The past thirty days have seen a prolonged debate on an important matter: Ethereum’s Issuance. But be it an important matter or not – few of us seem to understand what’s going on.

To be fair, this issue has complexities that has brought indecision to even the best minds of this space. So, it’s not surprising that many of us have decided to glaze over the issue. However, as a community, we owe it to ourselves to understand at least the basics of this issue.

In this post, I will break down the Ethereum Issuance debate as simply as possible.  This will be an easy read – and by the end of the post you will have a firm understanding of what is going on.

Ethereum is “inflationary”. You hear it all the time. But many don’t seem to understand how the inflation is caused. It’s rather simple.  Ethereum miners get rewarded for mining new blocks. These miners get rewarded/paid in Ether. But this isn’t “existing” Ethereum; this is Ether that is freshly minted/created.

Essentially, miners are rewarded by issuing freshly minted Ether into the system. This “inflates” the existing supply in the market.  Hence the term “Inflation Rate”

The Ethereum inflation rate and issuance rate are pretty much the same thing – for the most part. There’s a tiny ‘difference’ that is worth discussing.  Let’s think about this for a second. There are two factors that will affect Ethereum’s inflation rate:

1. The speed at which fresh Ether is given out
2. The AMOUNT of Ether given out each time

Analogy
I can give you one piece of candy every minute; OR give you ten pieces of candy every ten minutes. Either way, over time I inflate your candy supply  at the same rate. You’ll have 100 candy pieces in 100 minutes.

Speed of Ether Issuance

Currently, the speed at which Ether is issued out is pretty stable. Ether is issued to miners as a reward each time a new block is created/validated. As things stand, the time taken to create a block is relatively stable at ~14 seconds.

However, if Ethereum increases the difficulty of “block creation”, then it will take longer to create each block. This is what people are referring to when they mention the “difficulty bomb”.  If it takes longer to create create blocks, then less Ether will be rewarded over a period of time

Analogy
I stop giving you 10 pieces of candy every 10 minutes, and instead give you 10 pieces of candy every 15 minutes. After 100 minutes, you’ll have only 66 pieces of candy (instead of 100)

Amount of Ether Issuance

The amount of Ether issued for each reward is the next driving factor for Ethereum’s inflation rate. And this is the most debated factor at the moment. Ethereum is currently issuing roughly 5.5 Ether per block (as rewards) If Ethereum decides to reduce the amount of Ether given out per reward, then the inflation rate will drop regardless of the difficulty bomb.

Analogy
I keep giving you candy every 10 minutes. However, I give you only 6 pieces of candy each time – instead of 10. You’ll have only 60 pieces of candy after 100 minutes.

The Problem

Reducing the Ether issued will cut into miner profits. But not reducing Ether issuance will anger the rest of the community (more on why later)

The current inflation rate is around 7.3% annually. The Ethereum community was promised somewhere around 2% - 4% with the release of Casper. (In fact, Vitalik once quoted ~0.5% as a feasible number – leading to even more expectations)

So, the community has been patiently waiting on a reduction in Ethereum’s inflation rate. This was supposed to happen with the release of Ethereum’s Proof Of Stake: Casper. If you’re keeping updated, you know about the delay on the Casper release.

​Casper was also supposed to include a “difficulty bomb” that would increase the time it takes to find a block. This would decrease the ethereum inflation rate

However, since Casper has been delayed, the community wants the matter of issuance being addressed right away.  If Ethereum has to delay the difficulty bomb, then the other course of action is to reduce the amount of Ether being issued per block. Many community members are advocating for a reduction of issuance that would align inflation rate to ~2%.  This would align the inflation rate to what it would be if Proof Of Stake was not delayed.

However the Ethereum Miners don’t like that idea – since it would cut directly into their profits. It’s important to note that Ethereum is still using Proof Of Work – which consumes a lot more power per block than Proof Of Stake would. Many miners claim that they would be forced off the network since the rewards would not be enough to cover their costs.

Miners do more than just process/validate our transactions. Each miner contributes to the security of the network via their hashpower. If overall hashpower drops, the network is easier to attack. (I touch on this in a YouTube video on 1% Shard Attack)

Essentially, the more miners we have, the more security we have. If miners drop off the network, security will begin to drop – and we’re more vulnerable to attacks.

