Post
Topic
Board Development & Technical Discussion
Merits 1 from 1 user
Re: Tail emission ideas that retain the 21 million limit
by
stwenhao
on 02/06/2025, 12:42:36 UTC
⭐ Merited by vapourminer (1)
https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Prohibited_changes
Quote
These changes require the consent of every bitcoin-holder:
  • Increasing the total number of issued bitcoins beyond 21 million. Precision may be increased, but proportions must be unchanged.
Which means, that it should be optional. It is technically possible to make a chain, where each user can decide with signatures, if he wants to support that change or not. But, as I said before: burning coins is easier than making them out of thin air, in a backward-compatible way. Those, who disagree, will simply keep using the old version.

And also, the most likely outcome, is just some kind of fork, where there will be two coins: the original one, and the one with tail supply. And I guess it will be hard to convince all users, that the coin with tail supply is the real Bitcoin, and not just yet another altcoin. Because if tail supply supporters would want to avoid any forks, then they would need to trace the chain with the heaviest Proof of Work, and there are many reasons, why tail supply version may not reach hashrate majority.

Which also means, that tail supply supporters should be prepared to work within existing rules, because there are much more ways to even accidentally jump into the altcoin land, than they are to stay within Bitcoin (which is also, why there are so many altcoins: it is much easier to make yet another altcoin, than it is to improve Bitcoin, and stay compatible).

Another hint is to start from test networks: there are other prohibited changes, like network centralization. This assumption was broken in signet. Which means, that the whole idea will have much more chances to succeed, if it will be done as a test network first. And maybe it will even benefit from staying as a testnet, because weaker coins are for spending, and stronger coins are for saving.