V God proposes to limit the total amount of ETH to 120 million

Ethereum founder Vitalik Buterin proposed setting the total amount of Ethereum to 120,204,432, or twice the amount of Ethereum sold in 2014.

Vitalik Buterin has penned a new proposal today that could solve one of the biggest outstanding issues on the Ethereum network — whether to cap the amount of Ethereum that can be created.

In a new Ethereum Improvement Proposal written today, Ethereum founder Vitalik Buterin expressed his latest thoughts on the matter - setting the total amount of Ethereum to 120,204,432, or twice the amount of Ethereum sold in 2014.

The comments mark the first time Vitalik has directly addressed the platform’s monetary policy — a topic that has long been questioned by investors.

While the rules of the Bitcoin protocol state that no more than 21 million Bitcoins will ever be created, Ethereum has long been open. Under the original issuance terms, up to 18 million Ethereums could be issued each year. While there has long been talk that these terms would change as the protocol design changed, that has not happened.

In another post published on Sunday, Vitalik tried to put the idea into context, saying that if adopted, it would “ensure the sustainability of the platform’s economics.” (As CoinDesk describes, ethereum will soon abandon the proof-of-work model pioneered by bitcoin in favor of an alternative proof-of-work algorithm known as Casper.)

In fact, Buterin sees the coming shift as an ideal time to clarify how those who operate the software will be rewarded in the future, even if it is still in the conceptualization stage.

According to The Washington Post, Buterin predicted that monetary policy would not be decided until 120 million ETH has been issued, at which point he proposed choosing an alternative limit of up to 140 million.

It’s worth noting, however, that the proposal is just a suggestion.

Even with these announcements, ethereum developers and users will still need time to accept the changes, resulting in the formal code being merged into the software required for this idea to work. Therefore, this is likely just the beginning of a process that could take months or even years to complete.