So, bringing merge mining back to the discussion.
Pros:
- Increased hashrate/network security
Cons:
- Increased dumping
Discussion:
Auroracoin presently has a rather low inflation rate. It is lower than Myriad's and Digibyte's. For this reason, I feel that dumping is not a big concern for Auroracoin. In any case, the issues with merge mining and dumping are largely exaggerated — most mined coins get dumped, merge mining or not.
Because Auroracoin has low inflation, hash rate is more of a concern than it is for Myriad and Digibyte. Low hash rates open up vulnerability to 'difficulty hopping'. In worst case scenarios, a block doesn't get found for hours on that algo— and then 10 blocks get found in 1 minute. Of course, the rewards all get dumped. In a multi-algo system, this scenario is less damaging, because the other algos will continue to find blocks. It is, however, more likely— each algo already has rather a low hash rate, with only ~20% of the block rewards.
In Myriad, we had the experience that sha256d and scrypt were suffering from extensive difficulty hopping. We switched to merge mining for those algorithms, and it's worked out fantastically. Our current scrypt difficulty is 4383.68.... Aurora's is only 690.82.... And our scrypt is only for ~20% of the block rewards!
Personally, I would recommend enabling merge mining on all 5 algorithms. It would enable miners to mine AUR on top of their MYR, DGB, or soon XVG (Groestl). Added security for AUR and support for the whole multi-algo flock, at little cost.
At the very least, go with merge mining on sha256d and scrypt.
Pros:
- Increased hashrate/network security
Cons:
- Increased dumping
Discussion:
Auroracoin presently has a rather low inflation rate. It is lower than Myriad's and Digibyte's. For this reason, I feel that dumping is not a big concern for Auroracoin. In any case, the issues with merge mining and dumping are largely exaggerated — most mined coins get dumped, merge mining or not.
Because Auroracoin has low inflation, hash rate is more of a concern than it is for Myriad and Digibyte. Low hash rates open up vulnerability to 'difficulty hopping'. In worst case scenarios, a block doesn't get found for hours on that algo— and then 10 blocks get found in 1 minute. Of course, the rewards all get dumped. In a multi-algo system, this scenario is less damaging, because the other algos will continue to find blocks. It is, however, more likely— each algo already has rather a low hash rate, with only ~20% of the block rewards.
In Myriad, we had the experience that sha256d and scrypt were suffering from extensive difficulty hopping. We switched to merge mining for those algorithms, and it's worked out fantastically. Our current scrypt difficulty is 4383.68.... Aurora's is only 690.82.... And our scrypt is only for ~20% of the block rewards!
Personally, I would recommend enabling merge mining on all 5 algorithms. It would enable miners to mine AUR on top of their MYR, DGB, or soon XVG (Groestl). Added security for AUR and support for the whole multi-algo flock, at little cost.
At the very least, go with merge mining on sha256d and scrypt.
Merged mining is discussed and currently not on the roadmap.
- It would in no way alter the instamining scene
- it would introduce a new attack vector where someone can merge mine the coin against itself and get rewarded even if the attack fails.
- with this wallet, the retargetting is calculated over all algos so diff hopping in SHA256d will have less effect.
Lets wait with discussions about algo related changes till we passed block 225000, and then review the results from real life experience.
