Merge Mine FRC - Start a bounty?

[crazy_rabbit]

Why not Merge Mine FRC? If demurrage is going to work it should have at least the security of the bitcoin hash-power. Why not start a bounty to get someone to Merge Mine it?

I only have about 100FRC at the moment to put towards that, but gladly!

[wallet.dat]

Wait, I'm not done solo mining yet.

[smoothie]

LOL!

[crazy_rabbit]

Wait, I'm not done solo mining yet.

You mean pumping? :-)

[jtimon]

Why not Merge Mine FRC? If demurrage is going to work it should have at least the security of the bitcoin hash-power. Why not start a bounty to get someone to Merge Mine it?

I only have about 100FRC at the moment to put towards that, but gladly!

Thank you for your support on the currency! I'll add 1000 FRC to the bounty.

Actually I wanted to have merged mining from launch, but Mark (and others) convinced me that it would be very dangerous at the beginning since bitcoin miners could use the their hashing power to attack the new currency at no costs.
There was a consensus that merged mining feature should be added later when the hashing power was enough for the transition to be secure. By the way, I have no idea what that hashing rate could be, so please, Namecoin historians, enlighten me.

[K1773R]

applying the MM patches should do the trick, altough everyone would have to upgrade to work (otherwise it will only produce orphans).

[crazy_rabbit]

Why not Merge Mine FRC? If demurrage is going to work it should have at least the security of the bitcoin hash-power. Why not start a bounty to get someone to Merge Mine it?

I only have about 100FRC at the moment to put towards that, but gladly!

Thank you for your support on the currency! I'll add 1000 FRC to the bounty.

Actually I wanted to have merged mining from launch, but Mark (and others) convinced me that it would be very dangerous at the beginning since bitcoin miners could use the their hashing power to attack the new currency at no costs.
There was a consensus that merged mining feature should be added later when the hashing power was enough for the transition to be secure. By the way, I have no idea what that hashing rate could be, so please, Namecoin historians, enlighten me.

Besides a few coin-crushings in the past, Bitcoiners really need an incentive to bother with destroying alt-coins. Most of them die on their own, and people know this. When you want to merge-mine doesn't really matter. You could start any time.

[crazy_rabbit]

applying the MM patches should do the trick, altough everyone would have to upgrade to work (otherwise it will only produce orphans).

That's over my head to do, but someone should be able to do it without much trouble!

[maaku]

Any marge-mined variant of FRC would be a fork, and the blocks mined would be orphaned from the main chain, and anyone transacting on both chains would be in danger of having their coins stolen.

There has been discussion on IRC, our forums, and elsewhere on the subject of merged mining, and do intent to fully support at the appropriate time. Here is the current plan for merge-mining, accepted by most of the core contributors (jtimon being an outlier):

A generalized merge mining patchset will be applied, with merge mining disabled. In parallel, a system will be implemented for proof-of-work and proof-of-stake voting (something we want for other purposes anyway). A trigger will be coded into the codebase such that if a majority of miners and a sufficient plurality of stakeholders vote for merged mining, it will be enabled. This is similar to the proof-of-stake voting for the rollout of P2SH in the bitcoin network (another hard-fork).

If you want merge mining enabled for freicoin, I suggest devoting your efforts to this path. It would allow input from miners and stakeholders, and prevent unilateral action that might further divide the community.

[crazy_rabbit]

Any marge-mined variant of FRC would be a fork, and the blocks mined would be orphaned from the main chain, and anyone transacting on both chains would be in danger of having their coins stolen.

There has been discussion on IRC, our forums, and elsewhere on the subject of merged mining, and do intent to fully support at the appropriate time. Here is the current plan for merge-mining, accepted by most of the core contributors (jtimon being an outlier):

A generalized merge mining patchset will be applied, with merge mining disabled. In parallel, a system will be implemented for proof-of-work and proof-of-stake voting (something we want for other purposes anyway). A trigger will be coded into the codebase such that if a majority of miners and a sufficient plurality of stakeholders vote for merged mining, it will be enabled. This is similar to the proof-of-stake voting for the rollout of P2SH in the bitcoin network (another hard-fork).

If you want merge mining enabled for freicoin, I suggest devoting your efforts to this path. It would allow input from miners and stakeholders, and prevent unilateral action that might further divide the community.

When is the appropriate time? Why not do it sooner rather then later- you run less risk of a costly error, and you secure the network early on. Make sense no? Can't see any negatives.

[maaku]

You also make it trivially easy (no-cost) for any large mining pool operator to kill the coin, and completely change the economics of coin minting. This is something which requires understanding and approval from the relevant stakeholders (everyone currently using the currency).

[crazy_rabbit]

You also make it trivially easy (no-cost) for any large mining pool operator to kill the coin, and completely change the economics of coin minting. This is something which requires understanding and approval from the relevant stakeholders (everyone currently using the currency).

Why would anyone care to kill it? At that point BTC miners would just be accumulating coins, like Namecoin.

"This is something which requires understanding and approval from the relevant stakeholders (everyone currently using the currency)"

So FRC requires every person using the currency to get anything done? Wow. That's horribly inefficient.

[DiCE1904]

You also make it trivially easy (no-cost) for any large mining pool operator to kill the coin, and completely change the economics of coin minting. This is something which requires understanding and approval from the relevant stakeholders (everyone currently using the currency).

Why would anyone care to kill it? At that point BTC miners would just be accumulating coins, like Namecoin.

lol the same reason bbqcoin and others have been attacked

[crazy_rabbit]

You also make it trivially easy (no-cost) for any large mining pool operator to kill the coin, and completely change the economics of coin minting. This is something which requires understanding and approval from the relevant stakeholders (everyone currently using the currency).

