I have created this MIP to gauge opinions around a proposal posted in the discord channel
This MIP is to remove all the tokens sent to a burn address at one of the next Mina hardforks.
Brief Background. - from @CrisF Burning Supercharged Rewards
Recently the Mina Foundation created new foundation accounts for practical reasons. Because these accounts hold unlocked tokens, these accounts would receive supercharged rewards by default – there is no way yet to create new locked accounts that cannot receive supercharged rewards. Since Mina Foundation has made a commitment not to receive any supercharged rewards, a new Burn Address has been created to send the extra rewards to. Tokens sent to this address are not accessible and are considered to be burned, more detailed information on this will follow below. This address can also be used by anyone wishing to burn tokens.
The ‘soft’ burn address, B62qiburnzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzmp7r7UN6X , is an address that is effectively impossible to find the private key for, thus making tokens sent to it unspendable and unable to stake or participate in consensus. Having no known private key means that the address is ownerless and inaccessible. To create this special address, Mina’s ecosystem partner, O(1) Labs, built a tool designed to find public keys with a fixed prefix that can be used as ‘soft’ burn addresses. The tool ensures that the public key was generated in such a way that the private key cannot be found for it. Detailed information on this tool can be found through the links below. Further information Burn address creation tool: Add find_address tool by mrmr1993 · Pull Request #10409 · MinaProtocol/mina · GitHub Burn Address: *Mina Block Explorer
It would be fantastic to know…
a: Do you think this is this a good idea?
b: Do you know approx how many Mina would this take out of circulation @b_mckenna@evan ?
c: How could we measure support for this proposal in a tangible way?
We seem to have a lot of threads about modifying the ledger in some way As per all other threads, unless there is a truly exceptional circumstance, I would support not modifying the ledger. In this instance, the burn address is publically visible and demonstrated to be inaccessible, so it can be accounted for in any circulating supply calcs.
The point of these proposals is for the community to have a voice and help shape the trajectory of the project. There is no rule that states the ledger can’t or shouldn’t be changed, and this is a fairly mild one at that.
I believe yes the coins should be removed from the circulating supply, simply because these coins aren’t in circulation and never will be. So there is no benefit to keep them in the circulating supply. Currently the wallet has 176,168 MINA with an increasing amount per epoch. I believe these tokens need to be removed from circulating supply because as Mina increases in fiat value so will the burn address, potentially in the tens of millions. Circulating supply is a number used by many to gauge a potential investment and to calculate future potential value so it would benefit the community and future valuation of token price to have them officially burned.
I was simply expressing my opinion on the matter. They have been removed from the circulating supply as they can’t be moved; this is a discussion about removing them from the total supply. As these won’t be staked, I can see that being an argument for removing them from the total supply albeit the numbers are still very small.
Longer-term if there is a EIP 1559 style burn mechanism, then that should be incorporated at the protocol level.
I agree with @garethtdavies , there is no fundamental reason to remove these tokens form the supply and take the hammer to the ledger. Ethereum does something similar with here and here. These are softburn addresses. These values should be available publicly for any one to verify and not depend on 3rd party tooling/scripting.
I think we are completely missing the point if the motivation is to show reduction in circ supply thereby expecting fiat value to go up.
As per all other threads, unless there is a truly exceptional circumstance, I would support not modifying the ledger. In this instance, the burn address is publically visible and demonstrated to be inaccessible, so it can be accounted for in any circulating supply calcs.