It turns out, Vitalik wasn’t exactly joking.
原来，“不是开玩笑的。
Sure, that might be what most people thought when ethereum’s creator published a controversial proposal on April Fool’s Day, but the post has prompted a very real, very serious conversation about whether the underlying economics of the world’s second-largest cryptocurrency should be altered.
当然，这可能是大多数人认为当伊斯利恩的创作者发表在四月愚人节，一个有争议的 提议，但后引发了非常真实的，是世界上第二大cryptocurrency的潜在经济应该变得很严肃的谈话。
In fact, in the weeks since the concept was first floated, dialogue has only gotten more heated about the idea that a limit could be placed on the total number of ether, ethereum’s cryptocurrency, that could ever be created. And while it’s long been a contentious topic (there isn’t currently a cap), the rate at which new coins are being introduced into the market has been growing.
事实上，在那以后的几个星期的概念被首次提出，对话才有了思路，限制可以放置在醚总数更热烈，伊斯利恩的cryptocurrency，所能创造的。虽然长期以来一直是一个有争议的话题（目前还没有一个上限），新硬币投入市场的速度一直在增长。
Buterin appears aware of the concern, citing “economic sustainability” as the reason he wants to stop creating new ether when 120 million are introduced. In fact, he believes limiting the market supply to exactly that figure, twice the number of ether sold in the platform’s 2014 ethereum fundraising, could help long term.
buterin似乎意识到了问题， 引用“经济可持续发展”为理由，他想停止创造新的醚在1亿2000万介绍。事实上，他认为限制市场供应完全图，多醚在平台的2014个虚灵筹款卖了两次，可以帮助长期。
In a developer meeting last week, Buterin outlined his rationale further, and while his comments were initially greeted with giggles from other core developers, the atmosphere quickly gave way to serious reflection.
在上周的一次开发者会议上，Buterin提出他的理论更进一步，而他的评论最初对与其他核心开发者的笑声，气氛很快让位给严肃的反思。
From a technical standpoint, the change would be easy to implement, and pending sufficient community support, it could be executed with a simple code fix as part of ethereum’s next system-wide software update.
从技术的角度来看，这种变化是很容易实现的，并等待足够的社会支持，可以执行简单的代码修改为伊斯利恩的部分下全系统软件更新。
On one side, the concept has been applauded by ether investors. Lacking a formal stance on similar to say, bitcoin’s limited 21 million bitcoin supply, some investors have remained cautious, if not confused, about whether they should put their money in.
一方面，这一概念得到了乙醚投资者的赞扬。缺乏类似于比特币的2100万比特币供应的正式立场，一些投资者对是否应该把钱投入进来仍然保持谨慎，如果不困惑的话。
Nevertheless, the proposed issuance cap has also been the brunt of heavy criticism.
然而，拟议的发行上限也受到了严厉批评的冲击。
For one, critics cite ether’s role for the platform’s security and are warning that the introduction of a cap would make the cryptocurrency a pure speculative investment play, something that many developers worry will make updating the protocol more challenging. Others take offense with what they claim is a poorly timed, if not poorly researched issue.
一、评论家引用醚的作用为平台的安全警告，一个帽的推出将使cryptocurrency纯投机投资起，很多开发商担心会更新协议更具挑战性。其他人则对他们所说的不合时宜的问题感到生气，如果不是很糟糕的话。
“I don’t think that we have the understanding required to actually meaningfully know what we would be consenting to,” Vlad Zamfir, a leading developer behind ethereum’s upcoming proof-of-stake consensus mechanism, wrote in a blogpost. “The numbers seem completely arbitrary,” another critic wrote.
“我不认为我们需要的理解却意味深长地知道我们会同意，“Vlad Zamfir， 领先开发商在伊斯利恩即将证明股权的共识机制，写了一篇。 “数字似乎完全是任意的，”另一位评论家写道。
And a vocal opponent of the proposal, ethereum developer Nick Johnson tweeted:
一个提案的反对者，伊斯利恩开发者尼克·约翰逊啾啾：
“[The post] has degraded into a bunch of people arguing pseudo economics with each other, as if ethereum were designed first and foremost to be an economy and not a computing system.”
