Mining Profitability Can be 10% Higher via This Mechanism—For Now
Merged-mining Fractal Bitcoin offers bitcoin miners a potential bonus
Two weeks ago, we introduced you to Fractal Bitcoin merged mining, a method hailed by its developers as a way to boost Bitcoin mining profitability. Now, nine days post-launch, how has the Fractal Bitcoin merged-mining economy fared?
According to data analyzed by TheMinerMag, merged-mining Bitcoin and Fractal Bitcoin theoretically increased daily mining revenue per unit of mining compute power by approximately 10% over the past week. For those unfamiliar with the concept, we recommend revisiting our previous issue for a comprehensive introduction.
To summarize, Fractal Bitcoin is a fork of Bitcoin, utilizing a novel merged-mining mechanism called Cadence Mining. In this system, only one-third of the Fractal Bitcoin block rewards can be mined alongside Bitcoin. The remaining two-thirds require hashrate (a measure of mining compute power) exclusively dedicated to Fractal Bitcoin.
TheMinerMag analyzed data from roughly 31,000 Fractal Bitcoin blocks mined since September 9, categorizing blocks based on whether they were produced through merged mining or mined solely for Fractal Bitcoin.
Below is a chart illustrating the total daily Fractal Bitcoin block rewards generated via merged mining with Bitcoin's hashrate. Block rewards are broken down into block subsidies (check out ‘Block Rewards’ here to learn more) and fees (measured in Fractal Bitcoin’s native token, FB), alongside the corresponding daily hashprice—a key metric representing miners’ revenue per unit of hashrate.
Since September 9, the total hashrate for merged-mining Bitcoin and Fractal Bitcoin has remained steady at approximately 220 EH/s. This figure represents the combined hashrate of the three major mining pools supporting Fractal Bitcoin merged mining: Antpool, F2Pool, and Spiderpool. However, that could increase in the following days as ViaBTC, another Asia-based mining pool, announced the support for Fractal Bitcoin merged mining on Thursday.
Fractal Bitcoin’s token, FB, was initially without a spot market price until its listing on centralized exchanges like Gate.io and CoinEx on September 13. Following the listing, FB surged to nearly $40 but has since fallen to around $22 as of this writing, according to data from CoinGecko.
For each petahash per second (PH/s) of hashrate, Bitcoin’s hashprice averaged $41/PH/s over the past week. Participating in merged mining with Fractal Bitcoin could yield an additional $3.90 in daily mining revenue, boosting the total hashprice by roughly 9.5%.
But that means pointing your hashrate to Antpool, f2pool, ViaBTC, or Spiderpool and exchanging coins on platforms like Gate.io and CoinEx to realize these gains. The Fractal Bitcoin ecosystem, which has established strong ties with Asian partners, now faces the challenge of proving the sustainability of its economic model.
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