04-17-2006 11:31
As you are aware, the money supply is the best tool we have to 'manage' the Second Life economy. In the past, when we've been concerned about inflationary trends, we've reduced the amount of new currency entering the economy by targeting programs that were originally designed to incent specific behaviors. As the economy has grown and become more self-sustaining these incentive payments have been increasingly unnecessary to both the health and the culture of Second Life.

Traffic bonuses, the last remaining incentive payment, averaged about 6% of total sources into the currency pool over the last 12 months. However, the contribution percentage is increasing with population growth and in March it was actually 9%.

This incentive was originally created to support content creation in Second Life. The reality is that it has never done a particularly good job of recognizing the broad variety of content, and recently the advent of camping chairs has contributed negatively to the culture of Second Life.

Effective May 15, traffic bonuses will be reduced by 50%.

Effective June 13, traffic bonuses will be eliminated.

Traffic information by parcel will still be available to support the popular places listing and the sort functionality of the places directory.

This change will have the most significant affect on groups, who received 75% of the total traffic incentive to split among themselves over the last year. Premium account holders received 24%, and basic account holders received 1%.

For perspective, stipends still account for the largest source of new money into the currency pool. In March stipends totalled L$37.7million, or 72% of the sources for the month.
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