I must say I do stongly object to using the term "scam" in rererence to the proposal to reward merge-mined blocks less than native-mined blocks.
A scam is an" intent to defraud", usually pulled by con artists who are disguising their intentions. It's wholly inappropriate here, and I find it frankly somewhat offensive.... needlessly so.
First because nothing proposed is being disguised or hidden. It's entirely transparent and open for discussion.
Fact #1: Merge-mined blocks cost much, much less to produce than native blocks. By definition, their cost of production is marginal compared to native-mined blocks. The miner's fixed cost are exactly the same whether they mine just the parent chain, or the parent chain plus some number of AuxPoW (merge-mineable) chains along with it.
Fact #2: Higher hashrate means a more secure blockchain, more secure against 51% attacks and other such shenanigans. That is why we opened up Bitmarks 8 mPoW algos for merge-mining in the first place.
Unfortunately, enabling AuxPoW on all 8 of the algos has had the unitendended consequence of decimating native mining. Most other mPoW coins, if they allow merge-mining, allow it on only a few of their PoW algos. My initial thought of a solution was to
create native & merge-mine-enabled variants of each of the PoW algos, resulting in 16 "virtual" algos; each with its own block target time and DGWv3-governed difficulty. In this scenario, we could set any ratio desired of native to merge-mined algos by setting the block time target that DGWv3 seeks.
However, separating merge-mined blocks from native blocks would create a scenario where the merge-miners or the native miners of an algo could manipulate the other group's reward by peaking their hashrate during a day so that the denominator (peak_hashrate) in the subsidy scale factor (SSF = current_hashrate / peak_hasrhate) in CEM would shrink, reducing the other group's reward for as long as the CEM look-back period remembers that peak hashrate.
So instead, by keeping native and AuxPoW blocks in the same CEM group, this problem is avoided. And we don't have to choose an arbitrary ratio of native:merged blocks. We simply set the reward for native blocks to to be aproximately 5x greater than merged blocks, and let the economics sort it out.
This way, we account for the fact that merged blocks are cheaper to produce (fact #1) while we acknowlege that (although they are of near-zero cost to the miner), they have greater than zero cost
value to our blockchain (fact #2). Setting this differential is somewhat arbitrary, but it's certainly "in the ballpark" of what's fair. If it strictly represented the cost of mining differential, it would be much larger (maybe 100X greater reward for native), but we _do_want some merge-mining, it is valuable to our chain, therefore a middle ground, with a less pronounced differential seems appropriate.
I think it's also appropriate to put in
a word about the emission rate and the total emission in general. Since inception, Bitmark has a total cap on emission of below 28,000,000 coins (
27,579,894.73108000 to be exact). (This is on the very first page of our GitHub wiki:
Bitmark: Block Reward & Currency Supply.
Everything we have done respects this total cap on emission.By its nature CEM has the potential (because it can lower a block reward down from the epoch's maximum) to push completion of the total emission further into the future. Likewise, rewarding merge-mined blocks less than native-mined blocks defers completion of the total emission into the future by its own measure. I believe that a careful reading of the philosophy expressed in the Wiki justifies this. Particularly this passage:
the quicker the reward halves the more unstable the coin and unfair the distribution, and the more likely it will be considered and act like a project/currency with no longevity.
Slow block halving reduces urgency to mine and allows more natural growth and adoption. There is no unfair benefit to mining on day 1 as opposed to day 400
By deferring issuing coins when CEM reductions are in effect, and as well when blocks are mined by merge-miners, it ensures that mining will be sustainable for much longer before mining has to be incentivized only by transaction fees, But more importantly, it means that there are even less of the "early bird" incentives pointed out in the original paper. The emission algorithms, keeps coins in reserve for a future that may have more demand for them.
As always, no more than the 27,579,894.73108000 MARKS will ever be issued.
And last but not least, these measures, although they will not reduce emission as low as it had been for some stretches of time in the past, will move the emission rate
closer to what have been Bitmark's real, historical emission averages.
In summary, their are
5 benefits I see with the approach we are working on now:
1) We get
the security of merge mining,
2) The emission is more dynamic, and
emission is more in line with Bitmark's real historical averages,
3) We have an
incentive for merge-miners to adopt Bitmark as the parent chain,
4) We
don't have to revoke merge-mining on any algo, and
5)
No issues with merge-miners or natives sabotaging each other's CEM reward with 1-day high-hashrate attacks just to affect the other guy's SSF
As always I welcome thoughtful input and suggestions.
PS .. We're working on a graph that will illustrate our emission rates. Should be interesting.