ViaBTC | LTC & DOGE: Difference in Revenue Between Solo Mining and Merged Mining
Nine years ago, Litecoin founder Charlie Lee proposed the “merged mining” of Dogecoin and Litecoin. The proposal saved Dogecoin, which was a worthless crypto with weak consensus and vulnerable to hacking. At the time, Dogecoin developers decided to adopt the auxiliary proof-of-work mechanism (AuxPoW), which now appears to be one of the wisest decisions made by the network. With the Litecoin “endorsement”, and the hashing power acquired from the LTC network through AuxPoW, Dogecoin has been able to enhance its security performance. Today, DOGE has evolved into one of the top ten cryptos by market cap.
From the perspective of miners, the greatest perk of merged mining is the increased mining revenue. With merged mining, a miner’s hashrate could be used to solve math problems of both Litecoin and Dogecoin, allowing him to earn LTC and DOGE simultaneously.
A common misconception is that merged mining equals mining two cryptos at the same time, but the two are quite different. For instance, cryptos like KAS, ETC, and ETF that support GPU mining and feature similar algorithms could be mined at the same time. In such scenarios, miners get to mine two or even three cryptos at the same time, yet the total hashrate used for mining each crypto is reduced accordingly. In other words, the hashrate of the mining machine is divided into multiple smaller shares, which also drives up power consumption.
Merged mining, on the other hand, enables the simultaneous mining of two or more cryptos without compromising the hashrate devoted to any of the target cryptos. Essentially, with merged mining, miners can mine blocks with the same hashrate on multiple chains via AuxPoW. As the results computed on one chain are packed into the other chain(s), the hashrate utilized for mining on each chain remains the same, without consuming more power.
Attracted by the obvious advantages, more and more solo miners are switching to merged mining. Let’s take ANTMINER L7 as an example and check out the difference in earnings between solo mining and merged mining.
According to data from ViaWallet Explorer, as of May 5, 2023, the LTC hashrate is 754.44 TH/s, and the DOGE hashrate is 659.95 TH/s. On the same day, the LTC mining revenue is about 7,305.603 LTC, while the DOGE mining revenue is around 13,613,238.952 DOGE.
Here, the common 9.5GH/s model with a power consumption of 3,425W is used.
Given that $LTC=$87.87 and $DOGE=$0.07861, the daily revenue of ANTMINER L7 in solo mining is: 9.5/754,440 * 7,305.603 ≈ 0.091993 LTC = $8.083
The daily revenue of ANTMINER L7 in merged mining is:
(LTC revenue) 9.5/754,440 * 7,305.603 ≈ 0.091993 LTC
(Additional DOGE revenue) 9.5/659,950 * 13,613,238.952 ≈ 195.9629 DOGE
Therefore, the actual daily revenue under merged mining is about $23.487 (0.091993 LTC + 195.9629 DOGE = $8.083 + $15.404).
As we can see, in the case of ANTMINER L7, compared to solo mining, merged mining generates an additional revenue of $15.404. Furthermore, since the surge in the DOGE price thanks to Elon Musk’s endorsement, the DOGE coins mined in merged mining have become even more valuable than the LTC part.
As a growing number of miners are attracted to merged mining, the LTC hashrate and DOGE hashrate have become highly correlated. Despite that, the LTC hashrate remains slightly higher than the DOGE hashrate, which indicates that some miners have not yet engaged in LTC & DOGE merged mining.
Right now, it only takes a few simple steps to join LTC & DOGE merged mining. For instance, ViaBTC Pool allows users to participate in LTC & DOGE merged mining by mining LTC using the PPS+ or PPLNS payment method, and the LTC and DOGE earnings are allocated according to the miner’s hashrate contribution. On ViaBTC, miners could check out the additional coins earned through merged mining in the [Assets] section on Web or App. Moreover, ViaBTC Pool also allows miners to withdraw their revenue through CoinEx without any fees or withdrawal limits.
About ViaBTC
ViaBTC, founded in May 2016, has provided professional, efficient, safe and stable crypto mining services for over one million users in 130+ countries/regions around the world, with a cumulative mining output value of tens of billions of dollars. This world-leading, all-inclusive mining pool offers mining services spanning more than ten mainstream cryptos that include BTC, LTC, ETC, etc. Backed by the one-stop, all-inclusive services covering the mining pool, the exchange, and the wallet, ViaBTC is committed to offering global users more abundant supporting tools, stabler and more efficient mining services, and better product experiences.
