[ANN] Litecoin - a lite version of Bitcoin. Launched!

[michaelmclees]

Anyone thinking these changes are in any way like SolidCoin, doesn't know enough about SolidCoin.

Say it with me....  "Voluntary."

That's a bit like saying it's voluntary to update to a new SolidCoin version to get past a checkpoint. If someone cannot reliably send a transaction over the network I would say you are forcing them to update to use pretty much the main feature of a p2p cryptocurrency, sending money. A client which joins the network using an older version, can only connect to 8 other clients. If all of those clients have new rules for relaying transactions it's quite possible that new client will be unable to send some transactions out.

Sure, but you're admitting that whether or not someone is "forced" into using the new software is a function of the network, which is exactly what has been advertised from the start.

Care to make the same claim about SolidCoin?

[Vanderbleek]

AFAIK this thread is about LTC, not SC. On that note, I'm having some trouble with the newest Litecoin-QT -- I ran it, and it didn't show up (the process was there, using a ton of RAM like normal, but no icon etc). I backed up my wallet.dat, cleared the roaming/Litecoin folder, and started it, DLed blockchain (the client was appearing as normal at this point), but when I copied my wallet back over and restarted, it was back to being gone. I'm on 64bit W7, and the newest client works fine on my other W7 box.

Suggestions?

[bulanula]

AFAIK this thread is about LTC, not SC. On that note, I'm having some trouble with the newest Litecoin-QT -- I ran it, and it didn't show up (the process was there, using a ton of RAM like normal, but no icon etc). I backed up my wallet.dat, cleared the roaming/Litecoin folder, and started it, DLed blockchain (the client was appearing as normal at this point), but when I copied my wallet back over and restarted, it was back to being gone. I'm on 64bit W7, and the newest client works fine on my other W7 box.

Suggestions?

Maybe the next feature coblee decided to implement is wallet blocking. Who knows ? I bet less than 10% of LTC supporters read the damn code he writes.

Probably try and do a -rescan command and they will shop up !

[Vanderbleek]

Err, by being gone I mean "the entire client doesn't load, outside of a process in explorer called litecoin-qt, using 400MB of RAM, and litecoind -getinfo says that the server is not running." The problem isn't my coins being gone, it's the whole client. I can still use litecoind, but I'm lazy and prefer the gui.

[BeeCee1]

Err, by being gone I mean "the entire client doesn't load, outside of a process in explorer called litecoin-qt, using 400MB of RAM, and litecoind -getinfo says that the server is not running." The problem isn't my coins being gone, it's the whole client. I can still use litecoind, but I'm lazy and prefer the gui.

I have a minute or so of delay between when the splash screen goes away and the gui shows up.  How long have you waited?  If you have tons of spam transactions it could be a while.

Check the debug.log, I'm not sure where it is under windows but look in the same directory as the wallet.dat file.  If it is still getting written to then the process is still working and hasn't gotten around to showing the window.

[Vanderbleek]

I waited about 20 mins. The wallet file when plugged into my other machine works fine with the new client. I may just reinstall W7 -- been meaning to for awhile now, it's got some leftover problems from switching my Nvidia card to an ATI.

[CAMOPEJB]

OK, back to the topic,

What about:
http://litecoin.kicks-ass.org/graphs/graphs.html
and
http://allchains.info/

I think they need our help to back online.... 

[bulanula]

Seems like RS's PR skills are improving. Trying to get the LTC people to come over to SC.

Anyway, is the TX spam now completely over officially or is there some other drips of dust left ? How do I scrub my wallet ?

[mrx]

Anyway, is the TX spam now completely over officially or is there some other drips of dust left ? How do I scrub my wallet ?

According to block explorer, the dust spam is still there.

