What is merged mining & can it mitigate the effects of BTC & LTC halving

As the deadline for halving nears, Miners might find an unlikely ally in this concept

One of the many reasons that have been associated with the recent rise in Bitcoin & Litecoin is the effect of block reward halvings in both cryptos — August 5, 2019, for LTC and May 2020 for BTC. There has been some concern among some smaller players in the crypto mining business amid declining profit margins as a result. There is a very real danger of these players going out of business — however, merged mining techniques can be used to tackle halving. Binance Academy recently conducted a case study on the merged mining & defines it like this:

“Merged mining refers to the act of mining two or more cryptocurrencies at the same time, without sacrificing overall mining performance. Essentially, a miner can use their computational power to mine blocks on multiple chains concurrently through the use of what is known as Auxiliary Proof of Work (AuxPoW).”

Simply put Merged mining, which was first introduced in 2011, can be defined as…