If you think merge-mined chains represent proof-of-publication in a world of large pools, you misunderstand what the idea is. Fundamentally merge-mining is insecure without the participation of at least a very large fraction of the mining hashing power, which negates the scalability argument for merge-mining.
Don't forget about all the non-mining full nodes that would avoid having to carry the extra burden. Miners are getting financially rewarded for it, so it's much less of a problem for them. And hashing costs dominate up to pretty large scale anyway.Quote
In fact, with some cleverness I suspect I could make the entire Mastercoin and Counterparty protocols be purely hash based and unblockable by generic mechanisms; I should put some thought into this...)
Well if the system can be hijacked, then I'm sure some clever people will do it, and this will make all the previous talk about ethical blockchain usage moot.Quote
#bitcoin-wizards is where this has been discussed. Working on a more formal paper for tree chains as well. I prefer not to discuss ideas here - much better to discuss ideas on open mediums like email lists that are archived by multiple entities.
Thanks, I saw the tree chain discussion, but haven't read through it carefully yet. Are you not interested in the MMR TXO commitments idea anymore? Looking forward to the paper, I hope you finish it before you begin working on the blockchain hijacking mechanism 