Myriad Coin (XMY) – Crypto Mining Taken to the Next Level

Myriad (XMY) is a relatively little-known crypto coin, which is however by no means a newcomer to the scene.

XMY has several unique “selling points,” among them the most prominent being the fact that it supports no fewer than 5 different hashing algorithms.

Though the official Myriad website claims XMY was the fist altcoin to introduce this multi-algo hashing, it is merely the first that took the concept into the mainstream, so to speak…

A bit of history…

Myriad was launched in February, 2014, and it immediately generated quite a bit of buzz at bitcointalk.org. The first mined block showed up after the official launch of the coin, so there was no pre-mining involved at all.

Some people were skeptical, others were eager to start mining and overall, the reception was great.

Why do we say though that despite its website claiming the opposite, Myriad was in fact not the first multi-algo altcoin out there?

In 2013, the blockchain game-focused Huntercoin was launched. While it did support Scrypt as well as SHA256d for proof-of-work, its focus was hardly on mining, so it sort of flew in under the radar.

Myriad didn’t really follow in Huntercoin’s footsteps either. Instead of just two algorithms, it supports 5: Skrypt, Skein, Myr-Groestl, SHA256d and Yescrypt.

With that in mind, it is safe to say that XMY is indeed very much focused on mining. As a matter of fact, due to code upgrades introduced through an August 2015 hard fork, merge-mining the coin became possible too. More on that later.

Myriad’s origins can be traced back to another altcoin called ZetaCoin (ZET), which itself was based on Bitcoin.

As a seemingly successful multi-algo altoin, XMY generated a few spin-offs of its own. Digitalcoin, Saffroncoin, Auroracoin, Verge and Digibyte were all inspired by Myriad, though it is safe to say that only those at least neck-deep in altcoins have ever heard about these entities.

Myriad’s advantages/innovations

Mining

Looking to improve on its predecessors, Myriad adopted this seemingly radical approach towards multi-algo hashing, to up the security of its protocol and to allow as wide a range of mining equipment as possible.

In that regard, Myriad can indeed be mined with just about any GPU/CPU/ASIC combination ever used to mine cryptocurrency.

SHA256d is obviously for ASIC-based miners. The same goes for Scrypt. Myr-Groestl and Skein are aimed at GPU miners, while Qbit was used for CPU as well as GPU mining. Down the line, Qbit got replaced with Yescrypt, through a consensus among miners, a move which turned out to be the first of its kind ever, setting yet another record for the altcoin.

Technical details on each and every one of these hashing algorithms can be found online, and it is beyond the scope of this present article to go into details on them.

Security

How does multi-algo hashing help security? you may ask…Simple: in order to complete what’s known as a 51% attack, one has to first compromise the hashing algo.

In the case of a single-algo currency, that is a one-target task, as difficult as it may be.

With Myriad, an attacker has to compromise no fewer than 3 hashing algos to achieve the same effect, and that is due to how the network total is allocated among the 5 hashing algos. Each of them carries a 20% share.

Accessibility – a coin for everyone

Fair distribution has always been one of the core tenets of this altcoin, and this is especially true for miners, obviously. Miners are able to compete for block rewards with equal chances, as the way the system is designed has removed the incentive for pooled mining.

The same difficulty setting is applied to all hash algos, meaning that everyone will get an equal allotment of the rewards.

The Myriad network rewards resource-wise contribution on the part of the miners, which in effect means that one can earn coins with any type of hardware, and yes, that includes mobile devices.

It has to be said though that one can only use the same hashing algo to mine a maximum of 6 consecutive blocks. This is yet another way through which opportunities are kept equal and “democratic” on the Myriad network.

Some basic XMY information

The initial Myriad block reward was set to 1,000 XMY.

The halving time was set to approximately 98 weeks (determined by an exact number of mined blocks of course), while the difficulty increases with every mined block.

The block time is 1 minute and the total supply of XMY has been set to 2 billion. Of this, more than 1.5 billion has been put into circulation already.

According to the official Myriad website, the currency is currently the 450th most popular altcoin by market cap. This cap is $15.54 million at the time of writing.

The 24h trading volume of the coin is quite impressive for such a little known altcoin: $69.61k.

The exchanges which currently support Myriad are Cryptopia, Bittrex, Litebit and NLXCH.

Obviously, the site promises to make the coin available at several other exchanges in the near future.

Merge Mining

Merge mining is a devilishly clever addition to XMY’s repertoire. When merge mining, one is effectively mining for a parent coin and at the same time and with the same effort, for XMY as well.

Merge mining is available for the Scrypt and SHA256d hashing algorithms, which is just dandy, because that’s where the majority of crypto hashing power is focused these days anyway.

By taking advantage of this feature, a miner can effectively mine Bitcoin or Litcoin, while using the same work to pick up valid Myriad blocks.

Bottom line

As far as technology innovation goes, Myriad is indeed a rather impressive initiative. Its multi-algo hashing gives it certain advantages and its merge mining capabilities make it a rather attractive proposition for those already mining other cryptos.

Transaction speeds are good, as is community viability, though its code base development leaves some room for improvement.

For some reason, the public-at-large is yet to learn of XMY’s existence to begin with. It does look like it could be much more successful than it currently is, if only more people knew about it and about its innovative features.