Ethereum, the world's second most widely used blockchain, is causing controversy due to a lack of knowledge about the exact supply of Ether coins in circulation, which already far exceeds that of Bitcoin, Cardano and Ripple.
The co-founder of Ethereum, Vitalik Buterin, noted on his Twitter account that the Ethereum coin supply figure is “more or less” approximate, in response to the current controversies that exist on the social network regarding this topic.
The current supply of Ethereum is estimated to be over 112 million Ether, the network's cryptocurrency. However, this figure is approximate, or as Buterin noted, “We know more or less what it is”, since the supply may vary according to the browser blockchain that is used to perform the query. For example, the analysis of coinmetrics, show a metric on the supply of cryptocurrencies that may not yet be available within the markets in the short or medium term, contrary to if CoinMarketCap or Messari is used.
In this context, CoinMarketCap indicates that Ethereum has a current supply of 112.155.075 coins, while Messaria reflects a lower figure, showing a total of 111.576.204 coins circulating in the market. Knowing the actual supply figure on the Ethereum blockchain is important for the community because it is one of the fundamental data used in the analysis of an asset, as is the case with Bitcoin, whose community keeps an exact record of the issuance and circulation of the cryptocurrency.
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CoinMetrics analysis points to 112 million Ether
Cryptocurrency market and network data provider, coinmetrics, says that auditing the actual supply on the Ethereum blockchain can be more complicated compared to other blockchain networks.
First, CoinMetrics notes that a true count requires auditors to closely track all inflows and outflows to each account on the Ethereum blockchain, as the network operates on an account-based model. Further complicating the actual counting and recording of Ethereum’s supply is that the network made some implicit edits to its ledger, where changes were made to the ledger but not included in a transaction or block.
A look at Ethereum's past
So, to get as close to reality as possible on Ethereum’s supply, CoinMetrics analyzed previous editions of Ethereum’s internal ledger, looking to dive into the auditability of other cryptoassets.
After hack a The DAO In 2016, Ethereum forked, giving rise to two networks: the well-known network Ethereum Classic and Ethereum. As we know, in the first blockchain, ETC, the stolen funds were not returned to their owners, while in the second, ETH, the funds were returned to their owners. At this point, CoinMetrics indicates that the changes implemented in the ledger were executed in the network code executed by the nodes, not in the transactions or blocks of the blockchain, so there is no record indicating that such changes occurred, making the work of auditors difficult.
According to the data provider, the “The only way to capture those credits and debits is to find the encoded list of affected addresses and emulate the edits the code made to the ledger.".
Thus, based on the data in this case, CoinMetrics assures that the total supply of Ethereum was 112.114.600 for August 9.
Source: CoinMetrics
On the other hand, in addition to the importance of knowing the real supply of an asset for analysis, this data also provides important information about the burning or permanent loss of the asset on the network, also showing the amount of assets that are in the hands of an official foundation, providing a real metric on the liquid supply. It is estimated that around 72 million Ether were mined during the genesis block and are in the hands of the Ethereum Foundation.
ETH liquid supply higher than other cryptocurrencies
Data shown by CoinMetrics indicates that Ethereum's liquid supply percentage is higher than that of other cryptoassets such as Bitcoin (BTC), Ripple (XRP) Litecoin (LTC) Bitcoin Cash (BCH), tezos (XTZ) and Cardano ( ADA).
Finally, several users On Twitter, they have pointed out that the difference in the coin supply figure shown by CoinMarketCap, Messari and other blockchain explorers, generates a not inconsiderable difference of more than 260 million dollars in the market capitalization of Ethereum.
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