What exactly is wrong with LTC?

[almwaysa]

Here are the 2 reasons why I like LTC:
1- CPU mining is not yet obsolete, so I can use GPUs for BTC and CPU for LTC on the same machine.
2- ASIC resistance. After ASICs hit the BTC network gpus will be much less useful for btc mining, might as well go ltc with them.

It's not ASIC resistant at all. You could make an ASIC for LTC if you seriously wanted to and though it was worthwhile. What you mean to say, more precisely, is that Bitcoin specific ASIC's (SHA-256) will not work for LTC. That said however, almost all of the rest of the bitcoin hashpower COULD work on LTC. So if you're happy about CPU mining, if all that mining power were to switch to LTC, all CPU miners would be similarly royally screwed. Not an ASIC but the effect would be the same. :-)

If I understood correctly scrypt algorithm requires memory to function, and creating ASICs with memory in them [which is more expensive] will not be feasible at least for a year or 2.
So Unless LTC becomes really high I dont think any company would bother making ASICs for it since these ASICs will even cost more than the traditional BTC ones.

This is just my understanding, correct me if I was wrong

[coblee]

The only "problem" I see is that it hasn't been updated in months. I hadn't started litecoin in a couple months and there were barely any changes when I updated my source tree...

Is https://github.com/litecoin-project/litecoin still current? Are there any plans to rebase to bitcoin 0.8?

Yes, I plan to do that soon.

Does it have a design flaw?

It isn't as much flaw as deception. Litecoin used the same scrypt parameters as Tenebrix. Artforz had gamed almost everyone involved in the scrypt()-based coins. He had choosen the set of parameters that made GPU mining possible, but made claims that the design is GPU-resistant. Then he proceeded to mine all the scrypt()-based coins (Tenebrix/Fairbrix/etc) on his GPU farm that was significantly more efficient than the CPU miners.

Exactly. Scrypt-based mining is not bad but LTC is just a scam

I for one, did not see anything suspicious going on when I launched Litecoin. If I remember correctly, at the start the network hashrate was comparable to about a few hundred CPUs mining and it slowly ramped up from there. If there were any GPUs mining at that time, the network hashrate would be a lot larger than just a few hundred CPUs equivalent.

It's true that I probably should not have taken just ArtForz's word on how gpu-resistant scrypt was with those chosen params. But ArtForz was a very well respected member of the bitcoin community and seemed to know a lot about what he was doing... at least a lot more than me. And he has earned enough bitcoins from the early days, that stealing a ton of scrypt-based coins just seemed beneath him. Plus his reasoning for using scrypt with those parameters were posted months before Litecoin launched, and people have looked over his reasoning and no one came out and said anything against his reasonings.

So no, LTC is not a scam. Do you consider bitcoin to be a scam? Satoshi designed it so that everyone can mine bitcoins and get in on the action. But now one ASIC is about a million times faster than your CPU at mining bitcoins.

[coblee]

Here are ArtForz's posts: https://bitcointalk.org/?action=profile;u=584;sa=showPosts

If people wanted to see his thoughts, go read his posts. And stop spreading FUD about Litecoin being GPU-mined from the start. Is it possible that it was? Sure, anything is possible. Just like it's possible that Satoshi was ASIC-mining bitcoins from the start and now actually owns 10 million bitcoins.

[coblee]

Some interesting reading for those interested:
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=45849
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=46063.msg549768#msg549768

[DeathAndTaxes]

Why hasn't anyone used scrypt with more the kind of parameters it was intended for instead of perverting / crippling it to make it fit in GPUs? Everyone owns GPUs so doesn't really want to make CPUs competitive?

-MarkM-

So that those "in the know" could mine with GPU before the secret got out.  The whole design choice was deception.  The default scrypt parameters (1048567, 8, 1) is essentially a GPU killer, even the authors recommended "lite" option is (16384, 8, 1).    It would have made GPU non-economical (i.e. they could run but at higher cost and energy requirements than virtually any CPU).  The parameters had to be accidentally changed to far extreme to make LTC GPU capable (1024, 8, 1).   A circa 2008 CPU (running single threaded) could verify the "lite" option hash in about 100ms and that time would only decrease with Moore's law.  There was no reason to "cripple" LTC memory hard attribute except that (16384,8,1) couldn't be secretly mined on a GPU.




