One question I have for the developers is how many total coins will there be? You mention in your earlier thread that one billion will be distributed initially, which could now be outdated information. Please clarify.
From this thread:
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=525419 : « There will be 1 000 000 000 (one billion) sparks distributed initially, with nothing at all premined or reserved for the developers »
This information has not changed since, we will stick with this number.
Yes, I saw that. It says
INITIALLY. I wanted you to confirm the
TOTAL lifetime amount of coins. Is the total one billion? Thank you.
Yes, with no mining, the number of coins can not go up.
However, as we mentioned on the original post, there is an annual 10% proof of stake inflation of the total amount of coins. This gives a small advantage to people who decide to have their Sparks in a wallet (even locked/cold storage) where they can hoard them or spend them in shops and e-commerces. The reason for this is that we want to encourage people to use wallets for their Sparks instead of keeping them on exchanges.
The PoS minting is done every day (about 0.028% inflation per day), and is the only way new Sparks can be introduced. It would not even be possible for us to insert more Sparks in the economy without making a hard fork, as only the cloud with the id 0 can contain new Sparks, and that cloud has already been generated and locked.
The stake generation will only start after a bit over one year, on the 1st of May 2015. Until then, the number of coins in circulation will be exactly one billion, not less not more.
Great! Thanks for clearing that up. I knew about the staking, I just wasn't clear on if the "1 000 000 000 (one billion) sparks distributed initially" was still accurate or if that information was based on your previous plan to release the coins in 10% increments. I understand fully now.