Topic: The type of new alt-coin we really need (Read 1533 times)

Basically something like litecoin, but with the following two characteristics:

1. GPUs should be no better at it than CPUs and hopefully worse.
2. It has to be absolutely FPGA and ASIC proof.

Litecoin had the right idea, but didn't go far enough. The way to really make this happen is to use something like scrypt, but have it access far more memory than is used by litecoin, by tweaking the scrypt params. That way GPUs will not be able to run a gazillion threads, because at least for the foreseeable future video cards will not have enough memory to support them.

Let me know what you guys think...

"Quick rant: I have always viewed Litecoin as a detraction from Bitcoin and have refused to make mass quantities of physical Litecoins as a result.  I have viewed Litecoin as nothing more than a hedge against Bitcoin seeing a 51% attack due to choice of SHA256 as an algorithm.

But:  I believe I have thought of an idea that would make Litecoin far more important and relevant in the Bitcoin/cryptocurrency ecosystem, by being as ready in wait as possible in case Bitcoin really does experience a 51% attack.

In a nutshell, I view a Bitcoin 51% attack as eventually possible, for one reason:  ASIC production efficiency scales far more than linearly with the amount of money an actor is willing to put into it; a bad actor with $1 billion to 51%-attack Bitcoin with its own custom ASICs will be far more than ten times as effective than ten bad actors with $100 million.

Anyway: here is the idea:  Add a mandatory merge-mining feature to Litecoin so that it is always "merge-mining" Bitcoins, just for pretend, in hopes that one day Bitcoin will have the option of "let's subscribe to the Litecoin chain" (as a secondary means of block validation) as a way to resolve a future 51% attack on Bitcoin's SHA256-based chain.

Here is sort of how it would work:

1. Add a new requirement to the Litecoin chain such that a valid Litecoin block must contain either a record of the most recent Bitcoin block header hash, or a repeat of the hash found in the prior Litecoin block (with a limit of repetitions).  Litecoin blocks that contain outdated Bitcoin intelligence should be disfavored by nodes capable of detecting that.  Further impose the requirement that Bitcoin block headers must be represented contiguously in the Litecoin chain - Bitcoin blocks cannot be skipped (which shouldn't be a problem, when Litecoin blocks happen 4x as often as Bitcoin)
2. In the event there is an active Bitcoin block chain fork, the requirement is loosened such that the Bitcoin block header hash requirement can be satisfied by any leg of the chain, not just the one Bitcoin considers valid.
3. Add a feature to Litecoin clients that allow Litecoin users to decide to prefer or not-prefer branches of a Bitcoin fork while one is in progress.  The default for this should always favor the Bitcoin leg with the most longevity, and should disfavor long chains that suddenly appear to replace a large amount of the known Bitcoin block chain.  The user/miner/pool-op should always have an easy way to have the final say, such as by pasting in a preformatted message either exiling or checkpointing Bitcoin blocks.

Anticipated benefits:

1. Bitcoin users would have a ready made remedy to a 51% attack that they can switch to:  Bitcoin users can simply add the requirement that if a Bitcoin block header hash makes it into the Litecoin chain, that its proof of work should be given a bonus.  Litecoin community could create and maintain pulls to the Satoshi client that cause it to subscribe to the Litecoin chain and incorporate it as intelligence toward block validation and resolving block chain forks.
2.  Bitcoin would have an easy way to add an emergency upper bound to block creation, just in case an enormous amount of power suddenly appeared.  By turning on an optional must-appear-in-Litecoin requirement, the Bitcoin community could switch on an upper bound of 1 block per 2.5 minutes if it was deemed necessary.
3. Litecoin would be seen as far more important than a wannabe bitcoin knockoff without added value by those who see it that way.
4. Bitcoin's blockchain would be re-democratized to CPU/GPU users without forcing the Bitcoin community to switch to scrypt, they'd have more decentralized influence on bitcoin than those with the means to buy/make ASICs
5. The legitimacy of Litecoins would increase greatly - people would see the value of Litecoins in their role of protecting Bitcoin, and would potentially vote for the longevity of Litecoin by offering to accept LTC for goods and services, thereby increasing their value.
6. I'd start making Casascius Litecoins if you guys did this and did it well.

I'd call the concept "marriage-mining".  By doing something like this, LTC gives a nod to BTC's importance while adding synergistic value to BTC that LTC can benefit from by association."

I don't know what to do about botnets, but that argument can be used with any coin. As for server farms, at least there is an electrical cost per server that is not vastly different than the one per PC, so I am going to have to expand my notion of fair to include them. After all, the cost per server is at least as much as the cost per PC, so there is no FPGA/ASIC/GPU like cheat.

In a nutshell it's more fair, because people are more likely to have 2-3 computers vs 2-3 video cards per computer. As for server farms and the like, I'm afraid that that would be difficult to get around with any scheme.

Lets call it BotnetCoin

So we make a litecoin-type coin but set scrypt parameters to where they will need two or three gigs of RAM per thread? So even a 3 gig GPU will only be able to fit one thread? Of course all those cheap old pentiums with only 1 or 2 gigs of RAM you see on kijiji/craigslist type sites will be out of the running too but thats necessary to keep the GPUs out I guess... Even old ones usually have motherboards that can take at least 4 gigs of RAM though so throw some extra RAM in them and they could be used...

-MarkM-

Basically something like litecoin, but with the following two characteristics:

1. GPUs should be no better at it than CPUs and hopefully worse.
2. It has to be absolutely FPGA and ASIC proof.

Litecoin had the right idea, but didn't go far enough. The way to really make this happen is to use something like scrypt, but have it access far more memory than is used by litecoin, by tweaking the scrypt params. That way GPUs will not be able to run a gazillion threads, because at least for the foreseeable future video cards will not have enough memory to support them.

Let me know what you guys think...

And as we have sparred about, that is fine for long term investors.

However as soon as those coins start to gain value or get noticed, GPUS will jump on those chains knocking CPU miners out.

The introduction coin needs to be CPU friendly/GPU hostile period, or else it will become useless as an entry coin rather quickly.

There isn't really any need for this yet because so far we still have several coins that the GPU miners are basically ignoring, so for many many months now they have been mined by CPU miners quite nicely. As long as there are always coins the GPU miners ignore there is plenty to keep your CPUs busy. I0coin, GRouPcoin, GeistGeld, Tenebrix are all still mine-able using CPUs right now I think.

-MarkM-

At the very least to even the playing field. Everybody has a computer or two in their house and chances are they are not an order of magnitude apart in performance, as is true of video cards. Also, there will be less "cheating" by pros, because the playing field will consist of only one type of player - the CPU.

Also, you can do more interesting stuff like SHA3 for example as the hash (but still using an scrypt like scheme).

Yes, I believe there is need for a CPU bound coin to allow new users without either the knowledge or equipment investment to start using crypto coins.

Face it, getting started is not easy. It is not easy to trade cash, use credit cards or any conventional means to buy coins. The process often involves using expensive wire services to send cash to small companies one has never heard of who often charge their own fees. I doubt any of us has the capital to start a business that would be capable of absorbing the cost of reversed transactions on non-reversible crypto-coins to solve the issue.

A CPU bound coin would allow easy entry as mining would be easier and could be as simple hitting a button in the client.