Topic: The case for merge mined coins (Read 1085 times)

my buddha!
my brothr from another mudder!
Ahmen!

i thought i was alone in the room of ... "Why doesn't a $10B chain support alternatives"

BTC plan B.
you don't have a plan B!?  

When btc reward drops off and price doesn't rise high enough bitcoin network could greatly benefit from merge mined coins. These alts would help support btc network security in the future. If btc miners aren't stupid they support the merged chains so they can be profitable after rewards for btc drop off. I hope they'll understand this in time. Bitcoin maximalists should actually support these alts for their best selfinterest.

It is true it should be as diverse as possible.
On the other hand the level of diversity is also subject to constant change.
"Security" remains an illusion in all areas of life if you think deeply about it, it's not possible to achieve a 100% security in anything. It's always a relative security.  (same goes for btc, your 401k or your fiat $ ... or even your precious metal holdings)

Security can be an illusion though. For instance, onename (I think) dropped namecoin because it had a high hashrate that was completely dominated by a single pool, f2pool i think. Same deal for huntercoin, which uses both sha and scrypt, but f2pool owns 99% of the hash on both algos I think (tho they've announced they're going to stop mining huntercoin soon).

I think myriadcoin has a nice approach of using five algos, sha and scrypt being merge mined, and the three GPU/CPU algos not. That way a single monster ASIC pool can't own the coin least. Unitus also has an interesting approach of using five algos all GPU/CPU and all merge mined.

Tl;dr - hashrate != security

bump for investors who are looking for something more resilient 

Yeah - and what's more the Doge price stabalised once it became merge mined, because the hashrate also stabalised. It's nice for miners to have merge mined coins - they worry less about halvenings etc as a result. Litecoin for example didn't go to the moon after it's halvening but it didn't tank either because it was still worth mining it thanks to the other coins merge mining with it.

Interesting. I didn't know Blake. Will watch it, maybe.

The difference between the "2.0"-coins like NXT and a merged mined coin family is that in the 2.0 coins full nodes must save the entire blockchain. "Prunable" coins or "childchain"-capable coins like IOTA and NXT 2 could be a solution comparable to a "merged mined family" but are still in alpha/beta state. Until now, all 2.0 coins seems to have a monolithic blockchain. (I'm not totally sure about Ethereum and Lisk but I think they too).


Exactly. But these "DIY" guys are important, even if they're not mining. I guess the Bitcoin network would come in serious trouble if only the 20 or maybe 50 pool operators would run full nodes.

I forgot Blake.  
They've created " such a "merged-mined coin family" from scratch ".  But capital they lack.

Plus the 2.0s, have created some exotic variants of MM.  ETH, BTS, NXT, LSK all are built on the concept of a closed ecosystem that utilizes the hash of the parent.

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limit seems to be 5 chains / pool
(non expert opinion)

but a trivial footnote, since pool operators could still likely combine side pools to simultaneously mine the bread winner (BTC), thus allow variations in the AuxPow coins miners can mine.  

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"security/needed capacity equation"

not a major factor for pools, but yes for the DIY guys running in sync nodes, they will likely prefer lighter chains to maintain

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add new
"capacity to add new relevant blockchains equation"

Just like altcoins, AuxPow coins need to have a successful launch.  And it is currently difficult for any new comers to attach without first raising capital.  UNO and SYS have successfully forked to AuxPow after first establishing themselves.  Via has failed to hold the initial capital gains.  And the survival of Peseta is slim at current status.  But these are market force factors, and not technical factors.  

The AuxPow code is already well proven as functionally sound.  And it is in the interest of BTC and LTC to fund the continual launch of new AuxPow coins to help insure the profitability of mining on 'their' networks.  $10 Billion in capital would be smart to place $Millions/year into beefing up the  AuxPow ecosystem.  

  

I also think merged mining has more advantages than disadvantages.

Merged-mined currencies could be even a solution to the blockchain scalability issue: If you have a "family" of merged-mined currencies (e.g. Bitcoin, Namecoin and Ixcoin) they all benefit from the same hashpower, so they all together require the same (or only slightly more) energy than the largest of its member (in this case, Bitcoin). On the other hand, the disk capacity required by every individual blockchain of this "family" to process their transactions is the same of a regular altcoin. So the "security/needed capacity equation" is favourable for every participating coin.

That leads me to the idea that it could be interesting to create such a "merged-mined coin family" from scratch. Let's say we create 10 different currencies that are tied together via merged mining, but have independent blockchains. They could have 10x the blockchain capacity but a individual node would not have to download all 10 blockchains.

The only issue would be that the tokens of all these blockchains would have a different price. In post no. 2 of this Stackexchange thread the writer expresses the concern that all these blockchains could then compete in such a way that incentive for mining is lowered. I don't know if this concern and is legit (and important) or not, maybe someone has thoughts about it.

edited. Thanks for the aditions, BitcoinNational.

Some intriguing thoughts you have there regarding MM.

Merge mined coins with btc on the market include:

-IXcoin (no more blockreward TX fee only)
-i0coin (no more blockreward TX fee only)
-Unobtanium (active community and good things happening here, blockrewards for 300 years planned out, micro-inflation)
-Devcoin
-Namecoin
-SyS (just forked to AuxPow 256)
-HunterCoin? (vague recollection it is MM but also heard rumor code is faulty)
-Myraid (fairly sure it is MM on the Sha256 vein)
[also XCP and Omni platforms use the bitcoin hash, slightly different than AuxPow 256 tech]

Merged with Litecoin:
-Doge
-Via
-eCanada
-Peseta
-Umbrella
-eCanada
-Taco

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I hold the opinion that AuxPow coins are more secure than LTC or BTC.

