In overlay‐based applications, multiple overlay networks are deployed to fulfill different service requirements. A multi‐overlay environment may exist in which a number of nodes simultaneously participate in the networks. When there are multiple overlay‐based applications running over a set of nodes, some of the nodes take extra effort to maintain multi‐overlay networks. Therefore, maintaining these co‐existing overlays incurs redundant maintenance overhead. This research presents a cooperative strategy for exploiting a master–slave model to handle the common overlay‐maintenance. The purpose is to eliminate the redundant maintenance overhead. To evaluate system performance, this study not only analyses various combinations of multiple overlays but also considers the effectiveness of the master selection approach. Experimental results demonstrated that the proposed cooperative strategy significantly decreases the redundant overlay‐maintenance overhead. In some cases, the overall reduction ratio of maintaining multiple overlays is as high as 60%.