no. Merge mining has existed for a long time in Bitcoin and other chains. Namecoin, for example, is merge mined. Drivechains require a miner-activated softfork for *blind* merge mining, which lets the side chain operate very independently, so you can have a chain that is denominated in Bitcoin but that uses completely different rules for state (one of Paul’s proposed side chain for his upcoming drivechaik-enabled Bitcoin fork eCash.com will use zk-Snarks to make a privacy coin).

1st merge-mined chain is namecoin http://6cbn4rskfdr647otej7gpqlmpqcmj723vg2eoeuu7ljbwu6cpdebozyd.onion:8080/ amethyst the nostr client currently has nip-05 namecoin lookups