

The biggest problem I see here is that requires developers to both back and do, as people aren't going to burn money without developer support of the new fork. I don't think any of our developers want to split from each other at this time, nor do I think they should .. but the one's we have now are just as undecided as we are on the subject .. so there's no reason or incentive for them to split up at all. I don't see this situation as possible, unless you've got developers?

[thelibertycap]

Selfish miners wtf? They secure our fucking network and that´s why they get rewarded, mining is pretty much +-0 profit atm anyway...

if you actually read my post upthread linking to pdf explaining that deflationary nature of a currency that is vulnerable to 51% attack will get attacked once the hashrate drops due to low fees and not enough adoption. this is exactly where monero is headed. i think it is better to be safe now than sorry later when the chain gets attacked.
i explained a reasonable threat to monero and not just a mere speculation. better have a bit more slow emission than death in 1 year.

[othe]

If the emission is really such a terrible problem, then why isn't boolberry or another cryptonote with slower emission taking more of the total cryptonote market cap? Are you suggesting extending the emission by more than a factor of two (I believe boolberry is emitted twice as slowly as monero)?

While I admire the efforts of every other CN coin quite a bit, they've really been mostly socially eclipsed by this one since the first day. One, maybe two, of them slipped out for a little while, and have recently returned to being little more than a whisper. Saying this now doesn't exclude from these facts changing in the future, only that right this day, we can't compare social issues of a coin with a community to social issues of a coin with a negligible community.

My point here is that the 'social contract' of these other coins can't really be used as a comparison for the other ones right now, because there's not many people around to hold them to it - the communities are too small, and attention has been mostly from a pump group that's recently departed for the time being.

This is through and through a uniquely Monero issue at this point in time.

The problem isn't miners abandoning. Botnets mine a good proportion and sell their coins accordingly, contributing to the price decline. By launch a new coin, I mean something similar to what canth proposed and what I've seen other altcoins do. Create a new blockchain and have user's "transfer" their coins on the original blockchain to the new one based on the # of coins they hold in their wallet. So like starting a new beginning with a new, much better emission and keeping everything else that everyone loves(the logo, name, website, the ideals) and throwing away the thing that hurts the coin the most(the emission)

The biggest problem I see here is that requires developers to both back and do, as people aren't going to burn money without developer support of the new fork. I don't think any of our developers want to split from each other at this time, nor do I think they should .. but the one's we have now are just as undecided as we are on the subject .. so there's no reason or incentive for them to split up at all. I don't see this situation as possible, unless you've got developers?

Ok once again i explain it like if you guys are 5 years old:
What new FORK!?!?! It takes a few fucking lines of code to change the emission at block XYZ!

We are all open to change if the community reaches a consensus, but it hasn´t so far, so don´t even think of dropping the core team into this mess as it has nothing to do with us being in the way.
The reason why no consensus is reached is prolly because no one has found a good solution so far? An emission he can explain to every monero commuinity member and where the majority agrees that its better for us?
The problem is not on the Monero core team side nor is it on coding that, its solely a problem that till today no consensus has been reached and everyone who proposes something can´t really back it up.

Did some of you guys even talk to miners or poolops about this btw? I guess not even that happened, but flip it like you want they are an important part of the XMR ecosystem.

if you actually read my post upthread linking to pdf explaining that deflationary nature of a currency that is vulnerable to 51% attack will get attacked once the hashrate drops due to low fees and not enough adoption. this is exactly where monero is headed. i think it is better to be safe now than sorry later when the chain gets attacked.

Do you even know the Emission?? I guess not, before fees kick in it will take over 10 years with the current emission, if we arent successful till then i don´t know but i think we have other major problems then.

That PDF is from nicolas courtois who also released a lot of other rubbish whitepapers on bitcoin; why should i take him serious?


Once again: Don´t point out the problem; present a solution, make a better Emission curve and back it up why its better, present the advantages and disadvantages etc. Thats simply what i expect from a discussion. Just changing the Emission to be only half as fast or whatever can´t be the holy grail.

[BanditryAndLoot]

Ok once again i explain it like if you guys are 5 years old:
What new FORK!?!?! It takes a few fucking lines of code to change the emission at block XYZ!

I get where you're coming from, my take from the proposition was that it seemed like a way to sidestep a 'social contract', without actually changing it. A way to feel good about changing something that doesn't usually change. I don't agree with that method at all, but they did raise the point so I was trying to understand what they were saying and why I disagreed with it on their terms. Sorry if it was confusing.

