Ethereum block times have fallen to 12.69 seconds from 17 seconds, a drop of some 25%.

Ethereum’s new supply is likewise to increase by circa 25% as the effects of the difficulty bomb delay are instantly felt.

Ethereum block rewards, January 2020

As you can see above, there was a jump in the amount of new coins mined, up from circa 10,000 eth to now ◊12,000.

The hardfork went through at around 8AM London time, so for a 24 hour period down to these 12 second blocktimes, new issuance should be at ◊13,500 eth.

That makes it an inflation rate of circa 5% a year which will increase a bit further potentially this summer once hybrid Proof of Stake (PoS) launches.

Then onwards it looks probable it will stay around these levels until around September 2021 when the difficulty bomb is to kick-in again.

Around that time full Proof of Stake might launch, at which point the Proof of Work (PoW) chain is set to be discarded.

This 5% inflation from the PoW chain will be discarded with it, leaving an inflation rate of only 0.22%.

These timings however are an estimate as are future inflation levels as packaging the PoW chain into a PoS first shard is very complex and something to be done with great care.

Yet the aim is to eventually get down to this 0.22% inflation level, but in the meantime ethereum’s inflation will stay at 5%.

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