### ![VladZamfir](https://pbs.twimg.com/profile_images/683736320691298305/jHM6N6FK_normal.png) **[Vlad Zamfir](https://twitter.com/@VladZamfir/status/843445814420783105)** tweeted @ 19 Mar 2017 - 12:55 UTC

> If the price of ether stays high, I really hope the Ethereum community considers slashing block rewards by at least a factor of 4.


### ![petertoddbtc](https://pbs.twimg.com/profile_images/801927034603794432/H6vCS6tj_normal.jpg) **[Peter Todd](https://twitter.com/@petertoddbtc/status/843448818259709952)** tweeted @ 19 Mar 2017 - 13:07 UTC

> With some miners threatening 51% attacks against Bitcoin, researching a PoW change is a good backup plan: [btcpowupdate.org](https://t.co/SEZ1qlxhAH)


### ![VladZamfir](https://pbs.twimg.com/profile_images/683736320691298305/jHM6N6FK_normal.png) **[Vlad Zamfir](https://twitter.com/@VladZamfir/status/843552270784614402)** tweeted @ 19 Mar 2017 - 19:58 UTC

> This. This is exactly what I'm afraid of. https://t.co/z2OfP9MT3m


###### *Disclaimer: I am just a bot trying to be helpful.*

Vitalik Buterin's response:

>I feel ambiguous about this.

>Object level argument first. ETH block rewards are currently $14.3 per second. Next highest is Zcash at $4.77 per second. If we drop 4x, then that would put ETH at second place. If the price drops 3x then we would go down to $1.2 per second, which puts us down to third place below Zcash and Monero. At this point, we may be much more vulnerable to 51% attacks. A drop up to 2x seems safe to me, a larger drop less so.

>Second object-level argument. Suppose conservatively the proof of stake switch happens in 15 months. A 4x block reward difference starting 3 months from now is only ~7 million coins, and quite possibly less if we do hybrid proof of stake in the mean time. It may be most pragmatic to just let the issue slide until we can reduce block rewards even further (I am projecting 0.1-0.6 ETH per 14 sec) through a full PoS switch.

>Now, the meta-level disagreement. I think that as Ethereum is maturing, we need to start taking norms, schelling points, and stability of policy more seriously, especially on key economic parameters. That is, moving fast on precompiles is still fine, but mucking around with block rewards, staking rewards, etc arbitrarily much less so. This is in part because while Vlad fears what miners would do to the blockchain if unfettered, I have similar fears long-term with what developers would do if unfettered, and we should be acting to limit through social norms what any of these groups can do on its own.

>There are two situations in which I support dropping the block reward:

>1. As part of a hard fork which delays the ice age, and has the property that miners get net expected revenue that is somewhere between the revenue that they would get if the ice age was not stopped and the revenue that they would get if 5 ETH blocks with no ice age continued forever. That is, taking the ice age delay into account, the hard fork would not hurt miners relative to the baseline of inaction. Such a reduction should also have strong community consensus.
>2. As part of a switch to hybrid proof of stake, that is a step along the roadmap to full proof of stake. If Ethereum switches to an algorithm that can be reasonably described as only 50% relying on miners and 50% relying on stake, then it seems totally reasonable to cut the reward given to miners by 50%, and give stakers 50% the reward that they will eventually receive.

[Link to the Reddit comment Source.](https://np.reddit.com/r/ethereum/comments/609yjl/vladzamfir_if_the_price_of_ether_stays_high_i/df4r7hq/)

This is a very good post my man!

As always, researched well, and informative. Keep em coming, Dana!

Good discussion. Will watch with interest for outcome.