Topic: I thought litecoin was more secure., wait, litecoin Is MORe secure then Bitcoin? (Read 1781 times)

One Scrypt hash needs much more RAM and processing power to compute than one SHA-256 hash and can not be parallelized efficiently.


Cryptocoin security is dependent on:

• Strength of algorithm
• Distribution of mining resources
• Difficulty
• Network strength

Strength of algorithm:
Scrypt is so much more expensive in terms of resources to purchase.
It cost so much more money to increase attack strength in Litecoin that it becomes a very strong wall against attacks.
Hashrate is not the measurement of strength. Hashrate * Strength of algorithm is.

Distribution of mining resources:
http://blockinfo.org/ltc/pools

Difficulty:
The difficulty is lower in litecoin, but in reality litecoin is the same as bitcoin 5 years from now because of the algo strength.

Network strength:
It takes less work to get the same security in litecoin as it does in bitcoin.

 [Thank you so much for taking up your busy time to post mr coblee]

I guess the next question naturally would be. And this is for anyone..


Is litecoin the second most secure coin? The merge mined coins, namecoin and ixcoin both contain considerable hash. Do they even come close?

No, it takes less $ to 51% attack Litecoin than Bitcoin. But 1 confirmation on Litecoin is way more secured than 0-conf on Bitcoin. 4 confirmation (10 mins) on Litecoin is arguably more secure than 1 confirmation (10 mins) on Bitcoin because of Gabler's Ruin, but I have not done the math for that.

So question to you mr coblee, is litecoin more secure then bitcoin?

The calculations are a bit different when there are merged mined coins. Since the rewards are combined for merged mining, the security is relative to the combined value produced by the coins. For the sake of simplicity, you can ignore the merged mined coins because they add very little to the total rewards.

Ok, i just started reading and i must say. You are blowing my mind.. 

The math why Litecoin is more secure than bitcoin
http://www.reddit.com/r/litecoin/comments/1cssqr/the_math_why_litecoin_is_more_secure_than_bitcoin/

I'm going to have to run the numbers when I get time but I'm interested to see how things have changed over the last year since coblee wrote the above quotes.

Of interesting note is how this affects ixcoin. Ixcoin has the third highest sha256d hash but it also has minted all coins. So the only fees are transaction based. I'm curious as to how that effects the coblee formula. Is ixcoin an anomaly then?

But def from the coblee formula I guess it would be safe to say that litecoin IS the second most secured coin. (going to have to double check this though)

Everyone happy?

As you can see from the math above, the amount of $ produced by mining the coin determines how much hashrate is pointed towards that coin. Since Litecoin rewards miners twice as much as Dogecoin, its network hashrate (193,698 MH/s) is about twice that of Dogecoin (67,188 MH/s). It's a bit more because of popularity and liquidity. A more popular coin will have more people mining it. And if a coin is more liquid (lots of exchange volume), it will have more miners

Let's also look at Feathercoin:

    Feathercoin: 576 * 200 * $ 0.097332 = $11,213 (2,348 MH/s)

$/day per MH/s is a good metric to see how much each coin is paying for its miners.

    Litecoin: $323,424 / 193,698 MH/s = 1.67
    Dogecoin: $157,680 / 67,188 MH/s = 2.35
    Feathercoin: $11,213 / 2,348 MH/s = 4.77

No one wants to mine Feathercoin, so they have to pay so much more for its miners. It's just like how a weak startup has to pay more in stock options to get people to join them.

Here's some math. The best way to calculate how much security a coin has is to calculate how much block rewards are created a day in $. And to calculate that, you just multiple # blocks a day by # of block reward coins in a block by $ of coin.

Prices from http://coinmarketcap.com/

    Bitcoin: 144 * 25 * $443.50 = $1,596,600
    Litecoin: 576 * 50 * $11.23 = $323,424
    Dogecoin: 1440 * 250,000 * $0.000438 = $157,680

So Litecoin is twice as secure as Dogecoin. And Bitcoin is 5 times as secure as Litecoin.

thank you mjbmonetarymetals!!

https://www.reddit.com/r/dogecoin/comments/22niq9/merged_mining_amafaq/


Dogecoin merge mined with litecoin is this fact really so hard to swallow? 