As you may now be noticing, this issue does not have an easy solution. But we can get a better idea of which direction to take. First, let’s quickly go over where we currently stand.

The current Ether that is being issued is roughly 5.5 Ether per block. It’s important to note that unlike Bitcoin, the reward issuance is not straightforward.  Here is a simplified breakdown of the rewards distributed:

• Block Reward:  3 Ether
  Uncle Rewards:  ~2.4 Ether
  
  
• Total Ether issued per block: ~5.4 Ether   (Issuance reduction will decrease this)
  No. of blocks per day:  ~6000 Blocks (difficulty bomb will decrease this)
  ​
  
• Current Annual Increase:  ~7.3% (issuance reduction and/or difficulty bomb will reduce this)

(If you know what are Uncle Rewards , then you can skip this section)

Unlike Bitcoin, Ethereum rewards miners that find blocks that don’t make it into the longest chain. These blocks that are considered “stale” in Bitcoin, and are orphaned. In Ethereum these are called Uncles and are rewarded for their work.

This is primarily because Ethereum has a much lower block-time (the average time required to find a block). This “small window” may result in smaller miners unfairly losing out on potential rewards due to network latency etc. As such, miners are rewarded for their work.

Of course, we cannot predict the exact number of Uncles – but we’re estimating that around 2.4 Ether will be given out to Uncles on average. Uncle Rewards are important because they:

a) Incentivise decentralization (small miners are less likely to join pools)
b) Increase the security of the chain. (more on this in another post)

Alright, now the fun part. There are three proposals – Ethereum Improvement Proposals  (EIPs) to be specific. Here’s a list and summary of each of them:

This would be a significant decrease from 3 ETH to 1 ETH. It would probably put several small/mid-size miners in the negative profitability.  Many miners may drop off the network. However, this would probably benefit miners who have access to cheap electricity since they will be able to accrue more rewards for themselves. Larger miners may probably benefit for the same reasons.

This will be a significant reduction to the Uncle Rewards – from ~2.4 ETH to  ~0.56 ETH. Ouch. This will affect small miners the most since they rely on the Uncle Rewards. Furthermore, this reduces the incentive for them to remain independent; and may lead to larger shift of small miners to joining pools.  Of course, larger miners who aren’t affected by network latency issues do not get affected by this reduction. They benefit the most from this since the issuance will be maintained.

This EIP seems to be receiving the most favour from the community. It serves as a good middle ground. it will still eat into profits of miners, but not as significantly as the reduction that EIP 858 proposes. EIP-1234 does seem to have an air of “compromise”. It will offer developers enough time to develop & release Casper while keeping both sides of the community at bay. Is compromise the best way to go? -shrug-

 A vote took place – that lasted 30 days – where the community voted on their preference. Although the results were leaning significantly toward one side, these results are not binding. The vote was more-so to gauge community sentiment. Quite frankly, this issue is far too important to be decided over a vote like this. It requires serious consideration & research.

There was a core-dev meeting that took place last week where the matter was discussed. It seems like the developers are leaning towards EIP1234 – the reduction to 2ETH. However, I'm not certain if this has been confirmed.  If so, EIP1234 will be included in the upcoming hardfork scheduled for mid October.

I’ll keep you guys posted – and I will be updating this post regularly as news develops.

UPDATE:  Seems like EIP1234 has been accepted – on a conditional basis, however. Furthermore, the proposal still remains in a "draft" state, and minor changes may be made before finalisation

Constantly having to covert Gwei to Ether for transaction/gas fees can be frustrating. The irony is that “gwei’ and all other ether units were created to rid user frustration and promote adoption. The intent was definitely well thought out - you can trust Vitalik & team with logical ideation. But perhaps we require a bit more insight on Ethereum’s units and its intent.  It may just alleviate our frustration for all future transactions.

Let’s just say Ethereum’s core team took a history lesson from bitcoin before they brought forth all the Ether Unit monsters.

In order to grasp the concept of ‘gwei’, lets begin with something we’re all familiar with:

The money in our wallets!
(or if you’re anything like me - the money in the deepest corner of your jeans pocket)

The money in our wallets, regardless of currency, likely also comes in denominations. But for the purpose of this explainer, lets focus on the US Dollar. 1 US Dollar has four denominations: Cents (1 cent), Nickles (5 cents), Dimes (10 cents), and Quarters (25 cents).

