Merged Mining (AuxPoW)

Status: Built, not yet activated on mainnet. Active on testnet from block 1000 and regtest from genesis.

Tidecoin’s long-term mining model is Auxiliary Proof-of-Work (AuxPoW): a scrypt parent-chain proof commits to a Tidecoin block candidate, and Tidecoin validates that commitment as its own block proof. Tidecoin AuxPoW chain ID is 8.

This page is the miner-facing overview. Protocol details are in Protocol / AuxPoW, and pool implementation details are in AuxPoW Integration.

Two Mining Phases

Phase	Rule	Purpose
Pre-AuxPoW	Standalone YespowerTIDE	Early distribution and standalone mining.
Post-AuxPoW	Scrypt parent proof through AuxPoW	Long-term security through merged mining.

AuxPoW activation also gates Tidecoin’s post-AuxPoW consensus features: Falcon-1024, ML-DSA schemes, strict Falcon verification, witness v1 SHA-512, and OP_SHA512.

How Merged Mining Works

At a high level:

A pool asks Tidecoin for an AuxPoW candidate with createauxblock or getauxblock.
The pool builds a parent-chain coinbase transaction that commits to the Tidecoin candidate hash.
Miners hash parent-chain scrypt headers as usual.
If a solved parent header meets Tidecoin’s target, the pool submits a serialized AuxPoW proof to Tidecoin with submitauxblock.
If the same header also meets the parent-chain target, the pool can submit the parent block to the parent chain.

The parent chain does not need to know about Tidecoin. The commitment lives in the parent coinbase script, and Tidecoin validates the proof independently.

RPC Surface

RPC	Use
`createauxblock "<tidecoin_address>"`	Create an AuxPoW candidate paying an explicit Tidecoin address.
`submitauxblock "<hash>" "<auxpow_hex>"`	Submit the solved AuxPoW proof for a candidate.
`getauxblock`	Wallet-assisted create/submit flow.

createauxblock is unavailable before AuxPoW activation for the next block height. On mainnet, that means production AuxPoW mining is not live while nAuxpowStartHeight is disabled.

What Miners See

End miners normally connect to a pool’s scrypt Stratum endpoint after AuxPoW. They do not submit Tidecoin AuxPoW directly. The pool handles:

Tidecoin candidate refresh;
parent coinbase construction;
parent merkle root construction;
share validation against pool difficulty;
win detection against Tidecoin and parent targets;
submitauxblock to Tidecoin;
parent block submission where applicable;
payout accounting.

Activation Readiness

Before mainnet activation, operators should test on testnet or regtest:

candidate creation with createauxblock;
parent coinbase commitment layout;
parent merkle branch construction;
serialized AuxPoW submission;
reorg handling;
payout transaction sizing with Tidecoin PQ signatures;
monitoring and alerting for stale candidates and submit failures.