There isn’t an infinite amount of gold on earth, whereas there _is_ an infinite amount of any linearly emitted $COIN. Linear emissions models don’t resemble terrestrial gold mining.

Linear emissions are a security tax paid for by investors. Do investors enjoy paying this tax? Investors generally don’t “enjoy” being debased through inflation.

Ethereum got away with having no defined emissions policy early on, but they pulled it off during an era when information was low and ignorance was widespread. Many of their investors assumed Ethereum had a fixed supply just like Bitcoin did — and they had to scramble to rectify this years later.

“Governed emission” is achievable via systems of on-chain governance. Non-stakers get debased by tail emissions measures voted in by stakers. Stakers profit from the inflation measure or are hardly debased at worst.

While antithetical to gold, it achieves the stated goal of incentivizing ongoing chain security while also benefiting investors, particularly assuming staking yield is widely accessible to all in a decentralized manner.

> there _is_ an infinite amount of any linearly emitted $COIN

The amount emitted at any time is not only finite, but limited by time, with the yearly supply inflation going down toward 0. There's no essential difference with a capped supply [1].

[1] https://john-tromp.medium.com/a-case-for-using-soft-total-su...

A tail emissions rate of 0.03% or less annually seems acceptable.

    #!/usr/bin/env raku
    use v6;

    multi sub inflate($n, $r, $y)
    {
        my $m = $n;
        loop (my $i = 0; $i < $y; $i++)
        {
            $m = inflate($m, $r);
        }
        $m;
    }

    multi sub inflate($n, $r)
    {
        $n * (1 - $r);
    }

    sub MAIN(:$rate = 0.0003, :$years = 100)
    {
        my $purchasing-power = 1;
        my $inflate = inflate($purchasing-power, $rate, $years);
        my $output = qq:to/EOF/.trim;
        After $years years of inflation at a rate of {$rate * 100}% per year,
        purchasing power is {$inflate * 100}% of what it was initially.
        EOF
        $output.say;
    }

All else equal, a 1% annual rate of inflation costs you over half of your purchasing power per century. Even a 0.1% yearly inflation rate charted out over several centuries results in a collapse of purchasing power. This level of inflation practically requires investors to take countermeasures, like searching for alternative stores of value...

Expanding the supply on demand through on-chain governance in a way stakers can profit from, while sacrilege to “digital gold”, would be more palatable to me than rates of tail emission higher than 0.03% or so.

is 0.03% enough incentive to secure a trustless network?

I’m only commenting from the perspective of investors concerned over debasement. 0.03% annual inflation reduces purchasing power by about 7% every 250 years.