Merged miningrefers to the concept of mining more than one cryp-tocurrency without necessitating additional proof-of-work effort. Although mergedmining has been adopted by a number...
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Merged miningrefers to the concept of mining more than one cryp-tocurrency without necessitating additional proof-of-work effort. Although mergedmining has been adopted by a number of cryptocurrencies already, to this date lit-tle is known about the effects and implications. We shed light on this topic areaby performing a comprehensive analysis of merged mining in practice. As part ofthis analysis, we present a block attribution scheme for mining pools to assist inthe evaluation of mining centralization. Our findings disclose that mining poolsin merge-mined cryptocurrencies have operated at the edge of, and even beyond,the security guarantees offered by the underlying Nakamoto consensus for ex-tended periods. We discuss the implications and security considerations for thesecryptocurrencies and the mining ecosystem as a whole, and link our findings tothe intended effects of merged mining.