Bitcoin Forum

Jasinlee and LaSeek have announced their intentions to market an FPGA that does scrypt hashes.  Their claim is 400 KH/s at a wattage in the low double digits, for a standalone wifi-connected unit at $300 USD.  LaSeek claims to have worked on hardware optimizations for the scrypt algorithm for FPGA that allow for lower memory utilization while enhancing the number of logic unit cycles required.

This is all yet to be verified, but proof of concept will be presented soon according to them.

I would be interested, and constantly refreshed here till i see a thread about it. My questions are:

It will be standalone as said, so will it run litecoind by itself?
If not it will connect to a pre-configured p2pool? (unknown to customer that will buy it)

I ask those because laSeek said that the only thing that "you" will be able to config is adding your payment address and i curious on how it is possible.

Another thing i wanna say is that IF you release it and having it "locked" on litecoin (as laSeek mentioned) will be a failure, when a customer buys something doesnt want it locked and wants the freedom to choose between different coins. Bitcoin FPGA's or ASIC's dont hash only bitcoin  ;)
When i said that im gonna buy one, and mine nvc or ruc on it, laSeek said that i will have to tweek or re-program it, if there will be source available, so i guess there will not be source. Right?

A user on the chat copy/pasted an extreme (for scrypt) hashrate, if that is true, doesnt it count as pre-mining? (if it on the litecoin network) It could be seen as "Mine the hell out of a coin with this brand new device, and then sell all those useless devices"

EDIT: I wanna hold a position to be one of the first buyers :]

Any idea which chip or board are they designing LTC scrypt processor for? Will it be a custom board?

No, creating a new device to mine an existing chain is not PREMINING lol.

And no you can't hold a position to be one of the first buyers.   :D

It actually is, if you are saying that you have working devices you are willing to sell, and showing (copy/pasting) that it actually works (if thats the case), if its not considered "premining" its considered something very close to it to be fair

EDIT: added on my previous post: -> It could be seen as "Mine the hell out of a coin with this brand new "device", and then sell all those useless devices"

Before 1-2 days on the btc-e chat everyone(inc. laSeek) told that its unfair for the nvcdev(or any other coindev) to pre-mine his coin as a payment to himself, so how is this fair ;)


But.. But... *counts dollars in front of you* (lol)

Hey Dumbass,

If Novacoin (for example added any new value to crypto world) then okay...Balthazar has every right to premine and for people to take him seriously.

Finding a new design to mine in a more efficient manner (scrypt)...is NOT PREMINING.

Get that through your head.

The developers have every right to mine the fuck out of litecoin if they so choose because they added VALUE to litecoin and the new hardware by developing it.

LOL!

Your Best Friend,

Smoothie  :D :D :D

You know exactly what i mean but you prefer to troll damn you
but since you agreed on both, i have nothing to say :)

Translation: "WAH no fair...i want the good toys too...wah  :'("

 ;D ;D ;D

My point was that how the one thing cant be fair and the similar one can, i wont argue with you you will win lol
Yep i want that toy! I posted it in my first post in here ;)

ha ha ha ha ha

LOL!

Mine more RUC and NVC...it's so much "better"  :P

I have cheap electricity where I live ($.085/kWh). If these really were standalone and used low enough power, I'd probably buy 3-4 to start. Though I'm concerned about their effectiveness, as at 400KH/s, they lose money after the difficulty reaches around 80, and that's at my cheap electricity rates! I might be able to mine for a few months, but then they're break-even at best if the price doesn't increase.

I wouldnt hand over pre order monies without extensive proof of a prototype.

Laseek defaulted on a 30 BTC loan just a couple days ago:

https://btcjam.com/listings/747
http://forum.litecoin.net/index.php/topic,1205.0.html

Ha. I wouldn't order one until a few people had some in hand anyway. I'd risk the adjustment in difficulty over risking my funds!

Since they made me the money to purchase this(if i do), they are cool :) Get over it


My guess, price-wise, is it will be a custom board, with a custom chip. Noone can charge (each device) 230$ for programming a ready made 50$ board enclosed in a 20$ black(as mentioned) enclosure ;)

If the FPGA isn't less than the cost of a GPU with an equal-to or higher output, I wouldn't be a buyer. That's for sure! The FPGA would have to use a ridiculously low amount of energy compared to a GPU otherwise.

there is still a couple months left till the loan is due to expire. so hold off spreading disgruntled loaners thoughts until the expiry date of loans.

if you had a mortgage and missed a payment just one month, or was a few days late in payment. would you want to have your house taken away instantly and imprisoned for fraud? of course not,
so chill out on accusing someone before expiry dates. put facts into context. and do the maths. that loaner complaining on the forums only put in 2BTC of the 30BTC. other big players and more experienced loaners know now to shout and accuse instantly. so dont take noob loaners aggressions to the reality of life as reasons to then cause chinese whispers, accusing people of scamming.

wait till April before accusing people.

and to user #636 who done a loan for about $50 and went on a rampage because he wasn't repaid $10 on time. if you cant afford to be without $50 for 6 months, maybe being a loaner is not the thing for you. don't loan what you can't afford / fear to lose. and that is advice to anyone. whether the loanee is trusted or not.

Still, people should be aware of that situation if he is going to be collecting pre-order $$. Maybe he sees he will be marked as a scammer because of the BTCJam loan and decided to run a huge litecoin FPGA scam on his way out the door... you can never be too careful. I know you're his buddy over at BTC-E and you want to defend him, but I wasn't accusing him of being a scammer. It is however a fact he missed a payment on that loan, you can't deny that. I, as a potential investor in litecoin FPGAs, would like to know all sorts of facts about someone collecting pre-order money when deciding to invest. So I thought I'd share it for those who didn't know. Sorry if I offended you.

Contributing by answering questions about implementation of certain pieces of code =\= selling fpgas. laSeek is assisting with answering questions, with his own time and to date has asked nothing in return. You guys are taking his involvment completely wrong. Oh, and we are not going to be offering preorders. That is why there is no firm date, we will fund the production without preorders.

That is great! Thanks for making it clear.

Props to ya for not having to take preorders like other vendors.

Good work.

https://btc-e.com/chat/history/13091


Looks like scrypt is proving elusive to FPGA as expected

Heh, this is true and expected, but our simulations are still looking good, but I will not be going and pointing out which ones we might be using to everyone.

Hey how's this coming along?  I'm interested :P

Its on schedule, still working at improvements to the code.

If you want help, pm me. I am a software engineer.

Also count me in when you are ready to ship the board.  8)