I wish I had gotten in earlier, but I was spending additional time reviewing research to try to ensure I had a well-reasoned take. I’ve read the EIP, the issuance reduction FAQ (Anders - May 2024), “The Shape of Issuance Curves to Come” (Patxi - September 2024), Ethereum AMA (Drake, Buterin et al, January 2024), watched last week’s Consensus ACDC, watched the recent “The Defiant” webcast, and this thread through reply 145. I’ve also been to four presentations on issuance at Devcon 2024 (one at the Bankless Summit actually). I’ve thought about it independently a decent amount as well. I’m not an expert researcher, but I think I’ve given the topic considerable time and effort to understand.
For context, I’ve been an at-home staker since January 2022 (miner 2018-2022), not genesis, but before the merge and before withdrawals. I’ve run nodes for LSPs in the past, but now run a single consolidating validator from home with my own ETH. I also ran / run genesis validators for Holesky and Hoodi, starting in September 2023. Further, I hold ETH in ETFs in my IRA, more than my at-home stake.
As a pre-merge at-home staker, and ETH holder, I align with the goals of this EIP, and support it, or something like it. The sooner the better. I’ve been expecting an issuance reduction for some time, and fully believe “the window is closing”. I think some of the reaction so far is kind of proving the point that waiting will make the change even harder and more disruptive. I think those that say ‘change sometime is ok, but not now’, whether they realize it or not, are saying let’s never change it (maybe Lean Ethereum in 2029/30, which is much too late in my view).
70, 80, or 100% stake is not the issue, as I’ve seen argued. The issue starts at 50%, if not before. It’s been very long held belief that we cannot give up the social consensus layer. When taking into account the saturated entry queue (where 2 of my ETH are 9 days into the the 43 day queue), we’re already at north of 36%. I haven’t seen credible reasoning that it’ll magically stop at 36, 45, or 50%. I think changes in market dynamics are putting in a somewhat structural demand for staked ETH.
This is a modest proposal in my view. It gives stakeholders plenty of time for feedback, time to prepare, and 18 months to adjust to the eventual change. I think the motivations are totally valid, so I would hope that any suggestions for improvement would address them, rather than try to deny them (i.e. ‘don’t worry, we won’t get to 50%’, etc.)
Thanks to the authors for this important work. I hope people spend some real time engaging with the issues raised.