Canto XIII: The Eternal Emission

And now we arrive at a final mystery, an aspect of Monero that few understand. Bitcoin has a maximum limit: 21 million coins, never more. A philosophical choice that makes each Bitcoin increasingly rare, and potentially more valuable through scarcity. But also a choice that raises a question: when the emission of new coins ceases, what will pay miners to protect the network?

Monero chose differently. It has a tail emission, a continuous emission that, after the initial supply (18.4 million XMR) is mined, continues to emit 0.6 XMR per block, forever. Not as uncontrolled inflation, it is an inflation rate that begins at ~0.9% and decreases percentually as total supply grows, asymptotically tending toward zero. But never reaching zero.

The choice of proof-of-work algorithm is also philosophical. RandomX, implemented in November 2019, was specifically designed to be resistant to ASICs and favorable to common CPUs. This means anyone with a computer can mine Monero economically, maintaining mining decentralization, preventing large industrial farms from dominating the network.

Bulletproofs (2018) deserve mention: a cryptographic improvement that reduced transaction size by ~80% and fees proportionally. Later, CLSAG (2020) replaced old ring signatures with a more efficient scheme, reducing transaction size by another ~25%. And Bulletproofs+ (2022) improved efficiency further. Monero has not stopped evolving since 2014.

There is more. The tail emission is also a philosophical statement about what healthy money means. Money that stops being created eventually favors those who accumulated it early, the rich become richer through pure deflation. Money that continues to be created, at a decreasing rate, creates incentives for circulation, to spend, to use, so that money flows rather than being hoarded.