The big debate over Ethereum supply is on and it’s getting heated. If you do not follow; the network’s infinite supply has been the subject of much discussion since its inception in 2015.
That means unlike Bitcoin (and thousands of other cryptocurrencies), there is no ‘cap’ for how many Ethers can exist in the open market – with the idea that supply grows every year as long as Ethereum exists.
The total supply to Ether was approximately 110.5 million as of April 16, 2020. In 2017, mining generated 9.2 million new ETH, which corresponds to a 10% increase in its total supply. There is currently no hard cap implemented on the total supply of ETH.
Until now, there was none major problem with how Ethereum worked. Yes, the critics were always present and ICO fanatics made millions, but no one really cared what the Ethereum offer was (as long as bags were pumped).
But since this month – on the back of a rise in DeFi projects – the criticism has risen, and it is not the run-of-the-mill crypto scammers that are raising questions. Instead, leading members of the Bitcoin community are leading the charge in search of the one true answer; how much ETH anyway?
Bitcoin community asks
It started when Micheal Goldstein praised Arcane Research CIO Eric Wall’s Twitter thread; “Can they articulate how to control ETH’s monetary supply easily and independently?”
Timeline for ETH offer for drama:
Eric Wall claims that ETH-maxis are more articulate and refined than Bitcoiners
ETH maxi indicates Etherscan when asked to provide total ETH #’s.
Pierre asks for a script to check for himself
ETH maxi says it’s too trivial to do bare / function (???)
1 /
– grubles (@notgrubles) August 8, 2020
When asked about Bitcoin’s 21 million supply cap, Goldstein said the asset can be verified by anyone using a Bitcoin cli and a full node.
It is a trivial task to control the monetary supply of Bitcoin with bitcoin-cli with your own complete node. pic.twitter.com/KMMXeE5ytf
– Michael Goldstein (@bitstein) August 6, 2020
Andrew, a thread commentator who seems to explain how Ethereum’s inadequate offering was comparable to Bitcoin’s, said the former could be appropriated using a model of issuance rules with the current release. However, Monero lead developer, and code maintainer, Riccardo Spagni was quick to explain that any interested party can ‘independently’ verify the Bitcoin offer – with the same relatively difficult thing to do for Ethereum, he stated.
The keyword in @bitsteinThe Tweet was “independent”. You can absolutely control the current supply of Bitcoin independently. Have fun trying to do the same with Ethereum.
– Riccardo Spagni (@fluffypony) August 6, 2020
Ethereum co-founder explains
After the thread above began to arouse more interest in how much ETH is really in circulation, Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin jumped on his Twitter account to explain his view. He tweeted:
I love how people so awkwardly tried to push etherum on the lack of a pre-set “21 million” -like hard cap, when transaction costs over the past 2 months are high enough to more than completely cancel PoS rewards post -EIP 1559. pic.twitter.com/TuyZMotacu
– vitalik.eth (@VitalikButerin) August 7, 2020
He later mentioned how he could control the Ethereum offering, using this link. In further remarks, Buterin noted there were 112 million ETH in circulation.
Here are the rules for what the rewards are: https://t.co/4XCViRgzMZ
And you can run a node to make sure the current chain actually reflects those rules!
– vitalik.eth (@VitalikButerin) August 7, 2020
But some, like developer and Bitcoin trainer Pierre Rochard, were not convinced:
I will send 1 million batches to anyone who writes this script and executes it successfully against their own ETH node within the next 12 hours.
👇 https://t.co/k6IKspum3O
– Pierre Rochard (@pierre_rochard) August 7, 2020
Meanwhile, “Leon” ran the script and came up with several different delivery figures when he (claimed on Twitter) ran the script:
This is unbelievable. Popular block explorers and coinmarketcap all show a different ETH offering
Maybe fix this before Ethereum 2.0 frens launches https://t.co/Nf8sq2PO9W
– Udi Wertheimer (@udiWertheimer) August 7, 2020
And of course, it could not have been a crypto-argument without someone throwing a meme:
Unconscious mysteries of the universe:
– What happens when you die?
– What is the meaning of life?
– How much ETH is there?– jimbrrra 👁👄👁 (@jimbocoin) August 7, 2020
The debate rages on.
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