The type of new alt-coin we really need

[Peleus]

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.

People only have 2-3 video cards typically because they invest money in it in a profit / investment calculation. What stops the same thing adding 5-6 computers? Your premise that it's more fair is flawed, along with admitting you can't deal with botnet's / server farms. So once more - Why?

Edit: You also haven't explained why people investing equipment into mining is "unfair"

[human]

We need a coin which can only be mined by smartphones and nothing else. Is this possible? Unfortunately I do not think so... but the potential of such a coin for developing countries and continents like Africa would be huge.

[markm]

Yes, optimised for botnets is what CPU-coin amounts to.

One advantage the stuff mentioned on the Devtome wiki page I linked to above has is that it can be done in a way that will make it harder for botnets than for normal people, simply by setting up the situations in such a way that running millions of very simple, reliable repetetive drones can be made to be far less effective than using strategies that might end up going off-script and needing human intervention now and then, adaptation to new circumstances and so on.

Basically make a trade-off where people who actually monitor and adjust have significant advantages over people who just turn the on switch and walk away for weeks.

-MarkM-

[mg27341]

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.

[markm]

The main limitation botnets have is dealing with too many threads per actual human operator.

A normal person running, say, five characters can relatively easily adjust each character periodically, maybe even daily, certainly one each day so as to get 7 characters adjusted each week. Whereas someone trying to run thousands will have significant manual work to do to keep up with a changing environment.

Also, by employing others, anyone with managerial / marketing skills could recruit as many actual people into an organisation as a botnet operator could recruit zombie systems, but the actual people would be able to be more adaptable maybe - more capable of making independent decisions and such.

-MarkM-

[Peleus]

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.

You have not explained why it's fair. You have no explained why investing in mining equipment is unfair. You have not explained why GPU / ASIC / FPGA is a cheat.

Your argument is boiling down to "I want a coin where I can mine with the equipment I have, anything else I deem as unfair, solely because it doesn't favor me", and hence is retarded.

[markm]

Maybe best will be when we get something equivalent to what the Jalapino was intended / designed to be, cheap ($150) to buy, low power, so anyone can easily get involved.

-MarkM-

[CoinHoarder]

BouncerCoin (or insert clever name here)

It would protect ALL other crypto currencies similar to how Casascius suggested. Here is a qoute since the thread is locked now.

Casascius' words:

"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."

Although I didn't think this idea was good for Litecoin, because it is already established and thriving, it would be good to start a new crypto currency to do this. In theory it would effectively protect chains from 51% attacks by being a "backup" of block chains. To take out other chains by 51% attacks, they would have to take US down too! Casacius only mentioned wanting to protect Bitcoin, I am proposing to protect ALL (or the most popular) coins in some sort of standard way that would make it easy to implement.

Protecting other chains would bring immediate value to the coin, and I think it's an idea everyone can get behind (bitcoiners/litecoiners/ppccoiners/terracoiners/etc)!!

[Anon136]

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...

also it needs more adaptive re-targeting. I think this is by far bitcoins biggest weakness. It is susceptible to extreme oscillation especially if miners begin to jump back and forth between another alt coin with long spans between re-targets. This could in theory cause such extreme oscillation as to outright kill bitcoin.