{"id":22357,"date":"2018-04-02T04:00:00","date_gmt":"2018-04-02T04:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/ci027dc17280002489"},"modified":"2018-04-02T04:00:00","modified_gmt":"2018-04-02T04:00:00","slug":"going-meta-vitalik-buterin-issues-proposal-capping-ethereums-supply","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/bitcoinmagazine.com\/markets\/going-meta-vitalik-buterin-issues-proposal-capping-ethereums-supply","title":{"rendered":"Going Meta: Vitalik Buterin Issues Proposal For Capping Ethereum\u2019s Supply"},"content":{"rendered":"<div id=\"bsf_rt_marker\"><\/div><p>On a day when the cryptocurrency community was on high alert for gags, whimsical announcements and other tomfoolery, the creator of Ethereum, known for pulling his own <a href=\"https:\/\/blog.ethereum.org\/2017\/04\/01\/ethereum-dev-roundup-q1\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">pranks in the past<\/a>, stepped forth with a most serious proposal: setting a cap on Ethereum\u2019s monetary supply \u2014 which has long had no cap at all \u2014 at 120 million.<\/p>\n<p>On April 1, 2018, a day known as April Fools\u2019 Day, Vitalik Buterin published <a href=\"https:\/\/github.com\/ethereum\/EIPs\/issues\/960\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Ethereum Improvement Proposal (EIP) 960<\/a> to limit the supply of ether (ETH) to 120,204,432 \u2014 twice the amount issued in the <a href=\"https:\/\/elementsproject.org\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">project\u2019s presale<\/a> in 2014. To those paying close attention, the proposal was listed under \u201cmeta,\u201d a hint that this was a meta joke, meant to leave people scratching their heads and wondering if he was being serious or not.<\/p>\n<aside>\n<p>For those still wondering whether or not <a href=\"https:\/\/t.co\/z44anVrOuT\">https:\/\/t.co\/z44anVrOuT<\/a> was an April Fool\u2019s joke, the answer is: it was an April Fool\u2019s meta-joke. *The point* was seeing people argue about whether or not the proposal is \u201creal\u201d.<\/p>\n<p>&#8211; Vitalik<\/p>\n<\/aside>\n<blockquote class=\"twitter-tweet\" data-width=\"550\" data-dnt=\"true\">\n<p lang=\"en\" dir=\"ltr\">For those still wondering whether or not <a href=\"https:\/\/t.co\/z44anVrOuT\">https:\/\/t.co\/z44anVrOuT<\/a> was an April Fool&#39;s joke, the answer is: it was an April Fool&#39;s meta-joke. *The point* was seeing people argue about whether or not the proposal is &quot;real&quot;.<\/p>\n<p>&mdash; vitalik.eth (@VitalikButerin) <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/VitalikButerin\/status\/980744740277661696?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">April 2, 2018<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p><script async src=\"https:\/\/platform.twitter.com\/widgets.js\" charset=\"utf-8\"><\/script><\/p>\n<aside>\n<p>If the community wants fixed supply and people believe that EIP 960 is a good way to achieve that, then it should adopt the proposal. If the community does not, then it should not. This is true regardless of whether or not the original intent was in jest.<\/p>\n<\/aside>\n<blockquote class=\"twitter-tweet\" data-width=\"550\" data-dnt=\"true\">\n<p lang=\"en\" dir=\"ltr\">If the community wants fixed supply and people believe that EIP 960 is a good way to achieve that, then it should adopt the proposal. If the community does not, then it should not. This is true regardless of whether or not the original intent was in jest.<\/p>\n<p>&mdash; vitalik.eth (@VitalikButerin) <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/VitalikButerin\/status\/980745388691922945?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">April 2, 2018<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p><script async src=\"https:\/\/platform.twitter.com\/widgets.js\" charset=\"utf-8\"><\/script><\/p>\n<p>All meta joking aside, the proposal recommends implementing the cap as part of a hard fork when the platform switches from its proof-of-work consensus algorithm to <a href=\"https:\/\/github.com\/ethereum\/casper\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Casper<\/a>, a proof-of stake algorithm still in development, as early as the end of this year.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cIn order to ensure the economic sustainability of the platform under the widest possible variety of circumstances, and in light of the fact that issuing new coins to proof of work miners is no longer an effective way of promoting an egalitarian coin distribution or any other significant policy goal, I propose that we agree on a hard cap for the total quantity of ETH,\u201d the proposal states.<\/p>\n<p>This is the first time Buterin has suggested setting a limit on Ethereum\u2019s supply of ether.<\/p>\n<h3>Why set a Cap?<\/h3>\n<p>Some argue that a supply limit is important to a cryptocurrency because it creates scarcity, making a \u201ccoin\u201d more valuable, sort of like gold. Yet, a hard cap can also mean there is no way to replenish the supply when coins fall out of circulation due to people dying, losing them or even holding on to them.<\/p>\n<p>Unlike Bitcoin, which has a supply limit of 21 million coins programmed into it, Ethereum has never had a monetary cap, which means over time the number of ether in the system could go up indefinitely.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>On a day when the cryptocurrency community was on high alert for gags, whimsical announcements and other tomfoolery, the creator of Ethereum, known for pulling his own pranks in the past, stepped forth with a most serious proposal: setting a cap on Ethereum\u2019s monetary supply \u2014 which has long had no cap at all \u2014 [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3488,"featured_media":22358,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[34],"tags":[621,2628],"class_list":["post-22357","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-markets","tag-ethereum","tag-vitalik-buterin"],"author_data":{"id":3488,"name":"Amy Castor","nicename":"amy-castor","avatar_url":"https:\/\/bitcoinmagazine.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/12\/amy-castor-promo-image-96x96.jpg"},"featured_image_url":"https:\/\/bitcoinmagazine.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/11\/metavitalikwidth-800.jpg","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/bitcoinmagazine.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22357","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/bitcoinmagazine.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/bitcoinmagazine.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bitcoinmagazine.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3488"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bitcoinmagazine.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=22357"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/bitcoinmagazine.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22357\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bitcoinmagazine.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/22358"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/bitcoinmagazine.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=22357"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bitcoinmagazine.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=22357"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bitcoinmagazine.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=22357"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}