We are all open to change if the community reaches a consensus, but it hasn´t so far, so don´t even think of dropping the core team into this mess as it has nothing to do with us being in the way.
The reason why no consensus is reached is prolly because no one has found a good solution so far? An emission he can explain to every monero commuinity member and where the majority agrees that its better for us?
The problem is not on the Monero core team side nor is it on coding that, its solely a problem that till today no consensus has been reached and everyone who proposes something can´t really back it up.

I'm not sure what you mean in bold? You said that you'd listen to the community, so I'm confused. Are we misunderstanding each other? I'm not blaming you guys for anything lol, or that it's a problem for just you guys, it's all our problem.

If it wasn't a problem, then why does it keep coming up? We've got so much less attention now, that I don't think it's trolls bringing it up.

We have two big problems that I see in front of us right now:

ONE: the price is too high
TWO: the emission is too fast.

Dropping the price doesn't change the terms of the social contract at all, but we risk losing current and future attention from people that like to buy and hold expensive things, and apparently large holders are pissed and ready to leave. On the other hand, dropping the emission will likely preserve the price, changes the terms of the social contract, and we also risk losing both future and present attention from people that like to buy cheap things, but we also likely keep the attention of people who like to buy and hold expensive things.

I'm on the edge, and an undecided community will always settle on no change, regardless of what the change is proposed to be.

edit: Really the only way I'd be able to make a concrete decision is based solely on which one will allow development to continue. I'm currently under the impression that the dev team is already donating all of the free time they have available for development .. but I'd wonder if either of the two problems mentioned above has any affect on that.

Did some of you guys even talk to miners or poolops about this btw? I guess not even that happened, but flip it like you want they are an important part of the XMR ecosystem.

I would also mention talking to exchanges on the matter. If they are not in favor of change, then we'd be forced to use their chain (existing one)

Do you even know the Emission?? I guess not, before fees kick in it will take over 10 years with the current emission, if we arent successful till then i don´t know but i think we have other major problems then.

I'm curious if you think fees will sustain this, as opposed to a tail end emission? What are your thoughts about that?

[rpietila]

Please othe and guys, take the time to read this and if you feel the reasons are not enough, present more!


Arguments for the MEW resolution recommending a change to the mining rewards.

This is a collection of arguments available. Even though I have been proponent of the change, it does not mean I personally support all these arguments. Also very harsh tone is used in debunking some arguments, developers or miners. It does not mean that I personally thought that way or especially had any grudge toward anyone I know or not know.

Preface: If it ain't broken, don't fix it.

During its short history, many issues about Monero have been fixed. Several of them have been so serious that without fixing them, it is not likely that Monero could live another year even technically, much less would anyone use it. Currently the issues hampering Monero's progress seriously, are lack of Database, lack of usable wallet, and dysfunctional emission. Of the first two, hardly anyone disagrees that it should be fixed. But their fixing is hard labor, which someone capable must do, and it takes time. The only one that could be fixed without effort, is the third one. Much time has passed that has proven that Monero is experiencing its moment of truth. Unless all the impediments to adoption are removed, the chances of success grow even slimmer. The market has already shown the distrust, and the value of XMR has shrank to so low that it is more than likely that the pillars of the economy just cannot find the time to support the coin any more, leading to its definite demise.

The core reason for supporting a change in emission is twofold - too high emission now punishes the community, enriching nobody. There is no economic justification for it, on the contrary it has already lead to the situation where Monero has dropped below the level of interest for investor-minded people. Since the community neither has grown during the time of uncertainty (to be fair - every coin is suffering, not Monero alone), all the emission is now burned with nothing in return. Not even the miners gain of the ongoing destruction of the value.

The first reason alone would hardly be legitimate for cutting the emission. The second, and more important reason is that fast mining leads to emitting most of the coins quickly. When the majority of coins are emitted, Monero needs to have established itself as the unquestionable leader in its market niche and have gained a general awareness and reasonable adoption in the people belonging to that niche. If Monero's market niche is privacy-conscious people and corporations, of which conservatively 10s of millions exist, the adoption in this segment needs to be a) much higher than competitors and b) large in absolute numbers, minimum 100,000s. If these targets are not met when the emission is 60-70% done, the risk for more resourceful parties taking all the hard labor of XMR/CN technology and forking the coin for their benefit is nearing certainty.

As a summary, NOT cutting the emission, risks the death of Monero in the short term, and (as a result of this) makes it weak to stand the challenge of the long term when "premined" coins are relegated in favor of new, "fair" ones, even using the same technology, again risking the death of Monero and total loss of value. BOTH of these can be mitigated by cutting the emission without delay, and the proposal is to cut it to 1/3. The future emission curve in this proposal would take exactly the same shape as if the block interval would be lengthened by a factor of 3. Exact table will follow.


