Post
Topic
Board Bitcoin Discussion
Re: Price stability, difficulty changes, fairness. infnite coins is NOT inflation
by
Timo Y
on 01/07/2011, 11:27:48 UTC
Voting will make the number of generated coins highly unpredictable. You are setting up a system prone to positive feedback loops that could create even more price instability.

I don't think that most people will vote altruistically or in the name of economic stability. A lot of miners will just vote for a very high number hoping to bring the weighted median up so they can make a few more coins. Once people get used to the fact that the block award keeps rising, they will vote for even bigger increases hoping to make up for the loss of value of their coins.  Hyperinflation could result.

Even your idea of "vetoing" for upper and lower bounds will be "abused" for selfish means: Many miners will set lower bounds (that they keep raising) simply to make sure other voters don't bring the median down again.


Here is a much less corruptible scheme that addresses your concerns:

Number of coins awarded per block = Difficulty

Simple, predictable, easy to understand by everybody, and likely to lead to (more or less) stable prices because difficulty is roughly proportional to the size of the economy.