Any Q's hit me up
Approximately 60% of bitcoin blocks are merge mining other chains (since the last halving).
That's down from a peak of 96% in April 2020.
For our latest nostr:npub1m7qjg4hsa2q32rtekewpdn54guh508tlh6ztml7ssluj6vgflensy6m4gz report, nostr:npub18h0w55nsp839ezxnggf00jd2xc6yl0ht62mf5p8wwllu8s80wdcs83ws8m analysed which merge mining schemes are in use, and which miners are using them.
Looking at recent data we see different miner / pool groups.
Group 1. No Merge Mining
Foundry, MARA, SBI Crypto
Group 2. AuxPow & “Chain A”
ViaBTC, F2Pool & Luxor
Group 3. Distinct switching pattern
Binance Pool, BTCcom, Poolin, Braiins, ULTIMUS
Group 4. Other
Antpool, SECPOOL
Taking a longer view looking back to the genesis block we see that adoption of schemes has fluctuated wildly over time!
Read the short report here:
https://research.mempool.space/merge-mining-report/
Discussion
Great stuff. What do you make of that last atypical gap in group 3 you mentioned?
It would appear that something caused all the pools in group 3 to behave in a similar manner at the same time. More research is required but I thought it was worth noting
Definitely interesting, just curious if you had a theory. I know little about the process, but does that imply the reliant chains didn’t update at all for a stretch?
I'm avoiding speculation, just reporting what I see from the onchain data.
The gap does appear to be specific to only a subset (there are pools which didn't have any interruption) so I don't think it's an issue regarding the progress of the reliant chains.