The rest of the arguments are presented as debate against the prior published list of Arguments not in favor to the change:

Violation of social contract. Monero's social contract is not the same as Bitcoin's. Aminorex has bought into Monero, without knowing, and strongly opposing, perpetual emission. A possible contributor to the decline is that he and his investor circle have sold their holdings after by accident hearing that "there has always been the idea of have perpetual inflation", which has never part of their social contract or acceptable to them. The change now proposed is much less violation of any contract (not express nor implied), and it has been on the table constantly cince the takeover of Bitmonero. When Monero already existed, the then community voted about the emission, and the understanding (verified by many) is that CN people, miners and sockpuppets of the above won the poorly-organized popular vote against (nearly?) everyone then and still in the community, who presented the voice of reason, which would have saved us from the current contention. Namely: If the original voting could have probed the community's actual opinion, the emission would have been cut already. After such a history that Monero has in forks, takeovers and rigged votes on emission when it was already launched, any talk about "social contract" when the things are finally made how they should have been all the time, and no coin cap is touched, and nobody is put to suffer, is absurdly hypocritical.

Damage to the brand; retroactive instamine. Which would you rather have, a bad name, or a bad reality? Would you try to save your clear face now, just to be labelled premine later? If the community and the developers do not have the guts to change it now, as something can still be saved, what does it help to be "clean" in the graveyard of failed coins later? This is not table-talk, either the coin lives or not. Database, wallet and emission cut carry it to 2015. Our unison is required to make the emission change happen, and everyone who does not support it, should not continue badmouthing and just move on. As well as if the change does not happen, the losers move on. There is a demand for a fair cryptonote, possibly clean of the baggage of Monero. Nobody who is fair likes retroactive instamine, but if the alternative is a fork, I would choose retroactive instamine instead. It still seems more fair to the community.

Loss of hash rate. This absolutely favors the cut. Currently, daily inflation is 0.43% and this value (EUR 8.5k) is spent on supporting the network. Unless the emission is cut, and supposing that the price per unit stays the same, the inflation after 2 years is 0.05% (EUR 3.1k). If the current inflation is perceived as important to secure the network, the emission should immediately be cut, otherwise the future inflation has no chance to secure it. In reality, the proposed 0.9% annual inflation to secure the network in perpetuity is only 0.0025% per day, which makes the discussion about the current inflation as means of securing the network totally pointless, by 2 orders of magnitude. Securing gold or silver costs 0.2%-0.5% per year. Therefore 0.9% per year should be enough if crypto wants to compete. 100++% per year (now) is definitely enough, and raising this argument reveals a serious lack of math and understanding.

Miners. They are seeking profit and have 500 coins to choose from, when conducting business most profitably. The influence miners should have when making the decisions about the coin's future should be limited. If the coin dies as a result of bad decisions, the owners suffer. If the decisions are good, the owners take profits also. Miners have invested in their equipment, and it is their duty to put them to the best use. Any consideration towards the miners from the part of owners (the MEW is the aggregate of the owners) is as misguided, as is the miners' consideration that "oh we pity the owners and don't want to dump, take the hit rather). It is important to be clear on this. Coins are hard-forking every week, there is no reason whatsoever to believe the miners would somehow boycott it, and even if they did, it would just mean that the EUR 8.5k per day would be there for other miners to take. The "special mining interests" do not exist, and this is a good opportunity to show it, to reclaim the legitimacy among the community who is not entirely confident of it given the new hashing function with room for optimization. Besides it is quite likely that cut of emission raises the price per unit.

Increase of inflation over time. Basically all that matters is the ratio of daily percentage growth of the userbase vs. daily percentage growth in emission. The matter is manifold. If the emission is larger than adoption growth, the price plummets. If they go hand-in-hand, it stays stable. If adoption grows faster than emission, the price may also increase. The problem comes when really high growth is sought. That does not even happen with a coin that does not have enough emission. The markets know where it is possible to grow, and no fastmined crypto has ever gained any popularity after becoming nearly fully mined. Even Bitcoin has got fat with early holders hoping that the price would go up one more time that they could sell. The main reason for cutting the emission is NOT avoiding the death that looms near, it is avoiding the legitimacy problem of being too much mined when it is time to hit mainstream. Inflation is a good thing. The opposite of inflation is called premine, or POS. The current course is destroying the price (and alongside, the community, and prospects) with needless inflation, and hoping that the coin would, after all these sacrifices, pick up when inflation abates. It is in the power of our community to give a signal that the fastmine is needless, and that Monero is actually designed for long-term adoption, by emitting the coins slowly over time.