Like the US Dollar, Ether too has denominations.
Remember, "Ether" is the currency used within the Ethereum Blockchain. Not ‘Eth’, Not ‘Ethereum’. .... "Ether"

Ether has three primary denominations, namely (lowest to highest): 

• Wei       
• Gwei       
• Finney    

In essence, ‘Gwei’ is simply a denomination of Ether - So when converting Gwei to Ether’ for gas, remember that ‘Gwei’ is Ether - Just a fraction of it. Similar to a regular economy, there are many microtransactions taking place on the Ethereum Blockchain that require payments in fractions.

Just like how a vendor wouldn’t ask you to pay “1/10th of a dollar” for a plastic bag (let’s be realistic - that’s all you’ll get), the ethereum blockchain wouldn’t ask you pay "0.0000021 ether" for transaction fees. It’s just a difficult price to convey.

Instead, you’d be asked to pay 10 cents for the plastic bag, and 2100 gwei for transaction fees. Sounds much better, doesn’t it?

When dealing with currency, fractions are difficult to convey, tedious to convert, and aren’t very user friendly. Hence, the introduction of user friendly denominations, like Gwei.

When considering all three ether units: Wei, Gwei & Finney, you can’t help but wonder - ' why couldn’t Ethereum decide on one denomination? Gwei to ether and vice versa? '
Note: There are actually 10 different ether units, 3 wasn’t too bad a compromise.

It appears that Vitalik was looking to future proof Ethereum so that people could always have an open dialogue about ether in varying quantities regardless of ether price.

the goal of specifying suggestions for all of them was to have some schelling point on what to use for smaller denominations so that people could easily talk about varying quantities of ether regardless of whether the ETH price was $0.01, $10 or $100,000 - Vitalik Buterin

All suggested ethereum units were meant to be a schelling point (an anchor term like cents) depending on various use cases. For now, the three primary ether denominations were meant for the following ether:

• Finney = for micropayments
• Gwei = for gas prices
• Wei = for discussion around APIs and other use cases

If ether’s value skyrockets like that of bitcoin, we’d likely see a rise in ‘finney’ in various ether uses and discussions.

Businesses – small or large – face issues with finality of payments quite often. A consumer can attempt to reverse his payment made via VISA or PayPal. In these scenarios, settlement finality conflicts are handled by the middleman.

However,  middleman-solutions are always going to be a point-of-weakness for finality. What if people in key positions are bribed?  What if  centralised servers are hacked? In a centralised solutions, there's always a chance that finality is reverted. Each intermediary will pose a risk point.

Comparatively, a blockchain uses no intermediary. It achieves finality via it's consensus method. Notable consensus methods are Proof Of Work and Proof of Stake. Both of which eliminate several weaknesses of centralised systems. However, neither of them achieve true finality. Finality will always be probabilistic (i.e there's a chance – however small – that a transaction can be reversed) 

First, let's go over finality in proof of stake and proof of work.

Settlement Finality: Proof of Work & Proof Of Stake

So, Mike – a Mango reader –  emailed me with this question a few days ago:

“ Hey Shawn, I enjoyed your explanation on Sharding. Thank you. But now I’m  trying to understand what makes Proof Of Stake less resource intensive than Proof Of Work? Doesn’t the verification process need to take place the same way? ”

This is actually a really good question, Mike! It shows that your understanding is growing deeper. Your asking the right questions!

Yes, PoW and PoS conduct the validation/verification of transactions similarly. As such, Proof Of Stake  consumes just as much resources to verifiy transactions as Proof Of Work does.

However, it’s important to note that the “verification of transactions” is not what makes Proof Of Work resource intensive. It is the Cryptographic Puzzle  – required to be solved by all miners –  that consumes a large majority of the resources.

Many of us tend to believe that it's the validation of transactions consumes the resources. In truth, the majority of the resources is consumed while solving the Cryptographic Puzzle - which has nothing to do with the validation/verification of transactions.

In fact, Proof Of Work and other consensus methods are more concerned with the ordering of transactions than the "validation" of transactions. The ordering of transactions is resolved by getting miners to solve the Cryptographic Puzzle.

