which pools are offering merged mining?

[OgNasty]

An old topic, but I’m curious if anyone has a list of pools that payout Namecoin from merged mining to their miners?

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[DaveF]

I know viabtc.com and poolin.com both merge mine and pay out your NMC.
I *think* f2pool.com and prohasing.com do.

With it's difficulty where it is vs. price, unless you have a lot of hashrate it's probably better to just buy some on the open market.

Not that it matters but, looking at it's hash rate and doing some back of the napkin numbers it looks like there are a lot more pools mining it out there then those 4 above.

-Dave

[philipma1957]

I earned 11.4 NMC in last 3 years mining with about 1 ph of gear.

at Viabtc  mining
BTC gives you


NMC ---------- this is active

SYS not sure if active it is  at 65.28123261  I will post back on weekend to up to 65.32631539
EMC not sure if active it is at   1.55737390 see if these are growing. up to 1.15658934 will check this again

ELA------------this is active

[kano]

Well at around $1.50 per coin it's a complete waste of time.
It affects the pool code and increases the risk of BTC block stales.
Apparently in the end, slush kept all theirs (didn't paid it out to the miners)
But I have still yet to understand why when you get them for free, why anyone would pay for them.
Ignorance I guess.

[OgNasty]

Well at around $1.50 per coin it's a complete waste of time.
It affects the pool code and increases the risk of BTC block stales.
Apparently in the end, slush kept all theirs (didn't paid it out to the miners)
But I have still yet to understand why when you get them for free, why anyone would pay for them.
Ignorance I guess.

BTC was also relatively free to mine back when it was around $1.50 per coin. I don’t think those buying them back then are considered ignorant today, but there’s always risk involved when your only concerns are financial. I think domain censorship has only become a more important issue over the last decade and am glad to see that there are still pools supporting Namecoin with merged mining as well as developers spending their time on active development and generous organizations giving sponsorships.

It is odd that slush didn’t pay out NMC (I’ve mined a decent number of BTC there over the years). I wonder what did/will happen with those NMC… Has this ever been publicly stated?

[kano]

...
BTC was also relatively free to mine back when it was around $1.50 per coin. I don’t think those buying them back then are considered ignorant today, but there’s always risk involved when your only concerns are financial. I think domain censorship has only become a more important issue over the last decade and am glad to see that there are still pools supporting Namecoin with merged mining as well as developers spending their time on active development and generous organizations giving sponsorships.
...

Unless it actually gets wide use (which it still hasn't after all these years) it's value is dubious.
In fact it was basically ignored for a number of years.
If you say people are trying to resurrect it, I'd wonder what their true reasons behind that are ... other than pump an dump like pretty much every scamcoin.

It certainly will never be comparable to the price of BTC, thus the $1.50 point still stands.
And when a normal domain these days can cost less than $10 a year, it's unexpected for namecoin to ever get a high price even it it became more widely used.

[DaveF]

Unless it actually gets wide use (which it still hasn't after all these years) it's value is dubious.
In fact it was basically ignored for a number of years.
If you say people are trying to resurrect it, I'd wonder what their true reasons behind that are ... other than pump an dump like pretty much every scamcoin.

It certainly will never be comparable to the price of BTC, thus the $1.50 point still stands.
And when a normal domain these days can cost less than $10 a year, it's unexpected for namecoin to ever get a high price even it it became more widely used.

Looking here: https://github.com/namecoin/namecoin-core/releases it looks like they have had development going on actively for at least the last few years.
It's not the cost of the domain it's the fact that its supposed to be un-censorable. Never actually checked if it is or how it works.

-Dave

[OgNasty]

Unless it actually gets wide use (which it still hasn't after all these years) it's value is dubious.
In fact it was basically ignored for a number of years.
If you say people are trying to resurrect it, I'd wonder what their true reasons behind that are ... other than pump an dump like pretty much every scamcoin.

It certainly will never be comparable to the price of BTC, thus the $1.50 point still stands.
And when a normal domain these days can cost less than $10 a year, it's unexpected for namecoin to ever get a high price even it it became more widely used.

Looking here: https://github.com/namecoin/namecoin-core/releases it looks like they have had development going on actively for at least the last few years.
It's not the cost of the domain it's the fact that its supposed to be un-censorable. Never actually checked if it is or how it works.

-Dave

Indeed. Comparing it to registering a normal domain is insanity. Namecoin is one of those things that will be overlooked until it is needed, and I’m glad there are people dedicating themselves to continued development even while others dismiss it as a simple domain registration coin.

It might be ok with people to not defend Alex Jones or others who are victims of censorship because they’re outliers, but there’s a quote somewhere about who will be left to defend you when they come for you?

With nearly 80% of Bitcoin’s hashrate and constant development for nearly a decade, I don’t think Namecoin needs resurrecting (unless you’re obsessed with the financial aspect), but I do believe it is going to continue to offer something that could potentially be extremely important to freedom on the internet. With this thread, I’d love to identify which pools are mining it vs which aren’t, and the ones that are mining them; are they cashing out, stacking, or giving them to their users.

