gistfile1.txt

<Squidicuz> Hi
<Squidicuz> Someone else and I, are going to try and work on improving merged mining of namecoin with p2pool
<forrestv> hi
<forrestv> huh, improved how?
<Squidicuz> we want to add a sharechain
<Squidicuz> if that is possible, we will find out
<Squidicuz> any thoughts on that?
<Squidicuz> and is it okay if I open a ticket on your repo to track the issue
<forrestv> i've given some thought to it before. it's tricky, due to the size of share proofs for namecoin
<Squidicuz> ahh, hm
<Squidicuz> well, we (drazisil and I) are willing to give it a shot
<forrestv> with bitcoin, you just need to provide a block header and the merkle link from your generation transaction to the merkle root in the block header
<forrestv> p2pool knows what the generation transaction should be, so it's pretty simple to make sure that miners are mining what they should
<forrestv> using just that information, which is 100-200 bytes
<Squidicuz> I see
<forrestv> however, with namecoin, you have to prove that you're putting something specific in the coinbase field of the generation transaction of the block that would go in the parent blockchain
<forrestv> which means that you have to include the entire generation transaction from the parent chain in the proof (unless it can be recreated somehow)
<Squidicuz> hmmm
<forrestv> if a p2pool miner mines a namecoin block, the entire bitcoin p2pool generation transaction becomes part of the namecoin block
<forrestv> i think it's called the auxblock structure
<forrestv> anyway
<Squidicuz> yes
<forrestv> if you made a p2pool that handled merged mining correctly, every share would have to include the generation transaction from the miner's parent chain
<forrestv> which (if you're using p2pool for the parent chain) is pretty large - >10kB, i think
<forrestv> several kB at least
<Squidicuz> hmm, I see. so the sharechain would farily large
<forrestv> most recent p2pool block had a generation transaction of 8519 bytes
<forrestv> yes
<forrestv> the one way i have thought of to fix this is to somehow link the namecoin and bitcoin p2pools
<forrestv> let the namecoin one grab the current bitcoin generation transaction
<forrestv> so it doesn't have to be explicitly included in shares
<forrestv> but that's a really big change
<Squidicuz> would that require a fork of the sharechain?
<forrestv> opening a ticket is fine. you should probably put this conversation there for others too
<forrestv> it might not require a fork of the bitcoin p2pool sharechain
<forrestv> i'm not sure right now - i think i've thought of it before but don't remember that detail
<Squidicuz> okay.  thanks
<Squidicuz> we will look into that and see what happens. going to try it out on testnet