NoM as P2P mining infrastructure for Bitcoin

Development
23

It’s like wznn in eth issued by locking znn in NoM? That’s what sumamu bridge does isn’t?

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We’ll have BTC locked in a multisig controlled by Pillars. This is basically what we mean by NoM’s BTC. We can then use that native BTC for a myriad of use-cases, most of which I’m not even in a position to be able to explain, but being able to post “data” into the BTC chain by submitting a BTC transaction should open up a world of possibilities.

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25

BTC locked by pillars isn’t native

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Why?

27

Because then you have to trust one more actor in addition to BTC aka the pillars. Beside, once locked on pillars those assets aren’t the ones moving on the NoM, the ones moving are wBTC or zBTC or whatever the name of that representation will be.

Unless I’m missing an important point trusting the pillars is trusting a more decentralized version of any non self-custodian solution. You lock A, you get zA to play around with. A is comprised on your trusted solution, zA become worthless.

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Pillars will control on-chain BTC.

They won’t move zBTC. They will move on-chain Bitcoin.

Pillars don’t lock BTC. They will use Bitcoin to pay for block space.

I have a solution for a more decentralized custody that will involve not only Pillars, but also other NoM network participants.

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29

Oh ok. The term “locked” confused me in the discussions

30

I think it’s native BTC that lives on the BTC network that has a private key controlled by the Pillars via TSS.

How do we deal with TSS as we add and remove Pillars?

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31

The same way Thorchain handles this case: creating a new key and invalidating the previous one.

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32

and merge miner will be new participants (first class)

it will be implicate to more znn inflation offcourse or reduce other reward participants
Since we have 90m max supply hardcoded, I think we need somthing like “halving znn/qsr”.
It think that is great for attract more solo merge miner participant.

33

If we really could mine btc via merge mining on nom, how would it influence the overall performance of the network?
How high of a hashrate could the network generate?

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Here’s my understanding, and I’m open to corrections if there are errors in my reasoning:

Merge-mining enables us to leverage BTC hashing power for mining ZNN at a reduced difficulty, a concept termed “share-chain” by @aliencoder .

For small miners, mining BTC alone isn’t profitable, even when pooling resources and sharing block rewards. However, by allowing these miners to simultaneously mine BTC and ZNN, we’re re-motivating them to contribute their hashing power to BTC. This re-engagement of small miners with BTC, as opposed to them shifting their focus to other competing cryptocurrencies or shutting down their operations, significantly aids in decentralizing the hashing power source. This is crucial, as the current concentration of hashing power is problematic.

In return for ZNN rewards, the mined BTC becomes the property of NoM, secured by a multisig of Pillars and managed through an embedded NoM contract.

While merge mining isn’t a novel concept, I believe no one has yet managed to develop such a harmoniously symbiotic merge mining system with the BTC ecosystem. NoM aims to establish a “smart” layer 2 ecosystem, where native BTC can not only exist but flourish. It does this by overcoming the limitations of the native BTC layer, without any trade-offs.

Here’s my question:

  • As the hashrate for the NoM share-chain increases and the difficulty level adjusts, won’t this eventually render small miners unprofitable again?
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35

My guess is yes, over time this will happen. But initially the early miners will probably be very successful with limited mining capacity.

36

What algo will be used for mining? If it’s SHA256 then ASICs will get in real fast. If it’s not, then I’m curious about how it works.

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I guess we need dynamic plasma implemented for this

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No impact. Merge-mining is decoupled from consensus.

As high as it can get. It really depends on the profitability of miners.

The embedded can support multiple share-chains (we can start with two share-chains like Monero’s p2p pool), where the smallest share-chain can accommodate the smallest miners. They will collectively can generate as much as the biggest share-chain. Check this: “add the --mini parameter to your P2Pool command to connect to the p2pool-mini sidechain. Note that it will also change the default p2p port from 37889 to 37888.”

Do you know how Bitcoin is mined?

Dynamic Plasma is not a hard dependency for Bitcoin merge-mining.

39

As I understand it we will use 2 different Algos. User transactions will move to CPU focused PoW (RandomX or similar but could be impacted by the Metamask Snap Discussion).

Pillars will perform PoW based on a difficulty adjustment and the Algo will switch [per the whitepaper].

“We plan to release a self-balancing difficulty algorithm that will use both ASIC-friendly [SHA256] and ASIC-resistant [RandomX] hashing algorithms; if the difficulty is below a threshold an ASIC-friendly hashing algorithm will be activated, and also if the difficulty is above a threshold, an ASIC- resistant will come into effect.”

