Merged mining - please explain me how and why

[rokshis]

Hello guys, I have found some information about merged mining, but I dont really get what is it. Have been googling around, but everything was written in expert level, so I wasn't able to understand a lot. Maybe anybody can explain me:

1) What exactly it is
2) How it works ( Just the basics, like i was a few years child, you know)
3) What is the point of it.

[Waramp22]

I think you're talking about pooled mining.

"Mining pools are a way for miners to pool their resources together and share their hashing power while splitting the reward equally according to the amount of shares they contributed to solving a block. A "share" is awarded to members of the mining pool who present a valid proof of work that their miner solved. Mining in pools began when the difficulty for mining increased to the point where it could take years for slower miners to generate a block and by pooling their resources together, miners were able to generate blocks quicker and receive a portion of the block reward on a regular basis, rather than once every few years."

http://www.bitcoinmining.com/bitcoin-mining-pools/

In the early years, you could mine bitcoin with a regular PC. Since there is so many people mining it now with huge machines, it is almost impossible to find a bitcoin. Users now join together on websites known as pools and mine bitcoin. This way they can find a bitcoin every few weeks and everyone gets a piece of the profit instead of mining for years by themselves with nothing to show for it.

[rokshis]

No, not about pooled mining, I'm talking about when people mine like BTC + NameCoin at same time, and they get more profit from that, don't really know how it works, but its named merged mining, so anybody can explain me?

[jokerrj]

I have kinda the same doubt.   Let's think about the pool Ghash.io. There they have merged mining with Devcoin, IXC, Bitcoin and Namecoin. How does that work? My miner is only deliverying works of Bitcoin network, but I get all this coins and they are not like pieces of each other as I thought they would be (1BTC=1NMC=27DVC=15IXC etc) they are individual and always adding to each other like 1BTC + 1NMC + 27DV + 15IXC.... What is happening ? If I mine one of those coins separately will I get more coins? I'd really like to know how does that work.

 

[jokerrj]

Sorry, I forgot that.



1) What exactly it is : point you rig to one of the pools that offer that (ghash.io, eligius, btcguild etc etc etc...) and get multiple coins
2) How it works ( Just the basics, like i was a few years child, you know): Same doubt here 
3) What is the point of it.:Get rich dude.... who is mining for anything else them making money? You kind make more bets if you have different currencys, imagine it one year ahead, you can be a lucky guy that already have tons of Devcoins in your wallet and they worth more than a $1000 each


I hope I helped you somehow

[bitpop]

If you find a bitcoin difficulty block, you can prove you also did enough work to find the alt ones because they are less. What made them interoperabile? A long time ago nmc founder invented it and forked nmc. Not every sha coin works, they have to be patched to accept it.

[jeliman]

but still you are creating a blokchain, so when you solve one coin how does that add a new block made of transactions of the other coins, you did not solve??

[odolvlobo]

1) What exactly it is

Merged mining is mining bitcoin with other block chains at the same time. Not all block chains accept merged mining.

2) How it works ( Just the basics, like i was a few years child, you know)

Basically the idea is that you assemble a Namecoin block and hash it, and then insert that hash into a Bitcoin block. Now when you solve the Bitcoin block at a difficulty level greater to or equal to the Namecoin difficulty level, it will be proof that that amount of work has been done for the Namecoin block.

When a bitcoin block is solved. That information is used to create blocks in the other block chains.

3) What is the point of it.

It allows you to mine other block chains at the same time as mining bitcoin with no extra effort.

[jeliman]

ok, for children now: (solo mining)

1. you choose your BTC transactions to include in the block you mine
2. you add a hash of the last block you want to merged mine (namecoin, devcoin etc)
3. you add the "zero transaction" (for your reward if mined) of BTC, or also Namecoin and Devcoin?
4. create that merkle tree hash from 1,2,3
5. you add all the rest BTC data, hash it to the final input for mining
6. you start mining the BTC as you are used to
7. you find a hash that matches the difficulty of Namecoin - you claim your coins and continue
8. you find a hash that matches the difficulty of Bitcoin - you claim it and go on

something like that?