Based on a discord conversation with Karl (inventor of Phonon), I am writing up his proposal for denominating native phonons. I think it is clever and worth discussing.
Proposal
There are 256 possible values of native phonons (1 zero through 256 zeros). Native phonons with relatively few zeros will be worth very little (at least at the beginning), and native phonons on the other end of the spectrum may be so valuable that they’re illiquid. Karl’s proposal is essentially this: Find the sweet spot in the middle of the spectrum to be “1,” and then divide all native phonons by that value – this would give all native phonons a new denomination.
Example
For example, if we decide a native phonon with 16 zeros is a good value to be “1,” we would divide all native phonons by 2^16. The result would be this:
+---------+-----------------------+----------------+
| # zeros | binary value of zeros | new base value |
+---------+-----------------------+----------------+
| . | | |
| . | | |
| . | | |
| 14 | 2^14 | 0.25 |
| 15 | 2^15 | 0.5 |
| 16 | 2^16 | 1 |
| 17 | 2^17 | 2 |
| 18 | 2^18 | 4 |
| 19 | 2^19 | 8 |
| 20 | 2^20 | 16 |
| 21 | 2^21 | 32 |
| 22 | 2^22 | 64 |
| 23 | 2^23 | 128 |
| 24 | 2^24 | 256 |
| 25 | 2^25 | 512 |
| 26 | 2^26 | 1024 |
| . | | |
| . | | |
| . | | |
+---------+-----------------------+----------------+
I believe this method works well because it preserves the binary nature of native phonons, and it makes the numbers/values more reasonable and easier to wrap our brains around.
Next Steps
For now, I think we should discuss the merits of this method of denominating native phonons. On the question of “which value should be 1?”: I believe this will become clearer during the testnet, and isn’t worth fretting over too much at this point.
Ultimately, I see that we would need to vote on two things:
- What value is 1?
- What do we call these things?