[kano]

...
Alex Jones
...
With nearly 80% of Bitcoin’s hashrate
...

That's quite a misunderstanding of what is actually happening.

Because you can get them for free, some (as you say) 80% of the bitcoin network is merge mining them for free.
i.e. as I said at the start, they are free, not worth paying for when (as you say) 80% of the bitcoin network gets them for free.

Indeed it would be of use knowing how much of them get dumped and how few people actually use it.

Lol at the melodrama you added in there.
What, the guy couldn't work out how to use tor?
Send him a computer geek to explain that so he wont look so stupid I guess.
Gotta laugh at his conspiracy theories listed on the wiki

[OgNasty]

It affects the pool code and increases the risk of BTC block stales.

i.e. as I said at the start, they are free, not worth paying for when (as you say) 80% of the bitcoin network gets them for free.

I’m not sure what you’re arguing here or how it pertains to domain censorship. I also don’t believe that 80% of Bitcoin miners are being given the NMC that their hashes are mining. I’d like to have a more clear understanding of what is happening to all that NMC by those pool operators that isn’t being distributed. Whether they’re dumping it, burning it, hoarding it, and who “they” are…

[DaveF]

It affects the pool code and increases the risk of BTC block stales.

i.e. as I said at the start, they are free, not worth paying for when (as you say) 80% of the bitcoin network gets them for free.

I’m not sure what you’re arguing here or how it pertains to domain censorship. I also don’t believe that 80% of Bitcoin miners are being given the NMC that their hashes are mining. I’d like to have a more clear understanding of what is happening to all that NMC by those pool operators that isn’t being distributed. Whether they’re dumping it, burning it, hoarding it, and who “they” are…

Although you won't get all of them you should be able to figure out some by following block explorers. If they mine a BTC block and they are merge mining NMC then there will be a NMC block mined at the same time. From there you can follow what happens to the coins that were generated.

You will not be able to figure out who is mining all the blocks this way but you will get a large portion of them.

-Dave

[OgNasty]

It affects the pool code and increases the risk of BTC block stales.

i.e. as I said at the start, they are free, not worth paying for when (as you say) 80% of the bitcoin network gets them for free.

I’m not sure what you’re arguing here or how it pertains to domain censorship. I also don’t believe that 80% of Bitcoin miners are being given the NMC that their hashes are mining. I’d like to have a more clear understanding of what is happening to all that NMC by those pool operators that isn’t being distributed. Whether they’re dumping it, burning it, hoarding it, and who “they” are…

Although you won't get all of them you should be able to figure out some by following block explorers. If they mine a BTC block and they are merge mining NMC then there will be a NMC block mined at the same time. From there you can follow what happens to the coins that were generated.

You will not be able to figure out who is mining all the blocks this way but you will get a large portion of them.

-Dave

My hope was that someone with more experience and who enjoyed doing this sort of analysis but needed a source suggestion for their happiness would step up to the challenge to answer these questions. I might be forced to take a look deeper myself for my own curiosity but I feel like there are definitely those out there capable of doing a better job.

[OgNasty]

I contacted a few pools I discovered were merged mining and asked about their Namecoin.  Most did not want to discuss the issue but I did have one pool offer to sell me some while calling them collector's items.  That fascinated me a bit that so much hashrate could be supporting something considered to be a collector's item but I do appreciate their commitment.  I really think this pool/Namecoin situation is fascinating.  It seems like such powerful entities controlling so much of something with such depressed value could lead to some excitement in the future.  For now, I continue to look into what is going on there...  I have not yet been able to learn where these exchanges are selling or if some are indeed dumping their mined coins.

[mikeywith]

I have not yet been able to learn where these exchanges are selling or if some are indeed dumping their mined coins.

CoinEx is the largest exchange for this coin, and even there, it has a very low volume, and thus buying/selling large amounts won't be the easiest thing in the world.

On a side but related note: the last a few comments (including mine) are somehow off-topic as far as mining bitcoin is concerned.

[MoparMiningLLC]

It is odd that slush didn’t pay out NMC (I’ve mined a decent number of BTC there over the years). I wonder what did/will happen with those NMC… Has this ever been publicly stated?

slush stopped paying out NMC early in 2018, Jan or Feb, right when NMC peaked - miners kept accruing it just were never paid. They finally paid it out in 2020 when it was less than 50 cents - I do know there was some sort of threshold and anyone below that threshold didn't get paid anything.

[kano]

...
That fascinated me a bit that so much hashrate could be supporting something considered to be a collector's item but I do appreciate their commitment. 
...

Again, they aren't supporting it, it's no commitment, it's simply a free coin they get merged mining, that they will switch off at some point in the future.
Their response you stated make it clear that they're simply a (very tiny) extra % of income, that I would suspect they will eventually just remove the merged mining at some point.

[neutraLTC]

Poolin.com fully supports merged-mining. Check it out  

[NotFuzzyWarm]

give more information
Also interested in this topic

How about you starting a topic to ask a specific question you have instead of tacking random comments onto existing threads....