"Therefore a faster curve makes sense now." There is no sense in any "faster curve", except the placating of scammers and developers who want to cash out at the first pump. Since Monero developers are not scammers, and the development is hard work and no pay, what we should do to show our gratitude to them is to propose the most reasonable long-term emission curve that would preserve the unique position that Monero has now, with the highest probability of success that the developers also would receive their honest rewards.

Position of MEW in recommending the change. The MEW has been inaugurated with great care to be the most legitimate possible way of making the voice of an anonymous cryptocurrency's owners heard in proportion to their influence. Officially, the MEW votes represent 15% of the owners, the real figure being much higher though. If the MEW was there in April, there would be no need to vote again about the matter that has been desired ever since. The decisions then were done in situation then available. Now we have a better structure for voting.

If the core team made this kind of change alone, without having a measurable community opinion behind it, I would probably object. Now the circumstances are such that the MEW is in position of giving an overriding vote of confidence to the original plan of the core team, for Monero, the plan that was foiled in the early days by people who are not around anymore, and who have leeched enough on the coin that is now ours. Monero has a great future. The enemies are constantly critizicing us for the lack of leadership. Now is our chance, a crucial one at that, to show that they are wrong. We are all in the same boat, and it is burning. How about doing what it takes now, so that we can continue to other things?

[Hueristic]

If the emission is really such a terrible problem, then why isn't boolberry or another cryptonote with slower emission taking more of the total cryptonote market cap? Are you suggesting extending the emission by more than a factor of two (I believe boolberry is emitted twice as slowly as monero)?

While I admire the efforts of every other CN coin quite a bit, they've really been mostly socially eclipsed by this one since the first day. One, maybe two, of them slipped out for a little while, and have recently returned to being little more than a whisper. Saying this now doesn't exclude from these facts changing in the future, only that right this day, we can't compare social issues of a coin with a community to social issues of a coin with a negligible community.

My point here is that the 'social contract' of these other coins can't really be used as a comparison for the other ones right now, because there's not many people around to hold them to it - the communities are too small, and attention has been mostly from a pump group that's recently departed for the time being.

This is through and through a uniquely Monero issue at this point in time.

The problem isn't miners abandoning. Botnets mine a good proportion and sell their coins accordingly, contributing to the price decline. By launch a new coin, I mean something similar to what canth proposed and what I've seen other altcoins do. Create a new blockchain and have user's "transfer" their coins on the original blockchain to the new one based on the # of coins they hold in their wallet. So like starting a new beginning with a new, much better emission and keeping everything else that everyone loves(the logo, name, website, the ideals) and throwing away the thing that hurts the coin the most(the emission)

The biggest problem I see here is that requires developers to both back and do, as people aren't going to burn money without developer support of the new fork. I don't think any of our developers want to split from each other at this time, nor do I think they should .. but the one's we have now are just as undecided as we are on the subject .. so there's no reason or incentive for them to split up at all. I don't see this situation as possible, unless you've got developers?

Ok once again i explain it like if you guys are 5 years old:
What new FORK!?!?! It takes a few fucking lines of code to change the emission at block XYZ!

We are all open to change if the community reaches a consensus, but it hasn´t so far, so don´t even think of dropping the core team into this mess as it has nothing to do with us being in the way.
The reason why no consensus is reached is prolly because no one has found a good solution so far? An emission he can explain to every monero commuinity member and where the majority agrees that its better for us?
The problem is not on the Monero core team side nor is it on coding that, its solely a problem that till today no consensus has been reached and everyone who proposes something can´t really back it up.

Did some of you guys even talk to miners or poolops about this btw? I guess not even that happened, but flip it like you want they are an important part of the XMR ecosystem.

if you actually read my post upthread linking to pdf explaining that deflationary nature of a currency that is vulnerable to 51% attack will get attacked once the hashrate drops due to low fees and not enough adoption. this is exactly where monero is headed. i think it is better to be safe now than sorry later when the chain gets attacked.

Do you even know the Emission?? I guess not, before fees kick in it will take over 10 years with the current emission, if we arent successful till then i don´t know but i think we have other major problems then.

That PDF is from nicolas courtois who also released a lot of other rubbish whitepapers on bitcoin; why should i take him serious?


Once again: Don´t point out the problem; present a solution, make a better Emission curve and back it up why its better, present the advantages and disadvantages etc. Thats simply what i expect from a discussion. Just changing the Emission to be only half as fast or whatever can´t be the holy grail.