Litecoin deserves this price move I only hope it continues to the point it rewards those that bought and held during the last peak. After months and months of litecoin being the crypto-punchbag it's great to see it throwing a few punches 

actually much before that. but I didn't post.

No need to attack me friend.

If you go by the numbers then ixcoin literally has the third most sha256d hash.

This thread is a thought experiment and in no way is bashing litecoin. Would you care to weigh in on my question? How would you compare litecoin security to bitcoin?

you have been here seen October 27, 2013 and still don't know what is Scrypt and SHA256d? by the way Ixcoin is a nonsense shit so don't try to compare shit to crypto.

ok, this raises another question, if litecoin was already secure, then why would it need to merge with dogecoin?

so far in this thread no one has answered the main question, how you rate the litecoin security to bitcoin and bitcoin merge mined coins.

Bitcoin vs Litecoin = Bigger, simpler vs. Smaller, more coplex ok I get this but how can one arrive at the conclusion that litecoin is the second most secure coin? Is it just that it is secure enough and has an early mover network advantage, so people just use it regardless of security?

Maybe I'm asking the wrong question.

#1 secure sha256d coin, bitcoin
#2 secure sha256d coin, namecoin
#3 secure sha256d coin, ixcoin

#1 secure scrypt coin, litecoin
#2 secure scrypt coin, doge?
#3 secure scrypt coin, ?

hmmm, how to word this.....

it seems that the argument is this, in the sha256d camp the top 3 coins are the most secure and in the scrypt camp the top three coins are the most secure. because the two algorithms are different it is impossible for one camp to attack the other camp. And because of this it is not possible to compare litecoin security to bitcoin security.

So the correct statement should be that litecoin is not the second most secure coin but that it is the most secure scrypt coin. Whereas bitcoin is the most secure sha256d coin.

if we compare the security of the two then we can't compare them with hash alone as they calc hash differently. We maybe need to factor in cost to attack the network and the health of the network?

This.. My CPU mined bitcoin with a higher hashrate than my gpu mined litecoin.

Litecoin is pretty secure, and merge mining with dogecoin certainly helped.

I think some people seem to be under the impression that because Litecoin has quicker conformation times it is therefor more secure but that's obviously not the case.

Hashrate
I think what NattyLiteCoin was tryig to explain is something like this: since the scrypt algorithm is "harder" for a computer to solve, for example a (equivalent) hardware that does 10GH/s in SHA256 does e.g. 1000kH/s in scrypt (just an example, not real figures). So the "numbers" (hashing speed) will be smaller in general and because of this it might seem that you could simply bring in 2 TH/s and kill the network. However, this is not the case as there is no such hardware yet and it is more complicated as well to create scrypt based ASICS.

Security
It comes down to the previous fact. The bitcoin network has probably a larger user base and hence larger hash rate (here I mean if I would convert the values of scrypt to sha256), however the scrypt algorithm is "harder" (as per above) ad hence a lower hashrate can also secure the network, because suddenly adding large hash rate is not possible.
Bitcoin vs Litecoin = Bigger, simpler vs. Smaller, more coplex

It's not that I don't believe you but how did you arrive at this conclusion? If scrypt can't generate the hash that sha256d can then how do you compare the security of the two systems? By appearances there are several coins that have a higher hashrate the litecoin.

Litecoin is the second most secure PoW coin in the universe. It would be quite difficult and in many perspectives in practical to assert a 51% attack. The hardware is not there, yet. Litecoin is fine example of a PoW model.

Is it possible to compare litecoin security to bitcoin then?

So then should I be thinking of security in terms of cost to attack the network? Ie: For a 51% attack on Litecoin one would probably need 50 Million Dollar worth of of LTC asics (which aren't even produced anymore). vs the cost to attack bitcoin?