"Look here GPU resistant cryptocoin.  It is fair for everyone because with only CPU it levels the playing field"
<pay no attention to the guy behind the curtain mining the shit out of LTC with a hundred GPUs>


..... some months later ....
oh look you can GPU mine LTC!
"Look here ASIC resistant cryptocoin.  It is fair for everyone because with only GPU it levels the playing field"

What I did was modify multicoin to make replacing the block PoW hashing function easier, then plugged in scrypt (http://www.tarsnap.com/scrypt.html) with parameters of N=1024, p=1, r=1, feeding in the block header as password and salt, output size of 32 bytes.

While those parameters would be way too low for a good password hashing/key derivation function (you want lots of margin for the future there), my initial educated guess and further experiments suggest they're still enough to "pessimize" current GPUs and FPGAs to a point where CPUs will easily be competitive... GPUs growing several MB of fast random access on-chip memory in the future might change that.

And yes, choosing such "unusual" parameters is skirting the rule, but in this case imo acceptable risk. Worst case... someone manages to make a "efficient enough" GPU/FPGA/... implementation or a new gen of GPUs comes out, scheduled chain fork switching to higher N and p. Up to N=4096,p=8,r=1 or so time to verify the PoW hash on a CPU shouldn't be an issue, beyond that you'd have to add some measures to prevent "junk block spam" DoS.

Strangely no explanation on why to change it.  The default values work fine as a POW on a CPU.   Also GPU never did get that "MB of fast random access on-chip memory" they still have roughly the same 32KB on chip low latency cache that they did four years ago.  Then again that is more than enough to allow a GPU to compete, it always was.

[bitcool]

Some interesting reading for those interested:
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=45849
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=46063.msg549768#msg549768

Thanks for the information, that clears up a lot of FUD being spread here.

[2112]

Plus his reasoning for using scrypt with those parameters were posted months before Litecoin launched, and people have looked over his reasoning and no one came out and said anything against his reasonings.

This is quite true in my case. The first time I took a look at scrypt() was only on the day that Litecon was launched:

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=47417.msg572019#msg572019

It took me about a month to read about and understand scrypt():

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=48863.msg620106#msg620106

You can also have a laugh at my suggestion of an OpenCL-resistant coin amongst the Solidcoin v2 trollfest about a month before Litecoin launch:

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=44423.msg537010#msg537010

The only thing I disagree would be "people have looked". In my opinion the trollfest was so intense and emotional that almost nobody tried to make any rational reasoning.

Again: too bad I decided not to keep the IRC logs from my idling on the relevant channels.

In a way you can see the failure of scrypt() parameter selection reoccurring right now in the casascius' thread about BIP 0038:

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=129317.0

This time there's no trollfest to distract. But there's only one publicly posted scrypt() implementation. And there's a strong motivation to hurry up and just bruteforce to win the competition instead of really analyzing the possible ways of implementing it.

[payb.tc]

who cares even if ArtForz has a million billion litecoins?

...no different from early people having tons of BTC. the currency still works the same

[smoothie]

Why hasn't anyone used scrypt with more the kind of parameters it was intended for instead of perverting / crippling it to make it fit in GPUs? Everyone owns GPUs so doesn't really want to make CPUs competitive?

-MarkM-

So that those "in the know" could mine with GPU before the secret got out.  The whole design choice was deception.  The default scrypt parameters (1048567, 8, 1) is essentially a GPU killer, even the authors recommended "lite" option is (16384, 8, 1).    It would have made GPU non-economical (i.e. they could run but at higher cost and energy requirements than virtually any CPU).  The parameters had to be accidentally changed to far extreme to make LTC GPU capable (1024, 8, 1).   A circa 2008 CPU (running single threaded) could verify the "lite" option hash in about 100ms and that time would only decrease with Moore's law.  There was no reason to "cripple" LTC memory hard attribute except that (16384,8,1) couldn't be secretly mined on a GPU.




