I like Ethereum and I definitely think its going to rise in value again. in fact, I am absolutely confident that in 10 years from now Ether will be worth $80,000+ because it doesn't stand on its own, every successful dApp builds it up. Right now concepts like Aragon and Status are nothing more than cool concepts, but they're very plausible concepts. Once all those dApps actually function and enough of the public get comfortable with where the future of money is going Ethereum will explode.
The question I have is, Do we want it to succeed? Sure, in many ways I do want Ethereum to succeed, but to what end? At one time Ether was limitless, there was no cap on the total, which is bad news for founders and professional investors, but good for the future of mankind. No one likes seeing depreciation, at least not until tax season, so many ICOs guarantee caps on the total supply to appease investors.
Why do the investors want caps? Because they want to buy in when its all cheap, get a disproportionately large sum of the stuff while there is virtually no value in it and then get the masses to adopt it, insuring this individual's increasing wealth. Okay, cool, I get why that guy would want it to work this way, but why would the rest of the world want to be subjected to this?
To drive this point home I'm going to give you a quick example. Let's say a guy, we'll name him Tom Greedbag, comes upon this cool blockchain called Humanity coin. He sees that its only $0.01 per coin with a 100 million coin cap. So Greedbag decides to invest $50,000 (which is nothing to this guy) and now he owns 5% of the coin.
Perhaps 5% seems harmless to you, after all it is just one of many coins. But it becomes exponentially less harmless the more prominent that coin becomes. In fact, that's my one and only real problem with Bitcoin, unknown individuals own such large percentages that we could be talking future god-status. Bitcoin is great, but for the sake of humanity I really think we should start over with a coin where no one gets more than 0.01%, which would still get you a Lamborghini and supermodel wife. I have no problem with people getting wealth, my concern is absurd amounts of power. Not saying Bitcoin shouldn't play a role in the future, it currently acts as a defacto gold standard and I like that, but whatever is everyone's coin, the coin to rule them all, shouldn't let one guy rule us all.
This is the power of limitless supply, it provides a never ending future for generations to come and if someone achieves 5% of the network, as people work hard and earn more that guy's 5% goes down slowly and this works to readjust the pool.
Going back to Greedbag, he hates the fact that everything got forked and people took the supply cap away. Now how is he going to achieve his goal of becoming the global overlord that outlaws plus size tubetops and gum? But never fear, capitalism is here! Even after the fork the blockchain still uses POS, so he can do better than 5%, while much of the world spends their hard earned coin on baby diapers and vodka Greedbag can inch up to 6% and world domination.
The blockchain community seems to be divided in three categories: 1. Investors, 2. Utopians, 3. Techno-anarchy. We need to think about what we really want from this technology. We can have ICOs, thousands of them, its fine. In fact, blockchains can be privatized all you want, so long as the major currency, the one of which all others exchange is private, secure, decentralized and opensource.
We still need something else, something pure. If the creator of the future currency of the world owned 0.01% of the world's wealth, alright, I can live with that. But not 7%, that's a serious issue, and it holds Bitcoin back from being the future, if the future is to be good. Again, I'm down with wealth, in fact, I hope my coin invests make me rich. But I'm not down with overlords, not even me. I would make a horrible overlord, there would be way, way too much sex...
Original article: https://forkthecrypto.com/a-forking-blog/f/why-pos-caps-must-die