Total supply increase

Eagle · March 13, 2019, 10:38pm

The total supply of Zcash could be increase in the future?? How?

kek · March 13, 2019, 11:31pm

outside of 21M …not happening

Blinky · March 14, 2019, 1:49am

My understanding is that ECC could basically change anything, including issuance, but it would still be up to users whether to choose run the new software with the changed issuance rules. An issuance change would almost certainly result in a chain fork. Someone please correct me if this is wrong.

I think Zooko talks about this hypothetically in this talk Governance Hard Forks Networks Zooko Wilcox Technion Cyber Computer Security - YouTube (Sorry no timestamp right now… I think it’s in the context of forks ?? if memory serves)

I have other thoughts but don’t want to get carried away with hypotheticals.

user000 · March 14, 2019, 2:50am

That’s what I’m concerned about too.

boxalex · March 14, 2019, 8:43am

Interesting question …

There is an interesting point when it comes to maximum supply most people never think about:

Decimals!

Most people use the number bevor the decimal in a currency and the total amount of that number as the max supply. That’s all about right but it isn’t the full story.

Example ZEC: 1.00000000 ZEC with 8 decimals, means there are 21,000,000 x 1 ZEC = 21M ZEC

Using decimals to calculate the maximum supply:

1 ZEC has 8 decimals, means that 1 ZEC has 100,000,000 MiniZEC’s (just calling them that here).
21M ZEC with 8 decimals means there are 21,000,000,000,000,000 MiniZEC’s.

With 8 decimals this is the amount that will be available as max. supply:
21,000,000,000,000,000 (Mini)ZEC’s in it’s smallest unit.

Example without decimals, let’s say there is a token without any decimal and 21M units to be released:

1XYZ x 21,000,000 = 21,0000 XYZ token in it’s smallest unit.

The examples above are just to show that 21,000,000M aren’t allways 21,000,000M at the end.

Does this really matter? It matters actually. For example at the beginning of BTC someone was able to buy 50 BTC at once while nowadays people buy 0.01 BTC, maybe in 10 years 0,00001 BTC and so on…

If we go further the real max supply could be increased with 2 methods:
1.) changing the contract and simply apply a higher number, for example from 21M to 50M. (direct max supply increase).
2.) adding another decimal(s) for example going from 8 decimals to 10 decimals. (indirect max supply increase)

johnwisdom · March 30, 2019, 1:17pm

Zatoshi

ChileBob · March 30, 2019, 4:04pm

‘Zits’ (20 chars)

Shawn · March 30, 2019, 5:10pm

The Zcash Foundation is on the record as opposing changes to the Zcash monetary policy (without broad consensus), which would include supply increases:

The Foundation opposes any change to the Zcash Founders’ Reward, even those that may benefit our balance sheet. Without overwhelmingly broad consensus, monetary policy changes cannot be supported

github.com

ZcashFoundation/zfnd/blob/master/_posts/blog/2018-07-10-founders-reward.md

---
layout: post
title: "Zcash Ecosystem Fund Controversy"
excerpt: "The Foundation's responses to contentious issues surrounding the Zcash Ecosystem Fund proposal."
categories: blog
tags: [governance]
image:
  feature:
date: 2018-07-10
author: zcashboard
---
At Zcon0, investor Eric Meltzer [proposed the Zcash Ecosystem Fund](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FY4JrU7bSFk), a new project that would use some of the [Founders’ Reward](https://blog.electriccoin.co/funding/?page=0) to create a DAO-like entity for backing Zcash-related startups. Last week Eric [posted a proposal on the Zcash forum](https://forum.zcashcommunity.com/t/proposal-to-create-a-zcash-ecosystem-fund-directly-funded-by-the-founders-reward/30111) describing how he envisioned the ZEF would work. “This should not be treated as a final document, but rather as a ‘request for comments’ to the Zcash community,” Eric wrote.

When the Foundation first heard about the Zcash Ecosystem Fund, several months before Zcon0, the plan was for it to be structured like a traditional venture capital firm, with limited partners contributing the investment funds. Instead, Eric’s proposal at Zcon0 and on the forum suggested reconfiguring the Founders’ Reward to fund the ZEF.

The Founders’ Reward is currently dispensed to a handful of Zcash co-creators. A proposal to redistribute their financial rights without asking them first, or at all, was very controversial. Zcash Company cryptographer Ariel Gabizon responded in a forum comment:

> The founders’ shares are theirs, like your salary and savings are yours. It is fine to suggest to someone - you should spend your money this way, you should donate to that cause, ect. [...] It’s not fine to pose as a question to the community - what should we do with this person’s money? That question implies it’s the community’s decision and doesn’t require the person’s consent.

Concurring with Ariel, forum moderator and Zcash Company engineer Daira Hopwood locked the thread. She explained her thinking [in a Reddit comment](https://www.reddit.com/r/zec/comments/8x259a/thread_proposing_a_redistribution_of_a_portion_of/e20t00k/):

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sonya · November 4, 2019, 7:27pm

Zooko posted about this recently, strongly advocating against any monetary changes: Protect the integrity of the monetary base supply schedule

fireice_uk · November 4, 2019, 11:09pm

How?

Technically it is pretty simple. Chain is whatever its nodes agree upon. For the same reason you can’t stop people from creating a fork of your blockchain - you can always run a node with different rules that will fork off and build its own chain.