"Look here GPU resistant cryptocoin.  It is fair for everyone because with only CPU it levels the playing field"
<pay no attention to the guy behind the curtain mining the shit out of LTC with a hundred GPUs>


..... some months later ....
oh look you can GPU mine LTC!
"Look here ASIC resistant cryptocoin.  It is fair for everyone because with only GPU it levels the playing field"

What I did was modify multicoin to make replacing the block PoW hashing function easier, then plugged in scrypt (http://www.tarsnap.com/scrypt.html) with parameters of N=1024, p=1, r=1, feeding in the block header as password and salt, output size of 32 bytes.

While those parameters would be way too low for a good password hashing/key derivation function (you want lots of margin for the future there), my initial educated guess and further experiments suggest they're still enough to "pessimize" current GPUs and FPGAs to a point where CPUs will easily be competitive... GPUs growing several MB of fast random access on-chip memory in the future might change that.

And yes, choosing such "unusual" parameters is skirting the rule, but in this case imo acceptable risk. Worst case... someone manages to make a "efficient enough" GPU/FPGA/... implementation or a new gen of GPUs comes out, scheduled chain fork switching to higher N and p. Up to N=4096,p=8,r=1 or so time to verify the PoW hash on a CPU shouldn't be an issue, beyond that you'd have to add some measures to prevent "junk block spam" DoS.

Strangely no explanation on why to change it.  The default values work fine as a POW on a CPU.   Also GPU never did get that "MB of fast random access on-chip memory" they still have roughly the same 32KB on chip low latency cache that they did four years ago.  Then again that is more than enough to allow a GPU to compete, it always was.

How is it any different that people GPU mined bitcoins before releasing the miner publicly?

Right, there is no difference.

[coblee]

Let me put this issue about GPU-mining from the start to rest once and for all. I will use cumulative difficulty to figure out how much hashpower has been working on a chain since the start.

There's going to be a lot of math here. First read up on this:
https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Difficulty#What_network_hash_rate_results_in_a_given_difficulty.3F
https://github.com/litecoin-project/litecoin/wiki/Mining-hardware-comparison

Here are the current state of things:

Code:

Current difficulty: 20.794
Number of hashes to solve a block: DIFFICULTY*pow(2,32) = 89,309,034,556.95
Seconds per block: 2.5 * 60 = 150s
Theoretical network hashrate (in mhash/s): DIFFICULTY*pow(2,32)/pow(10,6)/SECONDS_PER_BLOCK = 595 mhash/s (~2000 average GPUs)

Litecoin was launched on 10/13/2011 03:00:00 at block #3:
http://explorer.litecoin.net/block/dec173dda2735ff11376b68bdfda804cede230c1fa6f1a11765cddfd8edf4398

We can calculate how much hashpower has been put on the chain since the start using cumulative difficulty.
Let's check a recent block 294537 found on 2/12/2012 03:00:00
http://explorer.litecoin.net/block/a065026ba50a71e1d4979e078265dc9ccf15d0b393969cd35ec4c954bf2c22fb
You can see the cumulative difficulty on the block explorer page.

Code:

Cumulative difficulty: 2,421,540.599
Number of hashes: DIFFICULTY*pow(2,32) = 10,400,437,678,641,250
Time since start (in seconds): 2013-02-12 - 2011-10-13 = 488 days * 24*60*60 = 42,163,200 s
Theoretical network hashrate (in mhash/s): DIFFICULTY*pow(2,32)/pow(10,6)/TIME_SINCE_START = 246.67 mhash/s (~1000 average GPUs)

So we average about 1000 GPUs working on the chain. In other words, if you had 246.67 mhash/s pointed at the chain since launch, you'd have found just as many hashes.