Why would anyone care to kill it? At that point BTC miners would just be accumulating coins, like Namecoin.

lol the same reason bbqcoin and others have been attacked

Yes FRC is already highly vulnerable to being attacked, so whats the difference? The difference is that you can have big bitcoin miners PROTECTING the chain at the same time. Sounds like there might be some other reasons why people wouldn't want to merge-mine. Perhaps pump and dump??!?!?!?!?!

I say lets Merge Mine! It's security and stability.

[jtimon]

Yes FRC is already highly vulnerable to being attacked, so whats the difference? The difference is that you can have big bitcoin miners PROTECTING the chain at the same time. Sounds like there might be some other reasons why people wouldn't want to merge-mine. Perhaps pump and dump??!?!?!?!?!

I say lets Merge Mine! It's security and stability.

I want to merge mine as soon as possible as well. But the attackers could attack while mining bitcoin, so is basically free for them. Now they can attack, but at the opportunity cost of not mining bitcoin. If you're a pool operator, you don't have to tell your users you're attacking another chain with your hashing power (yes, you could get keep all the coins to yourself too), but you can't make your users stop mining bitcoin only to make your attack.

[crazy_rabbit]

Yes FRC is already highly vulnerable to being attacked, so whats the difference? The difference is that you can have big bitcoin miners PROTECTING the chain at the same time. Sounds like there might be some other reasons why people wouldn't want to merge-mine. Perhaps pump and dump??!?!?!?!?!

I say lets Merge Mine! It's security and stability.

I want to merge mine as soon as possible as well. But the attackers could attack while mining bitcoin, so is basically free for them. Now they can attack, but at the opportunity cost of not mining bitcoin. If you're a pool operator, you don't have to tell your users you're attacking another chain with your hashing power (yes, you could get keep all the coins to yourself too), but you can't make your users stop mining bitcoin only to make your attack.

Yes but at the same time, the attackers would have to contend with all the other bitcoin miners-  and there are a lot of them. You gain more security from Merge Mining then not. Even though it would be technically 'free' to attack the chain if it were merge-mined, you would have the protection of the ENTIRE bitcoin network FREE as well. And that's a lot more then FRC has now. All you need right one is one disgruntled pool owner or someone with a serious grudge....

At the moment Merge Mining is the best.

[maaku]

Yes but at the same time, the attackers would have to contend with all the other bitcoin miners-  and there are a lot of them. You gain more security from Merge Mining then not. Even though it would be technically 'free' to attack the chain if it were merge-mined, you would have the protection of the ENTIRE bitcoin network FREE as well. And that's a lot more then FRC has now. All you need right one is one disgruntled pool owner or someone with a serious grudge....

At the moment Merge Mining is the best.

No you're missing the point. We're talking about someone like Deepbit, Slush, BTC Guild, etc. attacking freicoin. Without having to tell any of their miner. How do you compete against that?

[crazy_rabbit]

Yes but at the same time, the attackers would have to contend with all the other bitcoin miners-  and there are a lot of them. You gain more security from Merge Mining then not. Even though it would be technically 'free' to attack the chain if it were merge-mined, you would have the protection of the ENTIRE bitcoin network FREE as well. And that's a lot more then FRC has now. All you need right one is one disgruntled pool owner or someone with a serious grudge....

At the moment Merge Mining is the best.

No you're missing the point. We're talking about someone like Deepbit, Slush, BTC Guild, etc. attacking freicoin. Without having to tell any of their miner. How do you compete against that?

Bitcoin has to deal with that every day. None of these juggernaughts of BTC mining are large enough to overpower all the others together. That's why you NEED merge mining to protect it. Otherwise a botnet could take out FRC. Far more realistic then Slush or someone doing it.

[doublec]

you would have the protection of the ENTIRE bitcoin network FREE as well. And that's a lot more then FRC has now.

Not really. Namecoin only has 1/3rd of the bitcoin network hash rate merge mining it. None of the other merge mineable coins (ixcoin, i0coin, devcoin, etc) has any large pool merge mining it. Some of the big pools are grumbling about including namecoin and I wouldn't be surprised to see it dropped at some point. Just because it can be merge mined doesn't mean any pools will actually bother.

Unfortunately merge mining is a double edged sword. Namecoin showed it can be used to protect a coin. Coiledcoin showed that it can be used to attack one. It also seems to make the coin mostly worthless as people see it as a by product of bitcoin mining. I haven't seen any merge mineable coin gain much in the way of usage outside of "sell immediately" as a result.

[Atruk]

Yes but at the same time, the attackers would have to contend with all the other bitcoin miners-  and there are a lot of them. You gain more security from Merge Mining then not. Even though it would be technically 'free' to attack the chain if it were merge-mined, you would have the protection of the ENTIRE bitcoin network FREE as well. And that's a lot more then FRC has now. All you need right one is one disgruntled pool owner or someone with a serious grudge....

At the moment Merge Mining is the best.

No you're missing the point. We're talking about someone like Deepbit, Slush, BTC Guild, etc. attacking freicoin. Without having to tell any of their miner. How do you compete against that?

Bitcoin has to deal with that every day. None of these juggernaughts of BTC mining are large enough to overpower all the others together. That's why you NEED merge mining to protect it. Otherwise a botnet could take out FRC. Far more realistic then Slush or someone doing it.

When an alt-coin gains traction Luke-Jr will often attack it with his pool if he thinks it is what he considers a scam-coin. There are a few defences like not enabling merged mining, but if you default to using tonal numbers in the standard client he'd probably leave you alone. Then you'd have to deal with trying to sell people on a currency predominantly denominated in tonal units though, ugh.