The argument that BTC or LTC might become less valuable to mine than the POW alts running on Scrypt or SHA seems absurd, but it is possible, no one knows what the 'networks' will look like in 10 years from now.  So it is a known, unknown.  Hence a risk factor.

BTC or LTC must earn the highest hash pools by market force, AuxPow coins are already mine-able in any pool and not coin specific tied.

AuxPow coins assure attachment to the most lucrative ... highest hash pools ... overtime with adoption all reputably ASIC pools will need to offer multiple flavors of  AuxPow options (if fact this option is already being seen as a marketing advantage) ... yet there is no 100% guarantee of pool adoption ... but the logic of working for $1.00 or $1.01 for the same workload historically and repetitively favors the higher rate no matter how small.  

Right.

Added Dogecoin to OP. It's merged with LTC, right?

While it's a good technical feature, it is not sufficient to have it for the coin to succeed, you should look at community, marketing, other technical features, trading history. Out of all I'd select to buy a bit of Dogecoin to represent a merge mined coin class in a diversified crypto portfolio.

Speaking as a trader and investor, merge mined coins seem to be undervalued to me.
They generally don't have shiny brands and lots of short-term hype. And they are mostly old coins.
Most technical developements in crypto have been going nowhere and most ideas never were finished. Not so merge mining. It is working like a charm and seems to be reliable.

Why are merge mined coins of interest?
For a whole set of reasons:

1st) MM with bitcoin makes a coin very secure if/when it is adopted by enough btc-pools.

2nd) They somewhat defy logic and gravity because normally running a network costs huge bucks. These costs mostly are hidden in the inflation of the coin. This translates to: The user of a coin who is not mining the coin does pay an invisible tax to the miners (the inflation) for their work of keeping the network running. These costs can sometimes be very high. For Bitcoin currently the costs per transaction are 10$. (https://blockchain.info/charts/cost-per-transaction)
These pretty high 10$ are calculated this way: "global earning of miners devided by number of transactions"

That being said, an altcoin network running on its own does also produce costs in relation to its marketcap. More often than not an altcoin shows an initial pump and an endless slow decline afterwards. These long slow declines you see in the charts of almost every altcoin are primarily caused by the oversupply the inflation causes constantly. So what inflation does is pushing down your price very little but all the time.

Merge mined coins now in comparison can be run much cheaper because the bitcoin miner is mining bitcoins anyways. For him a merge mined coin is a matter of setting it up once and getting a small aditional income from his btc mining activities. It's a win-win situation. The miner gets more for the same hashpower and no aditional cost while the coin gets exposure to bitcoin hashpower for only small costs. Basically merge mined coins do carry hashpower which is enormous and could never be paid for by those coin communities if it was running on its own.

I hear people often say "a coin looses its personality when merged with btc because now it's only a byproduct from btc mining" . I hear this line very often and i think it is utterly irrational. Because merge mined coins are cheaper, more secure, have less inflation and live much, much longer. MUCH longer.
Now your "feeling" towards the process of creation doesn't match with the facts. Oh, wait, people saying that are likely miners who want to mine shitcoins and dump and move on. Right, merge mined coins don't accomodate the parasitic miner that's why he doesn't like them. Most people making arguments against merged mining are of that sort. They shouldn't hold it down, though. Also their interest is opposite of investors interests. In a merged mined coin investors interests and miners interests are similar and both are happy about each other.

Basically all these alts that are mined on their own have some initial hype, people buy it, interest peaks and after that point inflation pushes the price over the next 6 to 12 months to near zero. This pattern repeats over and over in coins. Not in merge mined coins with low inflation. They can be kept afloat even with low interest.
This means MM-coins are basically a group of altcoins that aren't suffering from the very fast dying off or being completely abandoned like you see it with most of these fad-coins that pop up this week and are forgotten 2 weeks later and drop to zero

So from the standpoint of an longterm investor in altcoins merge mined coins are first choice because they normally don't depreciate to zero the way the stand-alone-coins do and they are better store of value due to very low inflation. Stand-alone-alts aren't a place to park your money longterm, merge mined coins are.
A solid merge mined coin is a real alternative for money-storage to Bitcoin and Litecoin.

And last but not least: Bitcoin blocks are full now and fees should rise. People could look for alternative chains to make txs on. Merge mined chains are just perfect to take on parts of the bitcoin load. So with this background they could possibly even turn out real good investement in case people would wake up to them. Currently these coins seem a little bit forgotten and aren't hyped a little bit so the entry they offer isn't so bad at all.


Merge mined coins with btc on the market include:

-IXcoin (no more blockreward TX fee only)
-i0coin (no more blockreward TX fee only)
-Unobtanium (active community and good things happening here, blockrewards for 300 years planned out, micro-inflation)
-Devcoin
-Namecoin
-SyS (just forked to AuxPow 256)
-HunterCoin? (vague recollection it is MM but also heard rumor it code is faulty)
-Myraid (fairly sure it is MM on the Sha256 vein)
[also XCP and Omni platforms use the bitcoin hash, slightly different than AuxPow 256 tech]

Merged with Litecoin:
-Doge
-Via
-eCanada
-Peseta
-Umbrella
-Taco


Personally i do think every longterm crypto-portofolio should have a portion in merge mined coins. But that's just my 2 cents.

Disclaimer: the author is holding merge mined coins (of course)