This page is maintained and kept ~up-to-date~ by Caspar. Feel free to ping with questions/comments/requests on Twitter or Telegram @casparschwa, and please point out missing resources.
Ethereum's issuance policy is effective at ensuring a minimum level of staking and thereby economically guaranteeing reasonable security.
However, the current issuance policy has effectively no control over the upper limit of stake participation. A too high staking ratio, (staked ETH / total ETH), comes with downsides that need to be considered carefully.
For this reason, proposals to change Ethereum's issuance policy were put forward and are currently discussed.
The goal of this document is to collect resources (writeups/talks/podcasts/etc.) relevant to Ethereum's current issuance discussion.
Disclaimer: This section is subjective. Please take a look at the following section for a more exhaustive and unopinionated list of resources.
For an overview on the current issuance debate, the following resources are a good starting point; in ~rough~ order of suggested consumption:
| Author | Title | Description | Type | Date | 🤯? |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Anders | Minimum Viable Issuance | Long thread arguing for minimum viable issuance to be an important pledge to the regular Ethereum user. | Post | 7 Oct 2023 | 🤯🤯 |
| Anders | Properties of issuance level: consensus incentives and variability across potential reward curves | Analyzes the effect of issuance level on consensus incentives and reward variability across potential reward curves. Recommends decreasing issuance at high staking levels, by changing the issuance curve from cF√D to cF√D(1+kD). | Post | 24 Jan 2024 | 🤯 🤯 🤯 |
| Ansgar & Caspar | Endgame Staking Economics: A case for targeting | Explores the past, current and probable future of staking levels, what negative externalities of too much stake are, and argues for why targeting a low % of stake is desirable as the endgame issuance policy. | Post | 22 Feb 2024 | 🤯🤯 |
| Ansgar & Caspar | Electra: Issuance Curve Adjustment Proposal | Short-term proposal to lower issuance curve from cF√D to cF√D(1+kD) as proposed and analyzed by Anders. This adjustment is proposed as an intermediate step toward the envisioned endgame: stake targeting. | Post | 22 Feb 2024 | 🤯🤯 |
| Julian | Initial Analysis of Stake Distribution | It presents a minimum non-trivial model to analyze the distribution of stake with respect to the level of issuance. | Post | 15 Mar 2024 | 🤯 🤯 🤯 |
| Mike | Issuance Issues — Initial Issue | Mike's personal distillation of issuance debate and why to change issuance policy. | Post | 30 Mar 2024 | 🤯 |
| Anders | Reward curve with tempered issuance: EIP research post | Aims to present the rationale for a reward curve with tempered issuance, i.e., cF√D(1+kD). | Post | 1 Apr 2024 | 🤯🤯🤯 |
| Anders | Foundations of minimum viable issuance | Takes a closer look at the dynamics of cost and surplus in staking, demonstrating how all token holders can benefit from reduced issuance. | Post | 17 Apr 2024 | 🤯 |
| Anders | Reward curve with capped issuance | Discusses a reward curve with capped issuance, as opposed to tempered issuance. | Post | 18 Apr 2024 | 🤯🤯 |
| Mike | Issuance Issues — Subsequent Soliloquy | Walks through a key point of the issuance endgame™ post argument-by-argument to provide more intuition: why real issuance yield can be higher in the long term equilibrium, despite a reduced (!) issuance policy. | Post | 11 May 2024 | 🤯🤯 |
| Anders | FAQ: Ethereum issuance reduction | Anders answers 8 FAQs in the debate around a reduction in issuance. | Post | 29 May 2024 | 🤯🤯 |
| Mike | Issuance Issues — Tertiary Treatise | Provides more intuition for why the burn (EIP-1559) is orthogonal to the issuance discussion. | Post | 21 Jun 2024 | 🤯🤯 |
| Artem, damcnuta, Sonya & adcv_ | Maximum Viable Security: A New Framing for Ethereum Issuance | Proposes shifting focus from minimizing issuance to maximizing security (in terms of ETH staked), arguing that issuance reductions could increase centralization risks. | Post | 06 Jul 2024 | 🤯🤯 |
| pa7x1 | The Shape of Issuance Curves to Come | This post analyzes the effects of different Ethereum issuance curves on decentralization. | Post | 10 Sept 2024 | 🤯🤯 |
| Vitalik | Possible futures of the Ethereum protocol, part 3: The Scourge | This post talks about The Scourge part of the Ethereum roadmap. In particular, it touches on the topic of staking economics, in which he lays out the tradeoffs of various paths forward. | Post | 20 Oct 2024 | 🤯 |
| Anders | Practical endgame on issuance policy | This post outlines a practical endgame on issuance policy, presenting reward curves that adhere to requirements of the consensus protocol and can reduce yearly issuance so that the quantity of stake stops growing in the near future. | Post | 1 Apr 2024 | 🤯🤯 |
| Speaker(s) | Title | Conference | Date | 🤯? |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Ansgar | Ethereum Staking Economics Endgame | EthDubai | 20 Apr 2024 | 🤯 🤯 |
| Ansgar, nixo, & dapplion | Issuance Panel | DappCon | 22 May 2024 | 🤯 |
| Caspar | issued issues | ZuBerlin | 12 Jun 2024 | 🤯 |
| Ansgar, Caspar & Christine | Talk/Discussion: What's the issue with issuance? | EthStaker @EthCC | 08 July 2024 | 🤯 |
| Ansgar & Caspar | restaking-burn | Restaking Day | 09 July 2024 | 🤯🤯 |
| Ansgar & Caspar | Is Ethereum’s Issuance Policy Sustainable? | EthCC | 11 July 2024 | 🤯 |
| Podcast | Guest(s), Host(s) | Title | Date | 🤯? |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Uncommon Core 2.0 | with Ansgar & Caspar, hosted by Hasu & Jon | Ethereum's Staking Endgame | 22 Mar 2024 | 🤯 🤯 |
| Bankless | with David & Ryan | The Debate Over ETH's Monetary Policy | 10 Apr 2024 | 🤯 |
| Infinite Jungle | with nixo, hosted by Christine |
Is Ethereum Printing Too Much ETH? | 10 Apr 2024 | 🤯 |
| Epicenter | with nixo & superhiz, hosted by Friederike | Ethereum Staking Wars with EthStaker | 7 Jun 2024 | 🤯 |
This is a collection of relevant writings/discussions/musings found on Twitter or relevant snippets from talks/podcasts. This list is not exhaustive.