I love reading your posts. This Straight talk is refreshing.

[BanditryAndLoot]

What makes you thinking the price is too high now? I mean, it has dropped 90 % from the recent ATH in dollars. Some part of this is due to the massive dump of bitcoin but also it has dropped due to the dump which is going on all the time.
Personally I am refusing to buy any new coins unless there is no serious cut in emission.
Also I am not that excited the coin at this moment anymore mainly since I do not see much potential in a coin which has merely few million usd marketcap.
You can have abudantly coins which are "cheaper" than Monero but they are not having any community and therefore they are actually expensive.
A high marketcap is a sign of community and by looking Monero's marketcap I see the fact that it is hardly growing. I am refusing to become an (apathetic) bagholder of a coin. I prefer selling my Moneros and leaving for good if you guys cannot put more emphasis on the latter emission when it is needed the most.

Because of the exact proposals : Risto - I'm ready to move on. You - I do not see much potential in a coin which has merely few million usd marketcap.

Both of you have mentioned that you will stop buying. You can write the longest posts in the world ( I just saw Risto's above .. going to read it after I post this), with some of the best explanations, but the reality is that you don't want to be the only buyers because it costs you value now, and you feel that the 'community will move on to something else' and 'instamine'. All prospects I can sympathize with.

You can hold this price and watch as only 4 or 5 other people buy, or you can realize that you can come together and voice your proposals that you dont want to collectively burn through 35 BTC/day because you would want to buy in at a lower price to get more value .. but you don't want to do that with this coin, because you feel that any lower of a price will be going directly against your own self interests, which include "not see much potential in a coin which has merely few million usd marketcap".

And I can only agree with you - lowering the price will probably move you guys toward either having neutral, or likely even negative interest. Chances are that, by now, you all can't exit without a massive loss so what can we do from your perspective, other than charging on, hoping to burn less BTC/day by offering a change to emission schedule .. and hope that adoption picks up in the next 6 months. That locks in both keeping the marketcap high enough to be of your interest, and gives you a cheaper price.

But as I said before, I'm undecided. I mean, it's not even a large leap to say that there's likely quite a few people who would be interested in this if a few of you guys either were no longer involved, or became a neutral bystander. Sometimes people are just spiteful assholes I guess - which I can only say I'm sorry for. End of the day, there's more whales in the sea. I'd hate to see you guys go, because I think you're alright .. but maybe it's time for this school of minnows to look pretty for another whale some day? I can't even fathom being in your guys shoes, as it's obviously a sensitive subject .. but at least we're talking about it.

[binaryFate]

Meanwhile the price is going up. If it continues that way, I suppose at one point we could naturally stop this discussion?

[smooth]

Once again: Don´t point out the problem; present a solution, make a better Emission curve and back it up why its better, present the advantages and disadvantages etc. Thats simply what i expect from a discussion. Just changing the Emission to be only half as fast or whatever can´t be the holy grail.

The best suggestion I've seen, I think, is from BanditryAndLoot, who suggested to take the next 3.5 years (or pick some other such number) of rewards under the existing curve and flatten them.

My rationale for this would be that:

1. BTC and LTC have done okay with keeping he emissions flat for a while and then cutting them. This is total speculation but I might guess that keeping them flat for a while encourages participation, since people do not feel disadvantaged for having arrived a bit later in each cycle.

2. 3.5 (or 2.5 or whatever) years should most certainly be enough time for build out of the technology and for adoption to start to occur if it ever will. I don't think the current 1-2 years before we are well over 50% mined and people start to look at the coin as mature but with little to show for it is enough.

3. This causes no permanent change so it has less "social contract" issues. Once the end of the flattening period is reached everything is just exactly as it always was. This is probably the positive action that can be taken with the least reputation harm. Not zero necessarily, but everything else is worse.

I'm still undecided on whether anything should be changed.

[smooth]

Meanwhile the price is going up. If it continues that way, I suppose at one point we could naturally stop this discussion?

That would certainly be an interesting experiment!

Speaking as a speculator here, the current price action doesn't support the idea some have stated that merely having the discussion is bad for the coin price. Of course it is always hard to interpret price changes, with other factors involved.

[binaryFate]

Meanwhile the price is going up. If it continues that way, I suppose at one point we could naturally stop this discussion?

That would certainly be an interesting experiment!

Speaking as a speculator here, the current price action doesn't support the idea some have stated that merely having the discussion is bad for the coin price. Of course it is always hard to interpret price changes, with other factors involved.

Or this complete uncertainty about emission could have been priced in long ago, and actually discussing it currently isn't of any significant effect.