“[后]已经退化成一堆人辩伪经济学与对方，如果伊斯利恩的设计首先是一个经济和不计算系统。”
The arguments against
反对的理由
Sure enough, the critics seem particularly worried about what the economic incentives could mean for ether’s role as a “crypto fuel” for the network.
毫无疑问，批评者似乎特别担心经济刺激可能意味着以太作为网络的“加密燃料”的角色。
“Ether has a primary intrinsic purpose on the ethereum protocol, that is, to be consumed as a resource with which to run calculations upon a computational machine,” an independent ethereum developer, Darryl Morris, wrote in a blog post.
“醚对是伊斯利恩协议，主要的内在目的，是消耗资源，计算运行在计算机，“ 独立伊斯利恩的开发者，Darryl Morris，在一篇博客文章中写道。
According to Morris, ether’s use as an investment tool shouldn’t be prioritized over its ability to secure and protect the protocol, something he thinks the proposal would do.
根据Morris的说法，以太作为投资工具的用途不应该优先于它的安全和保护议定书的能力。
Speaking at a developer meeting Friday, Johnson echoed similar points. Because such a limit would, theoretically, cause the value of ether to rise, transactions that burn small amounts of ether would be disincentivized.
在星期五的开发者会议上，约翰逊也表达了类似的观点。因为这样的限制，从理论上讲，因为以太的价值上升，交易，烧少量乙醚会disincentivized。
“Funding through transaction fees encourages holding and discourages an active ecosystem,” Johnson said. Continuing, Johnson said this would lead to a harmful spiral, where “costs go up because transactions are fewer and that leads to fewer transactions and so forth.”
约翰逊说：“通过交易费用提供资金鼓励了持有和阻止积极的生态系统。”。继续，约翰逊说，这将导致一个有害的螺旋，在 ”成本上升因为交易少，导致更少的交易等等。”
And the opposition started some time before Buterin’s recent proposal. Zamfir, for example, has spoken out against putting a limit on the issuance of ether in the past. Speaking to CoinDesk in February, Zamfir described the discussion as “bikeshedding.”
和反对派开始之前buterin最近提出的一些时间。Zamfir，例如，公开反对把以太的发行限制在过去。二月CoinDesk说，Zamfir形容为“bikeshedding讨论。”
He told CoinDesk:
他告诉CoinDesk：
“The entire cryptocurrency HODLer scene is apparently obsessed about issuance policies, even though issuance has very, very, very little to do with a cryptocurrency’s success.”
“整个cryptocurrency霍德勒场景显然是热衷于发行政策，尽管非常，非常，已发行做一个cryptocurrency的成功非常少。”
He further speculated that, should a cap be passed, miners might have reasons to inherently oppose the idea, since a hard cap could limit their future payouts.
他进一步推测，如果一个上限被通过，矿工们可能有理由内在地反对这个想法，因为一个上限可能会限制他们未来的支出。
“Hodlers and miners have obvious major conflicts of interests which makes it impossible to count on them to care about any notion of public good or even any kind of impartial truth about optimal parameters,” Zamfir said.
“Hodlers和矿工有明显的重大利益冲突，使它不可能指望他们关心的任何概念的公益甚至任何一种不偏不倚的最优参数，”Zamfir说。
Speaking in a blog post, Zamfir continued to state that understanding of the matter is limited, and using scarcity as an investment value-add is “stupid and annoying at best.”
在一篇博客文章中说， 赞菲尔继续状态的事实的认识是有限的，以稀缺性作为投资增值是“愚蠢和烦恼的最好。”
And finally, others have argued that an issuance cap would raise the cost of entry into the network, something that contradict the long-standing value proposition of keeping these costs low so that anyone can participate and in turn, make the network more decentralized.
最后，其他人认为发行上限将提高进入网络的成本，这与长期保持低成本的价值主张相矛盾，这样任何人都可以参与，反过来，使网络更加分散。
Speaking to that, one Reddit user wrote: “Great if you want to maximize your personal wealth, but shit if you want to create a decentralized economy.”
