The concept is that Bitcoin miners are blind to the sidechain/spacechain that’s being merge-mined.
In regular merge-mining Bitcoin miners that select to take part should run a node on the separate blockchain (Namecoin, Rootstock, for instance) and really construct the block for these chains, then embrace it someplace of their Bitcoin block. See https://bitcoin.stackexchange.com/a/35870/1026 for a extra detailed clarification.
In blind merge-mining constructs, comparable to Spacechains, a brand new function is added between the parallel chain that’s being merge-mined and Bitcoin: that of BMM miners.
The BMM miners acquire charges and construct the blocks on the parallel chain and submit their hash for inclusion on Bitcoin in what we are able to name a BMM transaction. They pay Bitcoin miners a payment in BTC. Bitcoin miners can simply embrace these hashes and acquire the charges with out caring about their that means, with out having to run a node on this parallel chain.
It is anticipated that competitors between a number of BMM miners will drive up the BTC payment paid within the BMM transaction as much as principally the identical quantity of charges they acquire on the parallel chain.
The toughest a part of implementing such a protocol is making certain that Bitcoin miners do not embrace multiple BMM hash for a similar parallel chain in the identical Bitcoin block. That’s dangerous as a result of:
- It may be messy for the parallel chain — it must have difficult and complicated guidelines with a purpose to decide what block is legitimate, for instance.
- It is wasteful — it should use Bitcoin block area for no objective.
- It undermines the aim of turning charges collected within the parallel chain into BTC paid on to Bitcoin miners — since there is no such thing as a atomicity ensures between paying the BMM transaction payment and really having a legitimate block accepted within the parallel chain, there is no such thing as a incentive for competing BMM miners to bid the BTC payment as much as the quantity acquired on the parallel chain.
There are a number of methods of attaining these atomicity ensures, such because the Ruben Somsen covenants BMM/Spacechain proposal and the BIP-301/Drivechain proposal.
