One more idea. I like the thinking—from you, tloriato, and others, of destroying the Sprout coins as setting a precedent. It changes the future social contract.
Here are two possible understandings people could have of what they are getting into:
- You can keep your coins untouched indefinitely and everyone else will pay the costs for you → Not great. Not sustainable. It cannot be sustained indefinitely. And anyway, why should future generations pay the costs for previous generations?
- At some unpredictable point in the future a governance process that is unpredictable to you will destroy your coins → Not great. Undermines trust. How can you know this governance process won’t eventually be abused to benefit others at your expense?
What would a sustainable and trustworthy social contract be? How about something like:
- If you touch your coins at least once every year, they are first-class. They’re indistinguishable from everyone else’s coins mathematically, so nobody and no governance process can discriminate against you even if they tried. If you don’t, you’ll incur a 1% fee the first couple of years to get your attention and compensate everyone else for the costs, and then that fee will escalate year after year, until, if your coins are still untouched after 8 years, the fee reaches 100%.
In my view this kind of social contract would balance both goals nicely.