While Bitcoin’s Hash Rate Remains Soaring, Merge-Mined Divides Crypto Asset Networks – Mining Bitcoin News

by James · March 6, 2023

In recent times, Bitcoin’s hash rate has been consistently above 300 exahash per second (EH/s) as several mining pools are dedicating significant hash power to the Bitcoin blockchain today. Interestingly, some of the world’s top bitcoin mining pools also use their hashrate to merge other coins, and these networks have benefited from bitcoin’s increased hashrate.

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How Bitcoin’s Hashrate Benefits Other Crypto Networks

Bitcoin’s hash rate secures the network and provides rewards for miners participating in the system, but mining pools also dedicate computational power to networks such as Namecoin, Elastos, Emercoin, and Vcash. For example, Namecoin has a hashrate of around 187 EH/si day, and some of the best bitcoin mining pools are merging the network to obtain namecoin (NMC) rewards.

Merge mining is a process where miners can mine different cryptocurrencies simultaneously at no extra cost. Merged mining is similar to a person playing Pac-Man and Asteroids at the same time, using the same joystick and earning rewards for both games. Namecoin was the first cryptocurrency project to be mined, as it shares the same SHA256 algorithm as Bitcoin, and the first fusion-mined block on the network was mined on September 19, 2011.

While Bitcoin's hashrate remains sky-high, fusion-mined cryptoasset networks have an advantage — An image of how fusion mining works created by Tari Labs University. Simply put, an ASIC mining rig performs the merge mining process by performing the same hash calculation for both blockchains. The cryptominer builds a block for both blockchains and allocates work units based on this block to other miners. If a miner solves a block at either or both difficulty levels, the completed proof of work is reassembled and sent to the appropriate blockchain, ensuring that every hash the miner makes contributes to the total hashrate of both currencies.

Bitcoin pools that dedicate hashrate to the Namecoin chain include F2pool, Viabtc, Poolin and Mining Dutch. While F2pool is the fourth largest bitcoin mining pool in the last three days, it is the largest namecoin miner as it dedicates a whopping 44 EH/s to the Namecoin network. Viabtc dedicates 26.25 EH/s to the Namecoin chain, and Poolin scores 5.10 EH/s against Namecoin as well. At the time of writing, a single name coin (NMC) is worth $1.24 per unit and 12.5 NMC plus fees are distributed in each block reward.

Namecoin has the second largest hashrate among SHA256 blockchains, but the Emercoin network (EMC) is the third largest behind BTC and NMC. EMC has 93.38 EH/s dedicated to the network and Mining Dutch and Viabtc are the top miners for the coin. Viabtc, which is BTC’s fifth largest mining pool by hashrate, also dedicates 26.76 EH/s to EMC. The Emercoin network utilizes a hybrid proof-of-work (PoW) and proof-of-stake (PoS) consensus mechanism. A single emercoin (EMC) is currently changing hands for $0.0088 per coin.

Meanwhile, Viabtc is dedicating the same amount of hashrate to the Syscoin (SYS) network, another hybrid PoW and PoS blockchain. Today, a single SYS trades for $0.167 against the US dollar. In addition to the aforementioned PoW cryptocurrencies that leverage the SHA256 consensus algorithm, miners are also dedicating hashrate to networks such as Xaya, Veil, Hathor, Elastos, and Vcash. Older cryptocurrency networks such as Terracoin (TRC) and Unobtanium (UNO) also see a small fraction of the SHA256 hash rate.

F2pool dedicates 44.32 EH/s to Vcash, but the coin’s native asset has no listed value on any of the top coin market aggregation sites. Elastos has over 100 exahash dedicated to the chain, and top mining pools such as Antpool, F2pool, Viabtc and Mining Dutch dedicate hashrate to the Elastos network. Current statistics also show that 100 exahash per second is also dedicated to the RSK smart contract network.

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Antpool, Bitcoin, Blockchain, blockchain technology, computational power, Cryptocurrency, Decentralized, Digital Assets, Elastos, EMC, Emercoin, F2Pool, Hashrate, Hathor, Merge Mining, Merge Mining SHA-256, Mining Pools, Mining-dutch, namecoin, Network Security, Poolin, PoS, PoW, Proof of Work, Proof-of-Stake, Rewards, RSK, SHA256, Smart Contracts, terracoin, TRC, UNO, Unobtanium, Vcash, veil, ViaBTC, Xaya

What do you think the future holds for fusion mining and the relationships between different blockchain networks? Share your thoughts in the comments section below.

Jamie Redman

Jamie Redman is the news editor at Bitcoin.com News and a financial technology journalist living in Florida. Redman has been an active member of the cryptocurrency community since 2011. He has a passion for Bitcoin, open source and decentralized applications. Since September 2015, Redman has written more than 6,000 articles for Bitcoin.com News about the disruptive protocols emerging today.