The supply of Ethereum has grown rapidly in the past three years, with 40 million new ETHs.

According to Trustnodes on August 29th, the total supply of Ethereum has almost doubled since 2016. It has now exceeded 107 million Eth, which is nearly 40 million more than the 72 million in 2016.

Image source: Trustnodes

The current supply (as shown above) is 10 million more than the Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin expects to reach in 2025. Buterin said in 2017 that by then, the supply of Ethereum will only reach 103,862,556.

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This is a bit off target, when Buterin said:

"In the foreseeable future, the supply of Ethereum will not be much higher than 100 million."

Ethereum supply statistics for August 2019

The significant difference between the expected supply and the actual supply is likely to be exactly what Buterin once said, "any delay in the ice age bomb should follow the overall supply growth curve of ETH."

But this is not the case. The current supply is a difference of $1.5 billion in Eth compared to the ETH's issuance forecast a year ago. This is because although the "probability bomb" has been postponed twice, Eth's release trajectory does not follow the same level as it did without delay.

The most recent decline in circulation occurred at the beginning of this year, when the block award was reduced from the original 3 Eth to 2Eth, replacing the proposal to 1Eth.

The difficulty bomb may start again around March next year, but it is not clear whether there is a plan to delay the start. If it is not postponed, Eth mining will become more difficult because the difficulty of the hash will gradually increase. This means that fewer blocks will be dug out. Once the difficulty bomb is successfully launched, the block time will be gradually extended from the normal 15 seconds to 30 seconds, which takes about 4 months.

Next, it takes about another year to reach the block time of nearly two minutes, and the block time will increase slowly every two weeks. In this way, if the "difficult bomb" is launched around March 2020, then Eth will keep running for 30 seconds, and it will continue until the fall, which is quite good. Then the block time will continue to grow, reaching about 1 minute in the spring of 2021. Of course, the fragmentation and complete Ethereum 2.0 are expected to be released in a brand new blockchain.

Therefore, perhaps there is no need to delay the difficulty bomb this time, because a new blockchain will be launched at that time, and the difficulty bomb will be transplanted as an incentive.

The schedule here may be a bit tight, but the 1 minute time is very good, even 2 minutes is controllable, because you only have to pay a higher fee, and you only have to use the network. Make a transfer transaction. You are using an updated blockchain, which may have 1,000 times the capacity.

Of course, it is precisely to motivate the network to convert to the Proof of Entitlement (PoS) and the fragmentation system before the difficulty bomb is implanted. It will also serve as an incentive for developers to focus more on their own ideas, and this time the code is actually released.

Therefore, there may be no need to postpone the difficulty bomb, but if this is the case, the supply of Ethereum will increase the number of ETHs by approximately 20 million before the start of the filming in 2021, at a current price of approximately $4 billion.

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