This comes from the be-open-and-transparent department.
I've written before regarding emissions and the LUV token. The short version: there is currently no formal emission schedule for LUV at this time.
This cuts against my grain with regards to emissions, and I've struggled a bit with this. I prefer a set, immutable schedule. So, I thought it would be appropriate to attempt and explain why I'm vacillating here on this topic.
When it comes to emissions, we're talking about the rate at which tokens are minted and put into a free market. Options that I see for emission are
Let's start by scratching #3 as being not good.
Option 1 is what Bitcoin does. Bitcoin uses an exponential formula (I believe that's what it would be considered).
The Grin cryptocurrency uses a linear formula...1 GRIN every second, forever. That's good ol' y=mx+b from middle school.
Graphed, they look like this:
The important thing is that both are known and neither can be changed. There are no surprises, no funny-business, no sudden "crisis"-stimulus packages.
Option 2 is what "The Fed" (the Federal Reserve Board) does in the USA. I imagine something similar occurs for most nations with their respective centralized banking systems. The Fed uses the levers and pulleys that it has at its monetary policy disposal, like open market operations, altering the discount rate, and quantitative easing. Combined, these are all fancy terms for "money printer go brrrr." The idea is that these can massage the money supply as it best sees fit. When the economy slows, it kicks into "easy money policies" (fast emissions), and when the economy gets going too fast it switches to "tight money policies" (slow emissions). It's driving a car and mashing the throttle or brakes as the car/economy goes to slow or fast.
Although I'm not a big fan of this, that's what I'm doing with LUV emissions...it's not random, but it's not set and unchangeable either.
I prefer set emissions and have considered something like 20,000 LUV per year, period, mint on January 1, no discussion, done and repeat next January 1. Yet, I'm using flexible emissions. Cognitive dissonance here?
My reasoning for using a flexible, mutable emission rate circles back to LUV's purpose. The goal of the LUV token is to spread love around the Hive blockchain. LUV isn't a cryptocurrency like bitcoin or Grin with the three basic tenets of money inherent (store of value, means of exchange, unit of measure). LUV is a token to spread love. That it can be traded on an exchange, in my mind, is separate from its purpose, its use case.
I think of a physical token that someone could put into a machine at the laundromat. With this laundry token, one token means one wash or one dry. The token has a specific purpose, a specific use case. Of course, those tokens could be traded between people face-to-face or traded on an exchange. Yet, that is separate from their purpose and usefulness.
Since the goal is to spread love around Hive, since the bot command of !LUV is the means by which LUV is currently being emitted, and since this goal would be impossible if the LUVbot had zero LUV to distribute, then...
This is a little hard to create because the rate is not set-in-stone. But, we can take what data we have and do the best we can.
Initially, 10,000 LUV were minted on Feb. 16, 2021 when the LUV token began. About 7,000 were given away airdrop style. Then, I pretty much cut off the airdrop. With LUV gaining traction and people began making use of the bot, I allowed the LUVbot to take over the distribution of new LUV. These new tokens draw from the @LUVshares account. As that account began to get down 1,200, I minted 2,000 more on March 30. 500 were given out as a "LAD" (LUV Appreciation Drop) that day. And, roughly 500 have been distributed since the March 30 minting. So, that's about 71 LUV per day doled out via the LUVbot.
These are rough, rough numbers. But, with these data, we can begin to build a graph:
The estimate for the year's end is around 17,000, assuming the 71/day rate continues. 17K is not far off from my idea of minting a set amount of 20,000/year. So, maybe such a set policy will come to fruition at some point in the future. For now, we'll stay flexible and follow this simple policy:
LUVshares account is low, time to mint more LUV.
:)
