Please vote and express your thoughts and concerns in this comment section! Thank you.
Peercoin distribution is still quite poor, although it is getting better slow by slow:
Peercoin distribution according to bitinfocharts on 14th September 2014:
Peercoin distribution according to bitinfocharts on 11th February 2015:
Each of TOP 10, TOP 100, TOP 1.000 and TOP 10.000 addresses has seen a slight decline over the last 5 months. But it is still a long way to go.
Unfortunately, I do not have any earlier screenshots from bitinfocharts. A tool to calculate it from the blockchain would be great.
A modest inflation tends to suppress the price for a while, but on the long term it can play out differently. Inflationary coins tend to see long periods of price decline, but then shoot up in price when people realize that the ecosystem has become bigger.
I bought my first 100 Peercoins in December 2013 when the price was high, but then stocked up later when the price was much lower. If I still had only 100 Peercoins, I probably wouldn’t be posting here.
So inflation helps people who are late to discover Peercoin to purchase a decent amount now and become active in our community.
Ötzi, you have all the screenshots you want here:
https://web.archive.org/web/20140703031131/http://bitinfocharts.com/ppcoin/
What are the benefits of removing proof-of-work, and the downsides of keeping it?
First benefit is to get rid of that 4% annual inflation rate that we’re facing with it. Everyday 2,000 PPC are generated via PoW. We are already quite comfortable with 22 million PPC, this is what I think.
Some previous discussions we had about disabling PoW:
https://www.reddit.com/r/peercoin/comments/2qyaj7/1_switch_off_pow_2_variable_pos_block_reward/
https://www.reddit.com/r/peercoin/comments/2ouu1o/peercoin_weekly_discussion_thread_december_10/
No, because I like peercoin’s unique way of self-regulated pow/pos distribution.
PoW will hopefully be unimportant due to a rising PoS-Diff.
All you have to do is have some patience 
[quote=“Thireus, post:3, topic:3324”]Ötzi, you have all the screenshots you want here:
https://web.archive.org/web/20140703031131/http://bitinfocharts.com/ppcoin/
;)[/quote]
Thanks, Thireus.
Unfortunately Bitinfocharts only listed the TOP 100 back then, not the TOP 10, TOP 1.000 and TOP 10.000, which offer a more comprehensive picture of distribution. I like especially the TOP 1.000 and 10.000, because they tell a lot about the size of the community and its growth or decline. There are many coins out there for which the TOP 10.000 is 100.00%.
I am also against disabling Proof-of-work, because a hard fork that makes changes about the money-tokens itself is not a sign of a serious currency.
I think we should make this decision from a position of strength, and I don’t see PPC there yet. I define strength by adoption rate and popularity. Making such basic changes now may send the wrong message to the community and have an adverse effect on PPC. I am only in favor of disabling PoW if it is legitimately hurting PPC right this very moment.
Disclaimer: I mine, but it is menial at best and do it as a hobby, we are talking 35 (thirty-five) GHs. The majority of my coins are purchased.
I think perhaps POW should not be removed before PPC passes BTC in market cap. Its effect on inflation will become smaller and smaller as technology advances, so it’s not a big concern.
[quote=“willy, post:6, topic:3324”]No, because I like peercoin’s unique way of self-regulated pow/pos distribution.
PoW will hopefully be unimportant due to a rising PoS-Diff.
All you have to do is have some patience :)[/quote]
That’s exactly what I think, too. No need to hurry. 4% is already quite good, and will be lower every year.
4% is lower than bitcoins inflation, yes. But without enough buyers even 4% inflation can cause a price decline far above the inflation rate because it erodes the trust in the coin.
On BTC-E we see over 1,7 millionen on the ask side, the highest i have ever see it. So i’m for a removal of POW because distribution works fine through markets and i’m not particular worried that the top100 adresses hold over 50% of the supply. Thats the case, more or less, in every asset on this planet.
No, because it is still useful during times of quickly growing price. As POS protects against a slow decline of price, POW protects against a rapid incline. I want to be able to destroy coin days during a particularly volatile time and know that POW will have my back (reference the recent hash spike correlating with the price spike). If the order books really do take a really strong turn over a significant period of time (order of months, not days) toward higher volumes, maybe I’d say something different.
[quote=“d5000, post:10, topic:3324”][quote=“willy, post:6, topic:3324”]No, because I like peercoin’s unique way of self-regulated pow/pos distribution.
PoW will hopefully be unimportant due to a rising PoS-Diff.