Now, here's what you all wanted to know. How much hashing power was pointed at the chain during the first week.
Here's block 14807 found at 10/20/2011 03:00:00:
http://explorer.litecoin.net/block/6fcf032b2edfd3e06ee6cace9ed9b6c219d8dca06fa1f43a47cb1c5b7f87084f

Let's do the same math:

Code:

Cumulative difficulty: 438.193
Number of hashes: DIFFICULTY*pow(2,32) = 1,882,024,604,336
Time since start (in seconds): 7 days * 24*60*60 = 604,800 s
Theoretical network hashrate (in mhash/s): DIFFICULTY*pow(2,32)/pow(10,6)/TIME_SINCE_START = 3.11 mhash/s (~100 average CPUs OR 10 average GPUs)

A month later. Block 31011:
http://explorer.litecoin.net/block/7b08a3bfb5f2a865fc0061f6e3f5b97fa1690c8d357ccd814fd9f55641f83187

Code:

Cumulative difficulty: 5,949.565
Number of hashes: DIFFICULTY*pow(2,32) = 25,553,187,100,426
Time since start (in seconds): 31 days * 24*60*60 = 2,678,400 s
Theoretical network hashrate (in mhash/s): DIFFICULTY*pow(2,32)/pow(10,6)/TIME_SINCE_START = 9.54 mhash/s (~300 average CPUs OR 30 average GPUs)

Seems like the normal growth of a CPU-only (at the time) coin to me.

ArtForz had 24 5970s. 5970s can do 750 khash/s. If he put those 5970s on mining Litecoin, he would have 18 mhash/s, which is twice the work done on the chain in the first month. Litecoin was put on the exchange pretty quickly and mining litecoins was pretty profitable even with a CPU. If ArtForz had GPU scrypt mining from the start, would he not put those machines on mining Litecoin and make a killing?

So can we now stop spreading FUD?

Edit: After 3 months, effective hashrate is 18 mhash/s (http://explorer.litecoin.net/block/55d1323fa4d7175953fab43ef97c0ef18577d8f000e494740ccc867d42fe67f5)

[coblee]

I made it its own thread: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=143659.0
Probably move this discussion there if there's still doubt about this issue.

[jl2012]

The only "problem" I see is that it hasn't been updated in months. I hadn't started litecoin in a couple months and there were barely any changes when I updated my source tree...

Is https://github.com/litecoin-project/litecoin still current? Are there any plans to rebase to bitcoin 0.8?

Yes, I plan to do that soon.

Does it have a design flaw?

It isn't as much flaw as deception. Litecoin used the same scrypt parameters as Tenebrix. Artforz had gamed almost everyone involved in the scrypt()-based coins. He had choosen the set of parameters that made GPU mining possible, but made claims that the design is GPU-resistant. Then he proceeded to mine all the scrypt()-based coins (Tenebrix/Fairbrix/etc) on his GPU farm that was significantly more efficient than the CPU miners.

Exactly. Scrypt-based mining is not bad but LTC is just a scam

I for one, did not see anything suspicious going on when I launched Litecoin. If I remember correctly, at the start the network hashrate was comparable to about a few hundred CPUs mining and it slowly ramped up from there. If there were any GPUs mining at that time, the network hashrate would be a lot larger than just a few hundred CPUs equivalent.

It's true that I probably should not have taken just ArtForz's word on how gpu-resistant scrypt was with those chosen params. But ArtForz was a very well respected member of the bitcoin community and seemed to know a lot about what he was doing... at least a lot more than me. And he has earned enough bitcoins from the early days, that stealing a ton of scrypt-based coins just seemed beneath him. Plus his reasoning for using scrypt with those parameters were posted months before Litecoin launched, and people have looked over his reasoning and no one came out and said anything against his reasonings.

So no, LTC is not a scam. Do you consider bitcoin to be a scam? Satoshi designed it so that everyone can mine bitcoins and get in on the action. But now one ASIC is about a million times faster than your CPU at mining bitcoins.

Satoshi has never advertised bitcoin as GPU or ASIC resistant, but Litecoin does. Moreover, there was a substantial low hash rate period in 2009, suggesting no GPU was used for mining.

[franky1]

ok a few history and FACTUAL lessons for you all.

