Dogecoin says "NO THANKS" to Merged Mining with Litecoin

[Pangia]

http://www.reddit.com/r/dogecoin/comments/22hqm6/official_an_update_on_the_foundation_core/

From Jackson Palmer:

There has been a lot of speculation around a recent comment from Charlie Lee (creator of Litecoin) regarding a discussion we’ve had / are having about merged mining. We just met recently at CoinSummit, and it was great to talk about altcoins with the person who was first to adopt scrypt as a proof-of-work algorithm (which most altcoins are using currently).

Charlie pitched the idea of merged mining to me as a way of securing both the Litecoin and Dogecoin networks, which minimal coding work required. It’s a really interesting concept that has both it’s pros and cons, and I’ve really appreciated the level-headed discussion that’s been going on both here on Reddit and over on the various Dogecoin-related IRC channels.

If you’re not familiar with merged mining, I’ll let you do a quick Reddit search and do the reading yourself - but here are my thoughts on merged mining between Dogecoin, Litecoin or any altcoin for that matter:

    Dogecoin is in a really interesting position, where we’ll reach block 600k and static rewards of 10,000 DOGE by the end of 2014. Up until then, saying that Dogecoin *needs *to do anything is really just speculation, and we have no real way of knowing how the network and it’s miners will react once block rewards drop.
    Right now, merged mining with Litecoin wouldn’t really benefit Dogecoin. It’d just force all the dedicated, passionate Dogecoin mining pools out there to shift over to also mining Litecoin to reap their deserved rewards, which they may not want to do. On top of that, it’s fair to assume that Litecoin miners who come in will likely auto-dump the Dogecoin they’re rewarded, which isn’t necessarily great for the stability of Dogecoin as a currency and no better than what multi-pools are doing today.
    Dogecoin has amazing growth at the moment, the strongest community in cryptocurrency behind it, and it’s viability shouldn’t be pegged to another currency or network while it’s only 4-5 months old.

In a nutshell, I don’t believe that merged mining is the answer right now. Maybe it will be once we see what happens past block 600k, but as I said that’s impossible to predict.

I’d actually propose this: Let’s work with other, smaller scrypt-based altcoins such as DigiByte to help them merged mine off Dogecoin as the parent blockchain. This helps secure all of our networks into the future (altcoins with lower hashrates are subject to frequent attacks), and I personally love seeing us crypto under-doges working together (DigiByte devs helping with us implementing DigiShield is a fantastic example of this). Just like Dogecoin, there’s no telling what the future of Litecoin holds either - so maybe they’ll want to merge mine off Dogecoin as the parent chain some day

[Pangia]

From Charlie Lee:

[–]coblee [score hidden] 27 minutes ago

I sent this to Jackson in an email, but will post here also.

Fair enough. I would recommend revisiting this at each halving. Doge has a unique design that, some believe (me included), doesn't work well with mining. Satoshi made mining last many many years before transaction fees take over. This is because he knew that it's not sustainable otherwise. Doge has to succeed or die in 1 year. It's too short of a time. You will need to be THE dominant crypto in your mining class in order to survive this. So the solution is either merged mining or switch to another algorithm. To me, it's pretty clear. BUT, I won't bet against Doge overcoming this. So it is possible that you can overcome this, but it means that you need to defeat Litecoin (in market cap and hashrate) within a year. I obviously don't expect to see that happen.

Also, do realize that it will be much harder for you to hard fork at a future date. You will have the same problem Litecoin has today with hard forks. Feel free to bounce ideas off me in the future. To the moon!

[Bit_Happy]

From Charlie Lee:

...To the moon!

Howl at the Moon?
Great update, I enjoyed reading the pros and cons.

[Rofo]

To be honest this sounds quite hypocritical to me. He won't promote merge-mining with LTC for greater security even though their hashrate is larger, but he's promoting smaller coins merge-mine with DOGE instead for increased security? Am I the only one reading that? A very aggressively competitive response.

Edit & disclaimer: I'm all for merge-mining and actively promoting it between all coins at this point, it'll come sooner or later.

[iGotSpots]

To be honest this sounds quite hypocritical to me. He won't promote merge-mining with LTC for greater security even though their hashrate is larger, but he's promoting smaller coins merge-mine with DOGE instead for increased security? Am I the only one reading that? A very aggressively competitive response.

Edit & disclaimer: I'm all for merge-mining and actively promoting it between all coins at this point, it'll come sooner or later.

Parent chain doesn't need a fork; auxiliary chains do. That's why he is for other coins merging with LTC as the parent, instead of forking LTC

[pandher]

Doge looks way too overconfident

[Rofo]

To be honest this sounds quite hypocritical to me. He won't promote merge-mining with LTC for greater security even though their hashrate is larger, but he's promoting smaller coins merge-mine with DOGE instead for increased security? Am I the only one reading that? A very aggressively competitive response.

Edit & disclaimer: I'm all for merge-mining and actively promoting it between all coins at this point, it'll come sooner or later.

Parent chain doesn't need a fork; auxiliary chains do. That's why he is for other coins merging with LTC as the parent, instead of forking LTC

Sorry I meant the DOGE response. It sounds as if Jackson won't fork for LTC merge-mining, but is promoting all coins beneath to fork merge-mine with DOGE instead. Is this correct? Am still catching up on some specifics about merge-mining.

[kelsey]

From Charlie Lee:

[–]coblee [score hidden] 27 minutes ago

I sent this to Jackson in an email, but will post here also.

Fair enough. I would recommend revisiting this at each halving. Doge has a unique design that, some believe (me included), doesn't work well with mining. Satoshi made mining last many many years before transaction fees take over. This is because he knew that it's not sustainable otherwise. Doge has to succeed or die in 1 year. It's too short of a time. You will need to be THE dominant crypto in your mining class in order to survive this. So the solution is either merged mining or switch to another algorithm. To me, it's pretty clear. BUT, I won't bet against Doge overcoming this. So it is possible that you can overcome this, but it means that you need to defeat Litecoin (in market cap and hashrate) within a year. I obviously don't expect to see that happen.

Also, do realize that it will be much harder for you to hard fork at a future date. You will have the same problem Litecoin has today with hard forks. Feel free to bounce ideas off me in the future. To the moon!

coblee is off his tree to even try and work with dodgycoin 

[Rofo]

coblee is off his tree to even try and work with dodgycoin  Cry

If the next block DOGE halving follows the same pattern as the last one (less miner interest/hash?) it will be interesting to see what DOGE does and Coblee's response then. He made the offer once and this personally feels like both a competitive and slightly disrespectful response.

[Bit_Happy]

Will be interesting to see what the future brings for both coins.

Doge looks way too overconfident

It's a dog eat doggie free market.  

[Rofo]

http://www.reddit.com/user/coblee
Is that the real Coblee? He seems pretty taken aback with the response.

[kalus]

too bad.

the coins that merge mine with litecoin have the highest likelihood to survive.

or,

will the coins that merge mine with dogecoin instead do better? 

[SmithsonJim]

Litecoin and dogecoin is doing fine on its own. I don't think we need merge unless it would be really necessary.

[HCLivess]

Lee is right

[TrueAccess]

Lee is right

because ?

I think it is ridiculous.