u/John_Inubook

Gm

TL;DR

We love miners 🐸

The answer:

Litecoin and Dogecoin miners can also secure $PEP, using the same hashrate.

Merge mining sounds complicated, but the idea is pretty simple once you break it down.

Normally, mining two different coins means running two separate setups — your hashing power on one chain doesn't help the other. Merge mining changes that: a miner can secure more than one blockchain at the same time with the same computational work, as long as the chains use compatible algorithms and support the mechanism.

The technical name is AuxPow (Auxiliary Proof-of-Work) — pioneered by Bitcoin and Namecoin back in 2011, and used by Dogecoin together with Litecoin since 2014. So this isn't new or experimental — it's a well-established, battle-tested setup.

For Pepecoin specifically: mining pools that already support Litecoin and Dogecoin can add Pepecoin as an additional chain to secure, without extra hardware or splitting hashrate three ways. As more pools enable Pepecoin alongside Litecoin and Dogecoin, the hashrate securing the Pepecoin network grows right along with two of the most established Proof-of-Work chains around.

Why it matters for a smaller chain like Pepecoin?

A brand-new blockchain starting from zero hashrate is vulnerable — it just doesn't have enough miners yet. By merge mining with Litecoin and Dogecoin, Pepecoin borrows security from two much bigger, established networks from day one, instead of trying to bootstrap that security alone.

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Did you know that Litecoin wasn't the first scrypt coin?

A forgotten, scammy coin named Tenebrix pioneered Scrypt in 2011. It was labelled as a "scammy" or unfair project because ArtForz pre-mined 7.7 million coins for themselves before releasing it to the public. This massive creator allocation caused severe mistrust, and the coin quickly faded into obscurity.

Charlie Lee loved the technical foundation of Scrypt but hated the unfair pre-mine. In October 2011, Lee worked on a clone called Fairbrix, which completely stripped away the 7.7 million pre-mined coins to ensure a fair launch.

Scrypt chains run a massive loop powered by a crypto building block named Salsa20.

Fun fact: Salsa20 is a high-speed stream cipher created by cryptographer Daniel J. Bernstein for the European Union's eSTREAM project in 2005. Instead of military use, it was designed as a fast, public algorithm for ordinary software, eventually becoming so efficient that Google adopted its successor (ChaCha20) to secure billions of Android and Chrome connections worldwide.

Historically, proof of work has been judged primarily by electrical cost vs other more efficient options.

Something many people overlook is the time and thought that contribute to maintaining the networks running PoW.

It is infinitely harder to maintain a pow chain when you’re not always getting paid for your time and personal energy expended on setup, studying, marketing, educating, community building, etc.

Other methods may be more efficient in consensus and electricity but the passion and engagement is just not there like it is for PoW coins and their communities.

That’s why we have seen over the years when times are tough, pow chains are better positioned to survive. Primarily because people have dedicated their personal time and mind power toward making it work. It turns almost into an obsession and fight or flight kicks in.

You don’t generally see that mindset with other models.

Just sharing my random thoughts of the day. Thank you for listening. Make it a good one.