Bitcoin Forum

What sorts of things could a programmer do that would be most helpful for making litecoin a successful currency (i.e. what would support merchant and customer adoption the most)?  I'd be willing to work on just about anything, and I'm not looking to collect bounties up front.  If people find something useful, that's enough for me, and donations are just a nice side effect. 

Most of my "day job" programming experience to date has been scientific computing and some real-time image data processing, with a little bit of hobbyist web development in the distant past, but I'm fine with trying out something new.

If nothing else, I'd be happy to be paid in litecoin for non-litecoin related development tasks. :)

Let's imagine a person, male or female, who sells... I dunno, blivets.
Finest dimensionally challenged satan forks that a man could desire.

http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_LtilrEQtBA4/SJxaupWM3SI/AAAAAAAABN0/-G4Y1MX88J8/s400/devil's+fork.jpg

Huge blivets.

Let's say that person accepts bitcoin.

Adding litecoin is trivial, but it's fuss.
It requires setting up a new daemon, fiddling with shopping cart... watching two exchange rates instead of one, if nothing else.

What exactly would motivate this person to go through the (mild) inconvenience of accepting two cryptocurrencies instead of one?
Slightly (oh so slightly ::)) faster confirmations?

someone who sells goods and services for LTC
Everything else is fun but at some point, completely useless. You can build huge highways for cars but if there are no cars, its all useless.
Goods and services for LTC is the key!

I can't tell if you're just generally criticizing the existence of litecoin, or trying to get me to go down a certain path of thought to figure out what you'd suggest working on, but in either case:

I presume we are early enough in the history of cryptocurrencies where most merchants support neither bitcoin nor litecoin, and then the choice for them is most likely to be,"which one should I choose?" instead of the choice you present.  What are the most painful parts when a merchant tries to adopt either coin?  Are there ways to make the process less painful if they choose litecoin?

That's really what I was trying to get at: there are lots of things that would be fun to play with (tweaking the OpenCL miner code, for example), but that doesn't make the currency any more useful in the long run.  So I'm really offering to do some of the un-fun things; I just wanted to get a better idea of what those were. :)

Any successful concept resonates and self-propels once it gets going.
For resonance you need a general motivation, a specific motivation, a way to maintain momentum, and an application of that momentum.
Once you have figured out what they are:
1. Engage the general motivation.
2. Moderate to maintain momentum.
3. Satisfy the specific motivation.
4. Use momentum to achieve your general motivation. See it wraps around.

The unfun stuff... let's find out.

Like most people pointed out we need more merchants.

There is a page on the Wiki (https://github.com/litecoin-project/litecoin/wiki/List-of-Litecoin-related-services) with some merchants and other services. If you accept Litecoin please consider adding yourself.

My head hurts, ugh

Thanks, I added a link there. 

I'm kinda trying to nudge people into thinking in a particular direction.

Bluntly put, it is "for shit to be popular, shit's gotta do something that's needed and that other shit doesn't do or does much worse or more expensive"

Right now, the only thing Litecoin does differently is hashing, which (even if we ignore the fact that it ain't all that CPU-centric as expected) is completely irrelevant to Jane the blivet merchant. And John the blivet fan who wants to buy blivets online.

Okay, Litecoin also operates slightly faster (not by very much mind you). I am unconvinced being a little bit faster constitutes doing "something that's needed" much better.

I think some new cool functionality is needed for it to amount to anything.

What is it - I don't know, but hey, programmers are supposed to be cunning, so the ball is kinda in your playground here...



Thing to keep in mind - theoretically one can adopt both, so "bitcoiners" aren't lost to you guys.

But your direction of thought is becoming interesting.

Identifying major merchant grudges against crypto-coin adoption and resolving them is a nice direction to investigate.

See, we're starting to move someplace constructive already  ;D !

Look at all the security problems bitcoin has been having.

It is trivially easy to plug in any of the altcoins given code that talks to a coin daemon, so any of the insecure frequently hacked web-based applications for coins could use pretty much any coin easily.

For quite a while now there has been an exchange where you can trade litecoins for bitcoins, litecoins for namecoins, litecoins for devcoins, litecoins for groupcoins, litecoins for ixcoins, litecoins for i0coins and so on and so on, but not by using the web's man in the middle certificates system where some man in the middle provides server and browser with known-to-be-insecure certificates and not by storing a hash of the user's password on the server.

The core functionality has been the main focus of development for the last year; what is needed now is people to make end-user front-ends that are "nicer" for users than the current "test GUI" client and the scripting system.

I am of course talking about my Open Transactions server (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=53329.0). A summary of the security goals of the Open Transactions system has its own thread at https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=95745.0

The system supports many languages, what is your favourite programming-language?

-MarkM-

Thanks, I'll have a look over the weekend.  Python is probably my favorite language, but most of my day jobs have been with C and C++, so I can get by pretty well in any of those three as needed.

Many will not like what I have to say. So I just suggest to take it easy, it is just one man opinion that could be just wrong.

Watch this http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qp0HIF3SfI4

Then ask yourself WHY Bitcoin is here. It is here to give honest money to the humanity. That is the great idea of Bitcoin which inspires large number of very motivated and talented people.

