ORE has officially frozen the mint program. This is a major milestone and security upgrade for token holders. The max supply has been made immutable and emissions rate is permanently capped. Here's what this means for users... 🧵

On Solana, every token has a "mint authority" which is authorized to create new coins. The ORE mint authority has long been managed by an automated onchain smart contract. This contract, in turn, has an "upgrade authority" which allows the community to update its rules. /2

While the ORE protocol has been in development, the community has frequently proposed rule changes, and freezing the contract has often been delayed. This presented a risk to token holders given the mint authority could be taken over or abused by contract rule changes. /3

Freezing a contract means its rules are effectively written in stone and made immutable forever. So to secure the ORE mint authority, it has been migrated from the "mining program" to a new contract called the "mint program", and the mint program has been frozen. /4

The mint program implements strict security rules on how many tokens may be minted and when. It ensures that the max supply limit can be never violated, and tokens can never be minted at a rate greater than +2 ORE per minute. /5

This separation of the mint program from the mining program ensures token holders are protected from inflation and mint abuse while still giving the community freedom to experiment with new mining rules and tokenomics features. A win-win for everyone. /7

As part of the contract freeze, ORE's max supply has additionally been reduced from 5 million to 3 million. This represents a 40% reduction in total amount of ORE that will ever be mined, increasing the longterm scarcity value of existing tokens. /8

This reduction in max supply was made after analyzing the new mining system and its effect on net emissions. It was calculated that ORE would take longer than planned to reach its max supply, and thus the limit could safely be reduced to minimize unnecessary supply overhang. /9

The new 3 million limit will effectively split ORE mining into three distinct eras based on circulating supply: 0 to 1m = early game 1m to 2m = mid game 2m to 3m = end game At a current circulating supply of 413k, we sit squarely in the first half of the early game. /10

This event marks a major milestone in ORE's hardening journey. The most critical part of the protocol has been frozen and max supply is permanently fixed. We look forward to continuing our work with the ORE community on new mining rules with this safety net now in place. /fin