A simple way to fund more public goods in Ethereum that makes everyone happy

What if I told you there was a simple way to make GPU miners happy, reduce ETH inflation, and fund more “public goods”?

Here’s the simple 3 prong plan:

Implement ProgPoW if audits are passed.
Mining rewards are reduced to 1.8 ETH per block.
0.1 per block goes to a new address administered by the Ethereum Foundation (EF) to be spent exclusively and transparently on public goods

Why should I like this if I’m an….

… Eth holder: inflation goes down by 0.1 Eth per block.
… Eth developer: 0.1 Eth per block for more projects (and possibly better salaries?)
… Ethereum fan: more public goods get funded immediately
… Ethash GPU miner: because this will make ProgPoW much more likely to happen, 0.2 less per block (.1 in reduction, .1 for public goods) is a very good deal for a GPU miner, as a hashing algorithm change will more than make up for a 10% issuance reduction. [Therefore, net security should stay about the same.]

Right now, ProgPoW is a contentious topic. Although I lean toward ProgPoW, it’s arguably a remnant of feelings from the early days of Ethereum. Frankly when I talk to people at conferences, most people mildly oppose ProgPoW or are ambivalent at best. The topic continually comes up on core dev calls, but so far there has not been a sufficient case for ProgPoW made to the Ethereum community.

Sidenote: I’ve heard some GPU miners think they’re entitled to ProgPoW because of the issuance reduction to 2 Eth. They’re wrong. When the hard fork happened, miners adopted the hard fork because the bomb’s difficulty adjustment meant that they had to accept the issuance reduction.

Does EF really need the money?

One of the concerns I’ve heard is “does EF really need the money?”
In some ways I understand the objection, but in other ways I find it a bit baffling.

Dedicating a new pot of money to public goods is the best way we can ensure they get funded.

In a very simple way, what this proposal does is re-direct money away from incentivizing better ASICs and instead puts it towards the people who do all the amazing infrastructure and public goods work in Ethereum. No brainer.

Is EF the best way to fund public goods? Why don’t we use [insert unproven, untested, super-complicated scheme here]?

Nobody is particularly happy about giving EF more money.

Over the years on r/ethereum, I’ve been one of the biggest critics of EF transparency. It’s frustrating, though over the last year it has been improving.

Everyone would prefer to have some autonomous DAO with perfect representation of the Ethereum community’s True Believers. But let’s be honest: that’s not going to happen.

Everyone with an axe to grind about the EF (that’s a lot of people over the years) can choose a million different ways to nitpick or “improve” this idea. But real talk: a proposal like this only becomes reality if people get behind it and push it. The best way to kill it is with the “well, but let’s just do it slightly differently” approach. Death by a thousand cuts.

This is only temporary

This is ONLY temporary funding. After the Beacon Chain (phase 0 of Eth2) goes live, we can use that to finalize the PoW chain, which means issuance will be further reduced on the current PoW chain. We’re not going to supply EF with a perpetual string of funding.

As such, this proposal is not a panacea which solves long-term open source funding. People working on those problems should continue working on them.

Asks of EF if this is accepted:

Every Ether is accounted for.
All Ether goes directly to funding “Ethereum public goods”
This is to be considered to be the Eth of the Ethereum community, and EF administers it.

Conclusion

Assuming ProgPoW passes audits, this is something we can decide to do “today.”

Let’s not make perfect the enemy of good. Let’s choose to make progress. Let’s choose more funding for Ethereum public goods.