LITECOIN is not resistant to any form of computational devices mining it. As long as they can be programmed to do so.
such as CPU,GPU, android phones. and many other devices.

the problem is that the devices such as the bitcoin ASICS have been hard wired to only be able to mine SHA256

litecoin was invented in 2011. asics were invented in 2012. so blame the later for not catering for the former.

the whole "GPU resistant" statement, originally stated on the wiki november 2011 is due to a users with a god complex called Luke-JR, whom has taken it upon himself to try to stop anyone's choice/freedoms of moving away from bitcoin to any other alt currencies people wish to try/use.

because he does not have the power to physically stop you. he can only control the information available on places that he moderates.

it is Luke-JR that makes the comment that litecoin wont succeed and is not worthy of peoples time.

Luke JR and other bitcoin superfans know that deep down, the lingering stench of illegal activities that media highlight about bitcoin will not grow bitcoin at the speeds they desire. he (Luke-JR) knows a sound coin with no negative publicity and nothing structurally wrong with it would succeed better going mainstream. i am not saying guaranteed to exceed in value, i am just saying user adoption would be less of a hurdle to climb.
So he wants to prevent any losses in the bitcoin userbase. He cannot shut down silk road, he cannot find a way to program it so that silk road transactions get ignored. so he is powerless to rid bitcoin of negative press. and from what i have seen. he has not been involved in any main stream expansion attempts outside of the forums.

this is what i call an armchair activist. (big mouth on the sofa, no voice on the streets)

but you have the freedom to mine litecoin if you want no matter what people say. so give it a try, and if you don't like it, you can always go back to how you done things before.

with that said feel free to try all the coins. and if you do want to help main stream a crypto currency i am not saying to not help bitcoin expand into the real world of bricks and mortar businesses. all i am saying is litecoin is a lot less of a headache swaying people away from the media propaganda.

which is at the crux of the whole issue.

[jl2012]

ok a few history and FACTUAL lessons for you all.

LITECOIN is not resistant to any form of computational devices mining it. As long as they can be programmed to do so.
such as CPU,GPU, android phones. and many other devices.

the problem is that the devices such as the bitcoin ASICS have been hard wired to only be able to mine SHA256

litecoin was invented in 2011. asics were invented in 2012. so blame the later for not catering for the former.

the whole "GPU resistant" statement on the wiki is due to a users with a god complex called Luke-JR, whom has taken it upon himself to try to stop anyone's choice/freedoms of moving away from bitcoin to any other alt currencies people with to try, use.

because he does not have the power to physically stop you. he can only control the information available on places that he moderates.

it is Luke-JR that makes the comment that litecoin wont succeed and is not worthy of peoples time.

Luke JR knows deep down that with the lingering stench of illegal activities that media highlight about bitcoin. it will not grow at the speeds he desires. he knows a sound coin with no negative publicity and nothing structurally wrong with it would succeed better going mainstream. i am not saying guaranteed to exceed in value, i am just saying user adoption would be less of a hurdle to climb.
So he wants to prevent any losses in the bitcoin userbase. He cannot shut down silk road, he cannot find a way to program it so that silk road transactions get ignored. so he is powerless to rid bitcoin of negative press. and from what i have seen. he has not been involved in any main stream expansion attempts outside of the forums.

this is what i call an armchair activist. (big mouth on the sofa, no voice on the streets)

but you have the freedom to mine litecoin if you want no matter what people say. so give it a try, and if you don't like it, you can always go back to how you done things before.

with that said feel free to try all the coins. and if you do want to help main stream a crypto currency i am not saying to not help bitcoin expand into the real world of bricks and mortar businesses. all i am saying is litecoin is a lot less of a headache swaying people away from the media propaganda.

which is at the crux of the whole issue.

OK, some FACTS from http://litecoin.org

Litecoin manages to maintain the unique traits and attributes of Bitcoin, while adding to the mixture CPU-specific mining and a 2.5 minute block rate. This means that Litecoin doesn't have to compete for the used up computational cycles of your graphics card if you're already mining Bitcoins, but can work independently on your processor.

Litecoin uses Scrypt as a proof-of-work scheme. Scrypt uses the low-latency cache memory of modern processors to provide greater hash-speeds on CPUs in comparison to GPUs. We would like to extend our thanks to ArtForz for the implementation.

