Quote from: Heisenberg_Hunter on March 23, 2020, 06:47:38 PM

Pretty much this. The 2017-2018 cryptocurrency concept was more or less like a get rich quick scheme such that if a non-developer just copy pastes the code of bitcoin with very little changes like the total supply and the block emission rate it would soar up in price when they reach the trading market. Sadly, the developers run away with the ICO money leaving the coin behind. When the investors tend to do a little research, they start to dump the coin. This was how the ICO coins came to an end at the end of 2018. Later on people started researching about the team before they simply threw their money inside the rabbit hole. Either way, there was a very late response for these scams which were taking place all over the 2 years and all was the result of people losing their hard earned money.

This was the primary reason for the shift of people towards coins which are practically usable in real world like Monero and Ethereum. I am still not sure how many more years these altcoins (except few promising one) will survive before almost everything is being replaced by bitcoin. On the other hand, satoshi has previously spoke about merged mining concept in one of his earlier post. Though through the merged mining concept, the altcoin can just be joining hands with the major network but when the miner tends to solve both the network coins, the one with lower difficulty gets solved first leaving the major network behind. These would all be linked to one single merkle tree.

There was a discussion between theymos and nanotube in the creation of such a coin which might be using a merged mining concept but not sure if they came out successfully. But later at one point of time, namecoin came into existence based on the discussion between satoshi and other devs. I am not sure, if the announcement was from a alt account of theymos, nanotube but they came with a imaginary name of Vincent Durham Check this out yourself.

Quote from: satoshi on December 09, 2010, 09:02:42 PM

I think it would be possible for BitDNS to be a completely separate network and separate block chain, yet share CPU power with Bitcoin. The only overlap is to make it so miners can search for proof-of-work for both networks simultaneously.

The networks wouldn't need any coordination. Miners would subscribe to both networks in parallel. They would scan SHA such that if they get a hit, they potentially solve both at once. A solution may be for just one of the networks if one network has a lower difficulty.

I think an external miner could call getwork on both programs and combine the work. Maybe call Bitcoin, get work from it, hand it to BitDNS getwork to combine into a combined work.

Instead of fragmentation, networks share and augment each other's total CPU power. This would solve the problem that if there are multiple networks, they are a danger to each other if the available CPU power gangs up on one. Instead, all networks in the world would share combined CPU power, increasing the total strength. It would make it easier for small networks to get started by tapping into a ready base of miners.

Probably I should restart reading more history threads. Roll Eyes

Speaking of Monero, it has been constantly improving its PoW algorithm every 6 months to maintain ASIC resistance. While this is good for mainstream adoption, it harms the security of the underlying blockchain network. ASICs are what makes a cryptocurrency extremely resilient against 51% attacks. It's no wonder why Bitcoin has been the most secure cryptocurrency after all these years. It may be difficult for anyone to mine Bitcoin right now, but at least it's extremely secure against external attacks because it relies on ASICs for security. When you constantly change the PoW algorithm, you open the path for anyone to hack your blockchain network. After all, miners don't immediately migrate to the new PoW algorithm. This in turn, leads to a smaller hashrate on the network making it easy for anyone to attack the chain at will.

Merged mining works, but it's not used by most cryptocurrencies today. There's a new thing called "VeriBlock" which provides security to other coins by relying on Bitcoin's hashrate itself. I believe it works just like Komodo's dPoW algorithm. The only difference is that dPoW "notarizes" an alternate coin's blocks into the BTC blockchain, while that's not the case with "VeriBlock". Still, these are interesting concepts that could make altcoins stronger like never before. At least, the solution is there to "tackle" the problems of a 51% attack from small chains. But it's up to the developers themselves whenever they'd want to incorporate this into their blockchain or not.

I was not aware about "BitDNS" (which later became Namecoin) before, but it's good to know that Satoshi talked about a "Plan B" for Bitcoin in order to prevent 51% attacks on the Blockchain. I also need to read more on history threads to help expand my knowledge on the subject. One could be a lifetime on crypto without knowing it all. Grin