Odaily Planet Daily News Grayscale Research Director Zach Pandl posted on X platform, comparing Ethereum to a "small country" and discussing the ETH issuance mechanism. He believes Ethereum has only one core "government function": protecting property rights and value exchange within the system. Unlike traditional countries that fund public services through taxation, Ethereum primarily relies on "seigniorage"—issuing new ETH to fund network security.
Within this framework, the stakers responsible for maintaining network security act as a group providing public services, rewarded through newly issued ETH. Therefore, Ethereum's staking mechanism and ETH issuance policy essentially constitute both the network's fiscal policy and monetary policy simultaneously.
Zach Pandl pointed out that the Ethereum community needs to decide how much "new money creation" should be used to cover network security costs. Greater security assurance typically means stronger property rights protection, but the trade-off is higher ETH issuance and potentially other risks.
For example, if network security becomes increasingly dependent on a few large staking service providers, whether these providers can maintain all users' asset rights in a fully neutral manner remains open to discussion.
Pandl believes that in traditional economies, no one knows the "optimal level" of government spending and money issuance—and the same applies to Ethereum. However, Ethereum has several critical security thresholds, including: 1/3: if attackers reach this proportion, they could impact finality; 1/2: influence over blockchain fork choice; 2/3: control over the finality process.
Some community members argue that Ethereum's monetary and fiscal policy design should account for the security trade-offs posed by these critical ratios, and the current mechanism has not fully incorporated these factors. That said, the analogy is not entirely accurate, as it does not yet cover other important elements such as ETH burning mechanisms, MEV, and governance.
