If we update the figures Ive drawn-up in the pastconcerning sMerit circulation, we get:
600.000 sMerits Initial Airdrop
-350.129 sent sMerits (Merit Sources and regular forum members)
+175.065 Min estimate generated (first halving taken to its maximum theoretical degree, and not accounting for all the other halvings which I cannot estimate)
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424.936 Total unsent sMerits (aprox. *)
(*) Not all is really sendable really, due to inactive users, banned users, and so forth.
Now Merit Source pool is currently of 20.855 sMerits per 30 days. Being conservative, and taking into account that the pool size has varies over time, lets say a bare minimum average of 12k has been sent each month since the beginning of the Merit System. That would mean that at least 180.000 of the sent sMerits were originated by Merit Sources .The remaining 170.129 (350.129 180.000) would come from the Initial Airdrop and halvings.
So even in the best case scenario (no halvings), there are around 600.000 170.129 = 429.871 airdropped sMerits in user accounts (*).
After 15 months of the Merit System, I dont know how likely they are to come into the scene, but they also constitute a risk for merit trading. I would think that, after 15 months on non-usage, they should be withdrawn from the accounts on the basis of avoiding risks and not being into the Merit game anyway.
I definitely appreciate your calculations, DdmrDdmr, about how many airdropped smerits likely remain outstanding.
I both disagree with your conclusory assessments that there is a lot of abuse potential with those dormant smerits or that theymos needs to do something about those outstanding unused smerits (such as decay them)...
As far as I know, on at least, a couple theymos has already expressed a degree of reluctancy to decay unused smerits, and I doubt that use of old/stagnant smerits has yet risen to a level that such decay implementation would have become warranted. Of course opinions are going to vary in this regard.