Bitcoin’s layer 2 scaling solution, Fractal Bitcoin, significantly increased its network security by onboarding one of the largest crypto mining pools.
Fractal Bitcoin (FB), a layer 2 scaling solution for the Bitcoin (BTC) network, recently secured a major win in terms of its security. On Thursday, April 24, the project managed to secure Foundry, one of the largest Bitcoin mining pools, to also start mining FB.
With Foundry’s integration, Fractal Bitcoin has now achieved 93% of Bitcoin’s hash rate. This means that 93% of the computing power used to mine Bitcoin is now also used to mine Fractal Bitcoin. According to the project, this makes it the most secure Bitcoin-compatible network out there.
This is in line with its goals to leverage Bitcoin’s security while also maintaining the scalability necessary to power complex DeFi applications.
How Fractal Bitcoin convinced miners to join
Most crypto miners use their resources to mine on several chains, such as Bitcoin, Litecoin, Doge, or Monero. This is despite the fact that mining on each network typically requires separate computing and energy resources. Still, depending on token prices and mining difficulty, it is advantageous to split resources.
Fractal and Bitcoin use the same hashing algorithm, SHA-256. Notably, networks that use the same hashing algorithm support merged mining. This means that miners can secure both networks at once, using the same computing power they would when securing just one chain.
For this reason, Fractal Bitcoin can easily onboard Bitcoin miners who can get additional rewards without much cost. However, Bitcoin miners don’t get all the rewards, as Fractal Bitcoin uses the Cadence Mining model.
This model splits block rewards between merged and permissionless mining, with one-third of the rewards going to Bitcoin miners. The other two-thirds go to anyone with the right hardware. This broadens access, as potential miners don’t have to rely on costly BTC mining infrastructure.