说，一 Reddit用户写道：“如果你想你的个人财富最大化，但该死的如果你想创建一个分散的经济。”
The arguments in favor
赞成的论据
But from Buterin’s research, none of these things hold true.
但从Buterin的研究，这些东西都不成立。
In the developer meeting last week, Buterin stressed that transaction fees are not proportional to the price of ether, but rather reflect demand for the ethereum platform. This means that irrespective of a price rise, if the numbers of transactions remain the same, fees on the platform would not increase.
上周在开发者会议上，Buterin强调，交易费用不到以太的价格比例，而是体现为伊斯利恩平台需求。这意味着，无论价格上升，如果交易数量保持不变，平台上的费用不会增加。
Plus, according to him, it isn’t up to ethereum to provide an affordable entry into cryptocurrency, that instead, new cryptocurrencies will provide that onramp.
另外，据他说，这不是到伊斯利恩提供负担得起的进入cryptocurrency，相反，新的加密货币将提供通道。
“Crypto can avoid being too inegalitarian through [the] emergence of new coins, not through any single coin being super-inflationary,” Buterin tweeted.
“密码可以避免过于不平等的通过[新币]的出现，不是通过任何超级通货膨胀的单枚硬币，”Buterin说。
While the inflation rate on ethereum is currently quite low, Buterin contended that even small rates of inflation are a “huge deal” in the context of financial market returns.
而在伊斯利恩通货膨胀率目前很低，Buterin认为，即使是小的通货膨胀率是一个 “巨大的交易”在金融市场回报率的背景。
With an unlimited supply, Buterin warned that ether could even be surpassed in market capitalization by one of the ERC-20 tokens that have been launched on top of ethereum. As tokens can be programmed without inflation, Buterin explained, “basically every ERC-20 token becomes a better store of value than ETH.”
一个无限量供应，Buterin警告说，醚甚至可以超过市值的erc-20令牌已推出上伊斯利恩。令牌可以编程没有通货膨胀，Buterin解释说，“基本上每个erc-20令牌变成一个更好的价值比ETH商店。”
And on the topic of miner payouts, Buterin argued at the meeting that rather than miners being paid with newly-created ether, miners could, in the future, be paid directly by transaction fees.
在矿工的支出的话题，Buterin说，在会议上，而不是矿工受到新生成醚，矿工会，在未来，可以直接交易费。
According to Buterin, that change would be simple to implement, since all the remaining ether could be locked into a smart contract, and dished out to miners via fees over time.
Buterin认为，改变将是实现简单，因为所有剩余的乙醚可以锁定到一个智能的合同，并抛出的矿工通过费时间。
“It would set any rewards to be proportional to the balance remaining inside of the contract,” Buterin said.
“这将设置任何奖励是对余额在合同的比例，”Buterin说。
And while rewards would decrease as the total ETH supply converges toward its limit – potentially disincentivizing miners – Buterin said that inflation poses a similar risk. “If we have a cryptocurrency which is inflationary then that could lead to its value dropping, which by itself leads to less capital securing the network,” Buterin said.
而奖励会为总的ETH供应收敛朝向其极限可能disincentivizing矿工- Buterin说，通货膨胀构成了类似的风险降低。 “如果我们有一个cryptocurrency，通胀则会导致其价值下降，这本身会导致更少的资本保护网络，”Buterin说。
And though he admits that it’s a complicated thing to measure, Buterin said, “I personally do think that there’s evidence that basically transaction fee levels are capable of providing enough revenue to secure a blockchain.”
虽然他承认这是一个复杂的东西来衡量的，”Buterin说，“我个人认为，有证据表明，基本的交易费用水平是能够提供足够的收入来获得blockchain。”
He added:
他补充说：
“And in the long run, if they’re not, then there’s the question of well, how valuable is the system that we’re building in the first place.”
“从长远来看，如果不是这样的话，那么我们首先要建立的体系到底有多大价值呢？”
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