And don’t forget the question vilkris asked previously about someone attacking the network with PoW. If someone throws a ton of ASIC power at the PoW the difficulty will go up and or change and the network will BENEFIT because it will merge mine BTC with that PoW and the network will retain the BTC.

40

User transactions will be made exclusively using a CPU PoW algorithm and the best we have is RandomX.

This means that users will merge-mine the RandomX share-chain where the difficulty adjustment algo will deter spam attacks.

Miners that help Sentinels craft the PoW links will also compute RandomX PoW.

Users will also be able to make transactions fusing QSR and hopefully using ZNN as fee.

Pillars and/or Sentinels won’t perform the actual PoW. They are just nodes that sign/relay information. Miners and users will compute PoW.

To recap:

  • Share-chains are at block-lattice level (embedded account-chains)
  • NoM consensus is at the meta-DAG level
  • The block-lattice will gain weight from those share-chains + user feeless transactions
  • Users will perform RandomX PoW for feeless transactions and they need to satisfy a certain threshold for their tx to be accepted by the network
  • The difficulty threshold will be computed based on the RandomX share-chain
  • Sentinels will relay transactions and add additional weight from RandomX miners computing RandomX PoW (Sentinels must share rewards with RandomX miners to be competitive in crafting PoW links)
  • Extra: RandomX PoW can be merge-mined with XMR/RandomX coins
  • BTC miners will compute SHA-256d PoW on a separate share-chain(s)
  • The difficulty of the BTC share-chains will be dynamically adjusted to accommodate both big and small miners
  • Pillars will monitor the BTC share-chains to propagate valid Bitcoin blocks to the Bitcoin network
  • Pillars will use high-quality BTC share-blocks to anchor NoM’s consensus to the block-lattice
  • The canonical Bitcoin blockchain is “longest chain with most PoW invested into it”
  • The canonical NoM ledger is “heaviest ledger with most PoW invested into it”
  • As an attacker you will need both stake and proof-of-work (users, miners) to successfully fork the network
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Yes. Please can you elaborate on the algo we would be using? If I understand correctly then we must use the same algo to merge mine with BTC and then I fail to see how it’ll benefit small miner since ASIC can step in anytime. If we use another algo, as @0x3639 mentions, then we can mine BTC, correct?

My question comes to challenge the small miner friendly claims I’ve read on the forum. If there’s ASICs, there’s no small miners. I’m assuming here that we have a new class of actors aka the miners.

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Q: What type of miners will NoM have?

  • ASIC miners that merge-mine BTC on the SHA-256d share-chain(s).
  • CPU miners that can merge-mine XMR on the RandomX share-chain(s).

Q: How many share-chains will NoM have?

  • For each category (ASIC/CPU) there will be 2 (or more in the future) share-chains to accommodate both big and small miners (such that the variance will be low for each type of share-chain), as follows:
    • If you have the most powerful Bitcoin ASIC miner you will mine on the main SHA-256d share-chain
    • If you have an older Bitcoin ASIC you will be able to mine on the mini SHA-256d share-chain
    • If you have a high-end server CPU you will able to mine on the main RandomX share-chain
    • If you are a user with a mid-range smartphone you will mine on the mini RandomX share-chain

Q: Who will merge-mine BTC?

  • ASIC miners will merge-mine BTC on the SHA-256d share-chain(s).

Q: Who will incentivize the BTC miners?

  • Pillars using the delegate-reward system that we already have proportional to their hashrate (share-blocks from the share-chain).

Q: What rewards will BTC miners receive?

  • Primary: ZNN rewards from Pillars.
  • Secondary: BTC rewards: blocks produced by miners that are used to anchor NoM’s consensus can also receive BTC rewards from the Pillar’s TSS.

Q: Who will compute the RandomX PoW?

  • RandomX miners employed by Sentinels to create the PoW links. Sentinels will only be required to sign transactions.
  • Users required to meet the minimum PoW threshold for feeless transactions.

Q: Who will incentivize the RandomX miners?

  • Sentinels will compete for RandomX miners to be able to create the PoW links.

Q: How do we compute the difficulty for the PoW feeless lane?

  • We compute the difficulty of the mini RandomX share-chain.

Q: How do we compute the difficulty for the PoW links?

  • We compute the difficulty of the main RandomX share-chain.

Q: What rewards will RandomX miners receive?

  • Primary: ZNN and QSR rewards from Sentinels.
  • Secondary: XMR or other coins that are merge-minable using RandomX.
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