[DeathAndTaxes]

If LTC offered better value to SR sellers (in terms of liquidity, stability, and security) they would switch to LTC.  The idea that someone the fact that there is no negative media attention is completley backwards.  There is NO media attention.  Note sure if you are aware but people bought and sold certain contraband online long before the SR.  It was was just more difficult.  Western Union, Liberty Reserve, etc.  The SR exploded in popularity because it used Bitcoin, not because the SR operators were trying to force Bitcoin adoption but .... because Bitcoin worked.  It provided value for users because it did what it was intended to.  If LTC did it as well or better the SR (and clones) would jump on that band wagon in a heartbeat.

"all i am saying is litecoin is a lot less of a headache swaying people away from the media propaganda."
So your have a long list of major businesses you were able to sway.... Of course not.  Nobody* has even heard of LiteCoin and likely never will.

*essentially nobody

[franky1]

OK, some FACTS from http://litecoin.org

Litecoin manages to maintain the unique traits and attributes of Bitcoin, while adding to the mixture CPU-specific mining and a 2.5 minute block rate. This means that Litecoin doesn't have to compete for the used up computational cycles of your graphics card if you're already mining Bitcoins, but can work independently on your processor.

Litecoin uses Scrypt as a proof-of-work scheme. Scrypt uses the low-latency cache memory of modern processors to provide greater hash-speeds on CPUs in comparison to GPUs. We would like to extend our thanks to ArtForz for the implementation.

in short
coin for coin you will get more litecoin per x number of computational cycles then you would bitcoin.

it does not state that litecoin is just for CPU mining.

this is again an attempt at using information wrongly to say its impossible to mine litecoins using a GPU for profit.

[DeathAndTaxes]

Hey franky1 since you joined in Sept 2012 did you ever think that the forum existed prior to that date?  For most of 2011 Litecoin was touted by its supporters and developers as being "GPU hostile".  Most of it is still in the old threads.  You trying to rewrite history a year and a half later just makes you look like an idiot.

[franky1]

If LTC offered better value to SR sellers (in terms of liquidity, stability, and security) they would switch to LTC.  The idea that someone the fact that there is no negative media attention is completley backwards.  There is NO media attention.  Note sure if you are aware but people bought and sold certain contraband online long before the SR.  It was was just more difficult.  Western Union, Liberty Reserve, etc.  The SR exploded in popularity because it used Bitcoin, not because the SR operators were trying to force Bitcoin adoption but .... because Bitcoin worked.  It provided value for users because it did what it was intended to.  If LTC did it as well or better the SR (and clones) would jump on that band wagon in a heartbeat.

"all i am saying is litecoin is a lot less of a headache swaying people away from the media propaganda."
So your have a long list of major businesses you were able to sway.... Of course not.  Nobody* has even heard of LiteCoin and likely never will.

*essentially nobody

actually i and a few others are in talks with quite a few merchants and services to expand the crypto currencies into mainstream.

how about 25,000 bricks and mortar businesses all in one swoop. if things go in the direction as planned. and the great thing about it is, that i personally am not limiting it to just litecoin or just bitcoin. i give the merchants a choice.

don't believe me that 25,000 merchants in one swoop is possible? then maybe  i shall just leave this link here as the simple answer to just one of the avenues (hint: bottom left of page see how many merchants that service links to)

just-eat.com

the reason i say this is from actual merchant discussions and not armchair activists forum FUD, merchants find litecoin more appealing, and silk road is not a promotional highlight of bitcoin in the real world.

so please give it a try. talk to some merchants, get them on board to any crypto currency you please. just dont try restricting peoples freedoms, using false information.

as that is ultimately the opposite of what cryotcurrency is about, freedom

Hey franky1 since you joined in Sept 2012 did you ever think that the forum existed prior to that date?  For most of 2011 Litecoin was touted by its supporters and developers as being "GPU hostile".  Most of it is still in the old threads.  You trying to rewrite history a year and a half later just makes you look like an idiot.

most of 2011?? what a shame that litecoin was 'born' in late 2011. and luke JR edited and kept re-editing the wiki about litecoin in november 2011. sorry i have to say it one more time

