I decided to start implementing merged mining for peercoin after the next demo release of PeerKeeper.
I also started a peer4commit for this task: https://peer4commit.com/projects/181
Donating to this project will make our argument to merge this into the next peercoin release stronger.
So please support this, and hopefully it will make it into ppcoin v0.6
If little interest in merged mining is shown (verbally or little donations) funds will be used to fund PeerKeeper development. Edit: apparently this is not done, the practice is to keep the funds there until someone picks up the task.
[ul][li]Larger PoW blocks (merged coins header included: ~80bytes/coin)[/li]
[li]Fork required[/li]
[li]Leaves a lot of ppc in the hands of a select group, as is currently the case[/li]
[li]Mining ppc will become more centralized, less chance for small miners[/li][/ul]
Any potential benefits for protocols like PeerAssets? I presume that this would peg the issuance time of block across the coins? Meaning, that PoW block would happen at the same time as BTC block.
Also, what about reputation of the Peercoin? Any negatives here? Could amateurs interpret this as a “dying coin is now trying to save itself by merge mining with Bitcoin”?
There is no guaranteed pegging. If it is assumed the bitcoin’s difficulty is higher, there will be only a verifiable peg if a bitcoin block is found by someone who is merged mining with peercoin. If he only finds a peercoin block, there is only a link to a non-solved bitcoin header which has no connection to the bitcoin chain. So only occasional and unpredictably timed pegs will exist.
I believe this effort will be of great benefit in many ways. Not only will it subsequently increase difficulty and decrease coinbase reward, but it will do so with consistency and bring a degree of reliability to the stability of the decreased reward. Instead of experiencing upward retracement after declination of the coinbase reward, I believe that merge mining will enable a certain level of insurance that difficulty will not fall too low too quickily within a given amount of time. Now that the distribution phase is tapering off, this could be excellent timing…
i am not an amateur in ppc world thus i don’t know. but for me and many others this move is definitely a “greener” one.
ppc will be made a really energy efficient coin leaving all the PoW energy to btc
it is like ppc is transforming to a pure PoS coin!
and for a greener planet all the PoW coins should be merged together!
Ha, now you’ve got me reconsidering! I almost wonder if getting rid of mining all together would be cleaner and more direct than changing the protocol to allow for existing mining power to drive down the reward.
Which makes me think we should leave it alone for now
I’ll decide next week what to do.
Merged mining doesn’t seem as promising as it did at first sight.
The funds will be kept in that peer4commit for a while and if it doesn’t get implemented next release it will be redirected to PeerKeeper.
Will it create a lot of PPC because many BTC minters also start to mine PPC on the side. Currently you either minf BTC or PPC, so to some degree the PPC price reflects PPC mining difficulty relative to that of BTC. Merged mining will change that.
It would lower the ppc solo mining revenue (increased difficulty), as the same hash power is used to mine multiple coins.
So the combined ppc/btc/emc price will be reflected in ppc PoW difficulty.
If miners are able to mine on multiple chains, they will as it raises their profitability.
So it is fair to assume that the peercoin hashrate can get close to namecoin’s hashrate.
Which indeed pushes peercoins PoW difficulty up.
