Merged mining involves Bitcoin miners actively taking part, which opens up the possibility for them to exploit the merged-mined chain while still mining Bitcoin as usual. On the other hand, Hemi's Proof-of-Proof (PoP) consensus protocol provides a way to inherit Bitcoin's security in a decentralized and permissionless manner, without needing miner cooperation. For an attack on Hemi to succeed, they would have to target Bitcoin itself.
Imagine you're starting a new blockchain. One of your top priorities is security, and there’s no denying that Bitcoin's security is the gold standard. So, why not borrow from it?
Well, you can — in a way. Through merged mining, Bitcoin miners can mine both Bitcoin and your chain simultaneously, allowing your blockchain to piggyback on Bitcoin’s security.
The Problem with Merged Mining
However, there are significant downsides for chains that go this route.
The main issue is that Bitcoin miners need to opt in, meaning they must run nodes for your sidechain. If only 20% of Bitcoin miners participate, you only get 20% of Bitcoin’s hashrate. Worse, these miners could attack your chain without facing any financial penalty while continuing to earn Bitcoin block rewards like normal.
In short, merged mining could expose your chain to new security risks and distort incentives.

How Proof-of-Proof Works
Hemi is different. Instead of merged mining, it uses a consensus protocol called Proof-of-Proof (PoP), which doesn’t merely borrow Bitcoin’s security but allows Hemi to exceed it at scale.
Using PoP means that Bitcoin miners don’t need to participate in — or even know about — Hemi. They simply confirm blocks that include Hemi transactions and collect the transaction fees for doing so. Users who do want to earn rewards in Hemi’s native token can run a super-lightweight PoP miner to publish Hemi consensus data to Bitcoin. It’s simple: Help publish proofs, get tokens.
Each new Hemi block receives a Bitcoin confirmation, which makes a reorganization increasingly unlikely until the block reaches finality. And that doesn’t take long. 
Users on Bitcoin by itself often wait about 60 minutes for finality, meaning that only a major 51% attack on the network would enable someone to change transactions on the blockchain. With Hemi, there’s a very small tradeoff — it takes nine Bitcoin blocks, or about 90 minutes, to reach finality. And in less than two hours it achieves Superfinality, at which point it is more secure than a comparable Bitcoin block, because an attacker would have to simultaneously attack Bitcoin and Hemi’s block production protocols.
Thus, in the Proof-of-Proof protocol, unlike with merged mining, Bitcoin miners needn’t be active to benefit, they can’t collude to attack the chain (unless they attack Bitcoin itself), and superfinality comes fast.
To get more context on Hemi’s consensus mechanism, read the whitepaper and the relevant documentation or stop by the team’s Discord. 
 
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Website: hemifinance.com
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Putting programmability into Bitcoin
TL;DR
The Hemi Virtual Machine (hVM) is a Bitcoin Node wrapped inside a Ethereum Virtual Machine (EVM) to deliver the best-possible access to the states of both.The Hemi Bitcoin Kit (hBK) is a library of smart contracts for developers to take full advantage of the hVM.The hBK provides rich data, reliability, and security so that developers can cheaply and easily make dApps — and build on other applications.This level of programmability will enable Bitcoin apps that previously would have been impossible or impractical to build.
Thanks to smart contracts, Ethereum has become home to decentralized apps. Hemi unlocks a similar level of programmability for Bitcoin, enabling applications that, until now, have been somewhere between impractical and impossible.
Well, the Hemi Virtual Machine (hVM) makes it possible. The Hemi Bitcoin Kit (hBK) makes it easy. Let’s dive in.
Better Bitcoin Programmability with hBK
The hVM is based on the Ethereum Virtual Machine (EVM) and comes stocked with built-in shortcuts precompiled to abstract away complex transactions. These make it easier for developers to create their own smart contracts and, by extension, build decentralized applications. Just as important, it makes the development of such applications relatively cheap—the infrastructure is there for anyone to tap into.
Because the hVM is an EVM wrapped around a Bitcoin node, it automatically extends that easy DeFi programmability to Bitcoin-based assets. 
And the Hemi Bitcoin Kit makes dApp development even easier. The hBK is a library of smart contracts that abstract away the precompile process. They seamlessly translate smart contract queries so that data is easier to deal with.
The Hemi Bitcoin Kit brings five benefits to developers:
Easier development: Any Bitcoin data you want is one smart contract call away.Rich data: You get access to data that is impractical or outright impossible to get with other solutions.Security and reliability: dApps get immediate information about any relevant events on the Bitcoin blockchain without having to rely on third-party relayers or trusted oracles.Composability: Anyone can design new layers of Bitcoin DeFi infrastructure for others on which to build.Cost-effectiveness: The hVM uses far less gas than other approaches and there’s no need to incentivize third-party bots to watch for and relay events.
What Developers Can Build
Some examples of unique applications that the Hemi Bitcoin Kit enables:
Custom Bitcoin tunnels: Connect chains to the Bitcoin network using customized security, cost, and speed settings.Trustless BTC staking and re-staking protocols: 99% of BTC is unbridged and/or unproductive. With Hemi, BTC can be used to secure networks and earn yield. Bitcoin-authenticated AI-model marketplaces: AI model owners can publish Bitcoin-secure hashes of their model weights, timestamping to Bitcoin.Multichain DAOs: Hemi DAOs operate across both Bitcoin and Ethereum, making decisions based on the collective input of stakeholders from both communities.
To see how you can get started making your own decentralized apps, read the whitepaper and the relevant documentation or stop by the team’s Discord.

Learn More
Website: hemifinance.comGitHub: github.com/HemiLabsReferral Program: https://points.absinthe.network/hemi/startDiscord: discord.gg/hemixyzTwitter/X: x.com/hemi_xyz