Prior to the recent insane jump in value of LTC on the market and the following incredible ramp up in difficulty, it has occurred to me that perhaps we need to think again about the idea of making Litecoin GPU resistant.
At the moment the incredible jump in value of LTC is in a purely speculative capacity, and the resulting number of miners with GPU's getting involved, threatens to destroy long-term "ownership" in the Coin as it will be come far more difficult to mine much faster then the user base expands.
At the moment, to be honest, LTC is in its infancy- there is virtually no infrastructure developed yet to enable true commerce using LTC, yet it's value is attracting so much hash power that it's fast becoming worthless to CPU mine- regardless of the fact that GPU mining on BTC is an order of magnitude greater, it can still be enough to make mining with a CPU impossible.
The reason why modifying the script to be GPU resistant would be important is that it is much easier to acquire substantial GPU hash power then it is to acquire CPU power (with the exception of bot-nets). Your average, even top end computer, will generally have max. 1 cpu chip (with multiple cores). While the same average computer can house many GPU cards. The barrier to multiplying ones CPU power vis-a-vis requiring a complete system to run a CPU is much higher then multiplying ones GPU power. With GPU'S enterprising individuals can concentrate hashing power significantly and quite quickly.
It is my opinion that for LTC to serve as a functional alternative to BTC (and have a future as a functional currency in any capacity) it is important that vast numbers of individuals are able to contribute and participate meaningfully in the process of mining. While of course the answer that most people will first arrive at is 'the increase in power helps to secure the network against attacks' I believe there is a real danger that while securing the network against attacks we may be simultaneously walling LTC off from widespread adoption, and thus it's long term potential and usefulness as a currency.
Perhaps you are right. But it's not like we can have an "off" switch that disallows miners from coming into the market to mine litecoins. The driving factor is probably price and that once again you can't limit the rate or amount that which people want to buy/sell LTC.
There is no solution that is pragmatic (programmable) to put into the litecoin source code.
That's just the way it is...
