> 9.9% percentage of that also was set aside for "founders"

> Today it accounts for something like 59% of total supply. Make what you will of that.

Can you help me understand what exactly this means? Ethereum's supply has grown since the presale, so if anything the 9.9% should have gotten smaller since then.

OP has provided the right links but either misunderstood the text or phrased it very confusingly.

https://messari.io/asset/ethereum/profile/launch-and-initial...

Ethereum's crowdsale supply was 72 million ETH. Of that 60 million were sold for BTC in the crowdsale. 6 million was given to the Ethereum Foundation and 6 million to early contributors (overall 20% of what was sold was created as a pre-mine).

Now Ethereum's supply is ~122 million, so the miners produced 50 millions new ETH.

Oh, I was a bit unclear there. The 9.9% was of the total money that was raised in the ICO (60m) and ended up being ~5.9m.

The total initial premine was 72m (~59% of today's supply).

I think someone more knowledgeable might provide a better breakdown of those funds, except that the article(s) linked covers it a lot better than my comment.

Since this "premine" (the 59%) was really a token sale, I don't think it's too problematic (mining is buying tokens with electricity/hardware).

It should also be noted in the 7 years since launch that a large portion of that 59% would have been sold or lost and hence re-distributed to other users on the platform.