For most of 2011 Litecoin

lol, sorry, couldn't help myself. its obvious that you are a bitcoin superfan only here to try provoking issues to make people with valid points seem invalid, but you misunderstanding of what was read. lets give it a word.. hmm the context.. of what what said, makes superfans look the fools.

saying litecoin is GPU resistant by using other peoples posts is just such a sofa activists failed attempt at reducing peoples perceptons of something, and reducing their choices. everyone knows people can mine litecoin with GPU. so why even bother to continue to highlight litecoin as GPU resistant. take things into context next time.

the events of the luke Jr and his superfans attempts to hoard the bitcoin userbase happened nearly a year before i signed up to bitcoin talk.
so maybe i do read the history, and maybe i do know the facts. and maybe i do put things into context also.

those 'litecoin fans' you speak of were not touting litecoin as a 'you cannot mine using GPU'. they were touting litecoin as a coin that is able to create coins without the NEED to buy expensive GPU just to be profitable..

much like what is happening now with bitcoin. people are flocking to litecoin because soon ASICS will be the only effective way to mine bitcoin for profit. so the GPU users, much like the CPU users of yester-year will flock to the coin they can profitably mine with, without needing to buy expensive equipment to stay in the game.

[jl2012]

OK, some FACTS from http://litecoin.org

Litecoin manages to maintain the unique traits and attributes of Bitcoin, while adding to the mixture CPU-specific mining and a 2.5 minute block rate. This means that Litecoin doesn't have to compete for the used up computational cycles of your graphics card if you're already mining Bitcoins, but can work independently on your processor.

Litecoin uses Scrypt as a proof-of-work scheme. Scrypt uses the low-latency cache memory of modern processors to provide greater hash-speeds on CPUs in comparison to GPUs. We would like to extend our thanks to ArtForz for the implementation.

in short
coin for coin you will get more litecoin per x number of computational cycles then you would bitcoin.

it does not state that litecoin is just for CPU mining.

this is again an attempt at using information wrongly to say its impossible to mine litecoins using a GPU for profit.

Oh well, "CPU-specific mining" means "litecoin is not just for CPU mining"?

[coblee]

Hey franky1 since you joined in Sept 2012 did you ever think that the forum existed prior to that date?  For most of 2011 Litecoin was touted by its supporters and developers as being "GPU hostile".  Most of it is still in the old threads.  You trying to rewrite history a year and a half later just makes you look like an idiot.

Sorry, the homepage will need to be updated. Litecoin was supposed to be a GPU-hostile coin. I was mistaken and believed ArtForz that mining on GPUs would be hard. Turns out, the scrypt parameters that ArtForz chose were not memory-hard enough. And when mtrlt wrote an efficient GPU miner and released it, it was pretty clear that mining on GPU is about 10x the speed of mining on CPU. It's not the 1000x different like it is for bitcoins, but it's still enough to cause a lot of GPU miners to start mining litecoins and making CPU-mining not worth it.

I have thought about upping the parameters to make the algorithm more memory hard to combat GPU mining. But that would cause a hard fork and I'm not sure how the users would take that. After thinking about it for a while, I decided to not do that mainly because of the impending Bitcoin ASIC release. One of the original goals of Litecoin was to release a coin mined by a different architecture than Bitcoin. That way, it will avoid the fate of Namecoin, where GPU miners would jump on Namecoin mining when it was profitable and abandon it when difficulty adjusts. This left Namecoin in a hole and made it such that it took months for difficulty to drop back down, and then the whole cycle repeated. You see a little bit of that with Litecoin right now where the difficulty would jump up and down. But with 4x quicker difficulty adjustments, it's not as bad. Namecoin had to resort to merged mining to fix this problem, which I believe kills all ability for that coin to act as a viable currency.

When Bitcoin ASICs come, the difficulty will likely shoot up 100x and GPU mining bitcoins would not be worth it. And a lot of the GPUs would be turned onto Litecoin. This is actually good, because it would help protect the Litecoin network. Mining Bitcoin would then again be on a different hardware mining architecture and we wouldn't see hashrates shifting from one coin to another due to fluctuations in price and difficulty.