All you have to do is have some patience :)[/quote]
That’s exactly what I think, too. No need to hurry. 4% is already quite good, and will be lower every year.[/quote]
agree with this, we still have a big wide world out there that does not know about ppc and pow mining can be an attraction, no need to rush… would be like bitcoin saying lets halve block every 2 year as opposed to every 4 years
imo disavling PoW is good idea
When Bitcoin starts having trouble, it’s possible that large mining operations will turn to Peercoin. Without it, this won’t happen. I believe keeping proof-of-work until after this happens will give us an advantage over pure proof-of-stake cryptos.
About 0.999 million PPC were mined and minted in 2014 and I guess no more than 0.7 million PPC will be mined and minted in 2015. Most of these PPC were generated by PoW. These amounts are not big.
So I don’t think it will have a significant influence on Peercoin’s price in the near future if we disable PoW for Peercoin.
But in the long term, it has much significant influence in Peercoin’s money supply since 1% PoS reward every year. The more PPC now, the more PoS reward in the future.
Therefor I vote to disable PoW for Peercoin.
I’m against disabling PoW anytime soon.
Advantages of disabling PoW:
the total inflation rate is smaller
the overall energy efficiency is hugely increased
no or little security impact as security is only slightly affected; PoS secures the block chain and the PPC mined in the PoW process are not enough to play a big role (this is not really an advantage, but no disadvantage either)
Disadvantages of disabling PoW:
PPC can only be bought from people who sell them or need to be minted
this provides an entry barrier for newcomers to Peercoin (newcomers who have SHA256 miners…)
hard fork required
As the inflation by PoW is small and will decline if more miners join the PoW process (that would require a rising PPC price level to make economically sense) I wouldn’t overrate this factor.
And with regards to the energy efficiency I tend to think that this is the price for distributing PPC which I’d willingly pay.
In terms of network security Peercoin is perfectly energy efficient. This might turn out to be the reason for Peercoin to become very important.
While inflation rate and energy consumption by PoW can be measured or guessed to a certain degree, I can’t assess the influence of stopping the distribution mechanism too early.
To be honest - I don’t know when it’s not too early.
Yet I feel it still is; at least I need to take into regard that it might be too early…
Was Blackcoin’s PoW process disabled too early?
If you consider how tiny our community is and how little is known about Peercoin by the masses (lol, what are masses when talking crypto, of which only a fraction really knows Peercoin…) I need to think that it can only be too early now.
The effects of disabling PoW can’t be properly assessed as this deals with people’s recognition.
Do you know what people will think about that?
How will you ask them?
The scenario in which peercoin has become important has not yet become true.
So how could people possibly tell you the answer to that question?
But the answer to that question would give a hint about the right point of time.
Once Peercoin is important and a majority of people who don’t already own Peercoins want to get some don’t complain about an already phased-out PoW process, you know that the point of time was well-chosen
I need to assume that the risk (in terms of Peercoin’s reputation) of disabling PoW can be tremendous (I don’t know the chance, but need to assume it’s above 0) while continuing PoW has only litte and measurable effect.
I prefer to go the safe way on this case.
I wouldn’t want to risk messing up Peercoin’s future by disabling PoW too early.
Peercoin just is too important.
I don’t want to make a hard fork (with unknown outcome!) for an uncertain goal if I can live with PoW for years without having a significant drawback.
why not combine XPM and PPC into one?
PPC with prime number PoW.
[quote=“sabreiib, post:18, topic:3324”]why not combine XPM and PPC into one?
PPC with prime number PoW.[/quote]
So you are basically against disabling PoW anytime soon?
I think it’s an intriguing idea to combine Primecoin’s PoW with Peercoin.
But what would happen with Primecoin then?
And what would happen to the whole Primecoin idea once the were an agreement to phase out PoW at Peercoin?
What would be the advantage of that?
Attracting a wider audience?
While I agree that Primecoin mining has different requirements (than SHA256 hashing) I don’t think this would open the gates very far.
To efficiently mine Primecoin you need quite specialized hardware as well; just not big hashing machines, but the right CPUs.
So I think it would just target a different but not a way bigger audience.
In fact there might be more people with capable SHA256 ASICs than people with high-end CPUs amongst those who will be attracted to Peercoin’s PoW process next.
Do you think Primecoin survives being merged and split with Peercoin?
I think I prefer keeping it as it is.
I wouldn’t want to sacrifice Primecoin just to have a meaningful PoW at Peercoin - for the time there still is PoW.
That hard fork wouldn’t be my preferred choice. I’d stick to keeping the Peercoin and Primecoin we already have
yeah right
My vote
No, because PoW is still helping with the coin’s distribution