WHAT is litecoin? It is just a "me too" attempt motivated IMO to large degree by greed and hubris.

Now let's get back to the question:


The answer is simple. Litecoin to be successful needs an inspiring purpose. What is the purpose of Litecoin? Another set of "early adopters"?

Golly gee look at the honesty bitcoin has engendered around here.

I hear you Vladimir. I just think having alternatives isn't a BAD thing to have or even try.

I still consider bitcoin as an experiment...hence then litecoin is just another bitcoin-like experiment.

Bitcoin is just like all the state-controlled currencies, even to the extent of committing violence to suppress alternatives.

Litecoin on the other hand one maybe could hope embraces the proliferation of alternatives...

-MarkM-

this!!

BTW I am not saying Litecoin is bad or not bad. I am saying that it is not inspiring.

A Silk Road. (Not that I condone this type of activity.) 

I don't think Bitcoin would be where it's at right now had SR not happened.

gonna have to agree with this

Please define "inspiring".

A busy forum with not so pussy moderators.
Someone (coblee) should make one so we don't post in this place anymore.

A new forum popped-up, but it's not really succesful... LOL

Shall I try to make one? :)

No, it won't work if it's not coblee that create it.

Litecoin needs more exchanges and liquidity to fulfill its promise to be a fantastic compliment to Bitcoin.

Right now it seems like a really good solution in search of a problem to solve.

People don't know how it fits into our monetary ecosystem.

Gold is the money of kings.

Silver is the money of gentlemen.

Copper is the money of peasants.

Debt is the money of slaves.

Bitcoin is the money of pirates.

Litecoin is the money of...err...umm...?  Drama?  Nerds?  Anon?

I'm leaning towards the bitcoin:gold::litecoin:silver syllogism.  LTC can be used for quick, small transactions while BTC stores wealth.

Hold gold, trade silver.  Hold BTC, trade LTC.  But that remains to be seen.  Can't wait to find out!

There is another discussion going on elsewhere in economics indicating that BTC is probably not ideal as a micropayment system and many of the arguments against them not being suitable for micropayments have merit. It's a good read here.

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=95218.0

LTC positioned as just that, a micropayment system with development for exactly that purpose may be the niche it fills. get wallets than run on every cell phone so you can buy a can of sugar water with it and that might be where it goes. Lt BTC store wealth.

I have to wonder why people are asking or hoping for LTC to serve some purpose different from BTC when they are exactly the same thing with a few inconsequential tweaks. There is nothing about LTC that makes it better for micropayments, they use the exact same protocol.

The theory seems to be that it makes a better "freebie" to "give" to gamers because their GPUs won't have to compete with FPGAs and ASICs, thus that they might be useful as a kind of "loyalty points" system for games.

Thus far though namecoin, devcoin. groupcoin, ixcoin and i0coin seem to be more popular with gamers, maybe because they do not require running separate mining expenses than one already pays to mine bitcoin.

-MarkM-

Here's something that you may want to try....

With someone else holding a GUN TO YOUR HEAD (preferably someone who suffers from Parkinson's), you send them a 'Ransom' of sorts, to release you from the precarious situation....and will be freed upon 6 confirmations of your payment being received by the gunman.

NOW. if it was my head about to be blown off, I surely wouldn't want to stick around for an hour+ OR LONGER (all the while, GUN TO HEAD, FINGER ON TRIGGER...very shaky hands etc.) waiting for those BTC confirmations to come through.

.....just a thought.

So, not only does the gunman want your BTC, but this gunman must be well aware of the danger of you, while a gun is being held to your head, being able to 51% attack the network and reverse the transaction you are about to send right in front of him because that risk is far greater than that of someone else stumbling upon the scene for an hour or so.


I'm still waiting for the miraculous proof on how assuming equal network power that 4x LTC confirms > 1x BTC, or 24x > 6x in the case of an hour. Sounds like you just want to spew litecoin homerisms just like any bitcoiner would do.

So, litecoin is the coin for pathetic Bauer-style showdowns ?

I'll be putting up a couple little ideas of mine here http://litecoin.co/ (http://litecoin.co/) to test out within the coming weeks. Keep an eye on it.  ;)

http://litecoin.co/logo.png

No offense, but what exactly is that cyborg caterpillar supposed to do ?  :D

Everybody loves a cyborg caterpillar!

LiteCoin won't be successful long term unless there is something is does better than BitCoin and that's just not the case.

A common myth is that you need to wait for a confirm for a small transaction. It's just not needed for really small purchases as the cost of performing an attack will be considerably higher than the reward of stealing the cheap item. Satoshidice doesn't wait for confirms and that appears to be robbed so infrequently that it's still profitable. Look at all the shops in the world that take credit cards, and all the ebay sellers that take paypal, they are still profitable despite chargebacks.

If you want a way to perform small transactions try this:  Settings -> Options... -> Display -> Set 'Unit to show amounts in:' to mBTC.

Litecoin is already successful as a testbed for Bitcoin.  ;)