Auxiliary Proof of Work (AuxPoW)

The Elastos mainchain is merged mined with Bitcoin. Merged mining is a process which enables consensus to be reached on both chains simultaneously. In this case, the Bitcoin blockchain functions as the parent blockchain to Elastos, with the Elastos mainchain acting as its auxiliary blockchain. Energy consumption does not increase with merged mining, and is equal to the energy consumed for mining Bitcoin alone.

Through this mechanism, the Elastos blockchain has an extremely strong guarantee of computing power and is able to provide blockchain innovations at a global scale. It makes full use of existing Bitcoin computing resources in addition to being environmentally friendly.

Additional benefits of merged mining include:

1. The transfer of trust over multiple chains. The merged mining characteristic can be extended to Elastos sidechains as long as the sidechain adopts the same proof of work consensus. Thus, layers of chains can be merged mined recursively, which establishes a hierarchy of trust among chains.

2. Isolated nodes. An auxiliary blockchain, or sidechain, dependent on merged mining does not need a consensus of multiple validator sets. In the extreme case, one chain only needs one node and does not diminish the reliability of the ledger information on the main chain or other chains.