Miners solve the cryptographic puzzle in order to win the “right” to place their block next on the chain. And it’s the solving for the "cryptographic puzzle" that is computationally intensive - not the verifications transactions.  

In my previous posts, I discussed Ethereum Sharding & Scalability. Several of you have been following the series and have asked me some intriguing questions.

A question that has come up multiple times is:  
​“Will Ethereum’s Scalability lead to a reduced “scarcity” and thus suppress the price of Ether?”

It’s a fair question, since scalability will lead to reduced operations/transaction costs. And that’s precisely what creates the demand for Ether. But the answer isn’t as intuitive as most would think.

Ether’s Scalability, Scarcity & Price

On one hand you’d think that Ethereum scaling should increase the price. After all, scalability is a good thing, right?

But on the other hand, scalability will lead to lower transaction fees. Since transaction costs are paid for in Ether – wouldn’t Ether be consumed less? And hence needed less? Therefore, is it fair to assume that the demand for Ether will decline because we’d need less of it?

Finally, if less Ether is needed for operation costs on the network, would the “scarcity” of Ether reduce? (leading to price suppression)

So which is it? Will scalability lead to a price up or price down?

Jevon’s Paradox - Coal & Steam,  Ether & Gas

English Economist William Jevons observed this paradox during the era of coal-fired steam engines.

He’s essentially saying: People assume that technological improvements that lead to efficient usage of fuel will in turn lead to reduced usage of fuel. But the opposite is true

Ether & Jevon’s Paradox:  The Rebound

Yes, transaction fees will decrease as the Ethereum network achieves scalability. However, this does not mean that the price of Ether will decrease as well.

As we scale into mass adoption, Ether will be used for various operations across a wide range of diverse industries. With this, the consumption of Ether will rise in response to lower prices. Eventually, we will reach a point of “rebound” where the gains in efficiency are overcome by the rise in consumption.

There are several examples of technological advances increasing the efficiency and availability while prices have still gone up. 

A perfect example is the price of fuel for your car (gas)
​Technology has made fuel far more efficient. We consume it more efficiently, and we find it more efficiently too. But the demand for fuel has only gone up with time.

Ether & Scarcity: To Infinity And Beyond

Finally, let’s understand what Scarcity really is - People tend to believe that scarcity is defined by the item/resource, but in truth, it’s defined by us humans and our needs.

And we live in a digital age where the “want” to conduct transactions/operations as efficiently as possible is fast approaching “infinite”.

As the cost of each operation on the Ethereum network reduces, humans will “want” to use the network more and more. But, Ethereum at any given point of time, is finite in number. (setting aside the minor inflation, of course)

Note: There’s a difference between a “shortage” and “scarcity”. Shortages are caused by rising prices, while scarcity results from falling prices.

However, as the village began to grow, they found it difficult to keep up with the system.

Maintaining the Security of the ledger was a tedious and time-consuming task.  It was essential that they cross-check & validate the ledgers properly. Any shortcuts would lead to security-vulnerabilities. Eventually, the village grew into a city, and they simply could not keep up with the task of maintaining the ledger anymore.

Essentially, the village wasn’t able to take their system and Scale it in preparation for the growth of the city.

In order to scale, the villagers had to alter their solution. They were wary of having a single middle-man due to their past experience with Mr.Ledger. So they appointed a group of individuals to maintain the ledger and keep a check on each other.

Conclusion​

As things stand, blockchain solutions are struggling the find the right balance balance to the trilemma.  Vitalik Buterin proposes Sharding to theoretically break the trilemma. I explain Sharding (using another analogy) in a previous post. It’s an ingenious solution – but still has some form of sacrifice. 

Other blockchain solutions that have high scalability have done so by sacrificing decentralization. EOS is a notable example that uses Delegated Proof Of Stake. This is essentially much like appointing (delegating) a group of individuals to manage the ledger – much like our village analogy.

Finally, other solutions like Radix, HashGraph and IOTA are not blockchains. They do not have the architectural limitations that blockchains do.

Sharding is an initiative to tackle the scalability issues that Ethereum faces. All blockchains are limited by their architecture & design. How? Because every node in the blockchain processes every single transaction. While this enforces a high degree of security/reliability (explained in this post), it also limits the scalability.

Sharding improves the scalability of the Ethereum blockchain by splitting the network into smaller “groups/pieces”.

