One of the key differences between Mintlayer and Ethereum is that Mintlayer has a fixed upper bound, and Ethereum has no upper bound. Ethereum’s total supply is affected by a constant balance of issuing block rewards, and since EIP 1559, a fee burning mechanism. Ethereum developers ultimately can dictate the future supply, leaving holders unsure of what future supply will look like.
Mintlayer’s hard cap ensures predictable inflation, and is meant to reward holders long-term. Once the block rewards run out the supply will remain fixed forever.
Understanding Supply
For Mintlayer, there will be three types of tokens as far as the supply is concerned. The unlocked supply, circulating supply, and total supply.
- Unlocked supply is determined by vesting periods
- Circulating supply is determined by how many tokens have been released to the public and vesting periods
- Total supply is 600,000,000 and will be realized in approximately 10 years
Initial Unlocked Supply
The initial unlocked token supply at the TGE is 15,820,000 ML. The rest of the ML tokens are subject to vesting schedules of different lengths. After two years, approximately 335,000,000 ML tokens will be unlocked.
Only unlocked tokens can be transacted from the wallet they were initially acquired by. The circulating supply will increase as more tokens become unlocked.
Mainnet Token Supply
At the launch of the mainnet, 400,000,000 ML will have been created in total. These tokens will be distributed to community members that took part in the various fundraising rounds, used to help facilitate exchange listings, and disbursed to the various community members (advisors, promoters, developers) that have earned an ML stake.
These tokens will be subject to vesting schedules before they unlock.
As the ecosystem operates, each Mintlayer block will generate a block reward until the total supply reaches the 600,000,000 ML hard cap.
Total Supply
The total supply of ML will be 600,000,000 ML. We expect this threshold to be met approximately 10 years after the genesis block. Once this supply cap is reached, operation will transition to a 100% fee based ecosystem.
This is an important number because once all the ML is distributed, the only way to acquire ML is to purchase it from an existing ML holder, or earn fees from operating a node. The only way for new participants to operate a node is to purchase ML from a holder.