Remember from our post on Consensus Methods, that consensus or “agreement” is achieved by a majority agreeing on the state of the ledger.

Remember that if we SHARD in PoW, we are breaking up the network into "pieces". Hence, to achieve a “majority” hashpower in a particular shard would suddenly become feasible (since each shard will have only a “piece” of the total hash power”)

Proof Of Stake

Proof Of Stake – along with this structure – allows Ethereum to do something that it cannot do (easily) in PoW. And that is the ability conduct “random-sampling”.

Since Super-Nodes are depositing their Ether, we can use that to randomly assign them to a shard. The assignments are reshuffled regularly as well.

This will ensure that attackers:

Comparing a Blockchain to a DLT  is like comparing an Apple to a Fruit. An Apple IS A Fruit.  Similarly, a Blockchain IS A DLT (Distributed Ledger Technology)

I've also received questions on whether or not the Bitcoin blockchain and distributed ledger technology have anything in common. Let's use another analogy to answer this question.

The Bitcoin Blockchain and Distributed Ledger Technology synonymous to "Google" and "Search Engine". Google is a specific type of Search Engine.  Similarly,  the Bitcoin blockchain is a specific type of distributed ledger technology.  

 Bitcoin IS a Distributed Ledger Technology (DLT). 

Remember, in the previous section we discussed how a blockchain is a sub-category of a DLT. There are many types of DLTs; and blockchains are only one of them. Similarly, there are many types of blockchains; and the bitcoin blockchain is just one of them. 

What is a DLT?

So what exactly is a DLT ?  Again, I will attempt to make this as easy to understand as possible.  A DLT – Distributed Ledger Technology – simply distributes information to multiple computers. These computers could be spread across the world. The primary aim is to reduce the risk of central storage.

Distributed Ledger Technology is the umbrella term to describe any system that distributes data across multiple sites. There are several types of DLTs.

A Blockchain is a type of DLT that organises its data in a “chain of blocks”. Each block encompasses a bunch of data that is verified & validated and then chained to the next block. Hence the term “blockchain”.  This data  – in the form of chained “blocks” – is distributed to everyone in the network.

That’s how a Blockchain type of DLT is typically implemented. Other DLT types may choose to implement differently. Radix, Corda and IOTA are all different types of implementations of DLTs. None of which are Blockchains.

This is another frequently asked question: Blockchain vs Databases – what's the difference? Technically, Databases are used within a Blockchain system. So a comparison between a Blockchain VS Databases is akin to  a comparison between Heart and a Body. The heart lies within the body; and is a core part of the system. Similarly, databases are used within the Blockchain system.

Remember, DLTs are simply databases that are distributed across multiple sites. And Blockchains are simply a type of Distributed Ledger Technology.  So essentially, a blockchain comprises of structured databases – that are distributed.

Blockchain vs Distributed Databases

This is where things get tricky.  If a Blockchain is simply a system of distributed databases, then what's the difference between a Blockchain and a Distributed Database? This really boils down to the interpretation of a "Blockchain". 

The first Blockchain system was introduced in 2008, and its goal was to escape the shackles of centralisation. Usually, when people talk about  Blockchain technology, they are referring to a distributed system with no central control. However, when they talk about  Distributed Databases, they are referring to high powered distributed systems that have a central authority. 

To sum it up, a Distributed Database has a central authority that requires trust; while a Blockchain is typically a trustless system that has no central authority 

Can we have a system that has sufficient number of “professors” (nodes) to still maintain the security –  while being small enough to increase the speed at which your assignments are returned (throughput of the network)?

Ethereum Sharding - Structure

Okay, so I may have oversimplified a tiny bit. But now that you understand the gist, you’ll understand this part a lot easier.

In each shard/group, we have nodes that are assigned as “Collators”.  Collators are tasked with gathering mini-descriptions of transactions & the current state of the shard.

In our analogy, you can think of Collators as Teacher’s Assistants. All the TA’s in shard/group do the first run through of all the assignments within the shard.

Finally, we have super-nodes. Each super-node receives the collations created by the collators of each shard. They then processes the transactions within those collations. Furthermore, they maintain the full-description/state data of all the shards – which they get from the collators as well.

You can probably see the benefits of this structure. The number of nodes that process every single transaction would be greatly reduced, and thus increase overall throughput.