Use 0.5.0.8 (50008) client to move your coins; by default txes below 0.0001 is ignored now when creating a new tx. (Haven't tried though, just saw the line in getinfo)

[ArtForz]

Yes, looks like about 10% of blocks still contain spam.
0.5.0.8 only ignores spendable outputs < mininput for sending, so if you're at the receiving end of dust it still shows up in listtransactions and friends and causes increased memory use (current bitcoind and forks keep all wallet tx in memory).
If you want to try, http://pastie.org/2909400 is a band-aid to make the wallet ignore new incoming tx that only contain outputs to you < mininput. If you really want the dust later just set -mininput 0.00000001 and do a -rescan.

[amazingrando]

It's great that Litecoin now has its own logo, but I have to say that the color scheme is quite awful.  The "L" is quite muted and set against a very drab background color. Couldn't we come up with something better?  Maybe offer some LTC from the faucet to have someone design something catchy?

[forsetifox]

I'm going to suggest again to use the cumulative compounding fee structure I suggested on IRC.

This may affect pools negatively? Or they could just charge the transaction fees to the users. I think most pools do that already?

Again a .1 fee to transfer 6 LTC kinda sucks.

[DeathAndTaxes]

Again a .1 fee to transfer 6 LTC kinda sucks.

Is there really a need to transfer $0.06 equivalent?  Even so for micropayments a sub 2% fee is pretty damn good.  Most micropayment systems charge a lot more than that.

[bulanula]

I frequently transfer small amounts of crypto coins under 10 units so I suggest we use a percentage fee and not a fixed fee. Can we make the fee be like 1% or something based upon the amount you are transferring ?

[amazingrando]

I frequently transfer small amounts of crypto coins under 10 units so I suggest we use a percentage fee and not a fixed fee. Can we make the fee be like 1% or something based upon the amount you are transferring ?

I would like a percentage fee too.  I think the question is whether there is enough aggregate volume of microtransactions for it to make sense to do it this way.  Moreover though, it would seem to reduce friction if it was percentage based - everybody pays the same portion and there is no penalty for transacting in small amounts.

[DeathAndTaxes]

I frequently transfer small amounts of crypto coins under 10 units so I suggest we use a percentage fee and not a fixed fee. Can we make the fee be like 1% or something based upon the amount you are transferring ?

The network has no concept of how much you are sending only the value of the address where coins are coming from.  If you send 10 LTC from an address with 1000 LTC the network fees that as a 1000 LTC transaction.

The purpose of fees is to reduce spam attacks.  If the fee was % based it would make that protection useless.

In any block chain the amount of coins is meaningless.  It doesn't take any more space in a block to transfer 1M LTC/BTC then it does to transfer 0.000000001 LTC/BTC so charging as a % misaligns the resource (space in the block) and price.  Transactions using a lot of space could be charged a small amount, and transactions taking up negligible space could be charged magnitudes more.

[DeathAndTaxes]

I would like a percentage fee too.  I think the question is whether there is enough aggregate volume of microtransactions for it to make sense to do it this way.  Moreover though, it would seem to reduce friction if it was percentage based - everybody pays the same portion and there is no penalty for transacting in small amounts.

The whole point of the fee is to
a) CREATE A PENALTY for small transactions and thus make spam uneconomical.
b) charge for space in the block which has everything to do w/ the transaction size (in kb) and not the transaction value (in LTC).

[amazingrando]

The whole point of the fee is to
a) CREATE A PENALTY for small transactions and thus make spam uneconomical.
b) charge for space in the block which has everything to do w/ the transaction size (in kb) and not the transaction value (in LTC).

I get that, but I'm not speaking from the perspective of the technical blockchain mechanics.  Instead, I am thinking more along the lines of making ltc (or btc for that matter) economically feasible in as many scenarios as possible, thereby maximizing the potential for innovation and usage.  If there are limitations resulting from the way transactions and the blockchain works, then that is just something we need to deal with.

[btc_artist]

If there are limitations resulting from the way transactions and the blockchain works, then that is just something we need to deal with.

Unless my understanding of Bitcoin is way off, I don't know if they can be dealt with, without completely changing the bitcoin protocol.  If I have 100BTC at address X and I send you 1BTC, then 99BTC gets sent back to me via a "change" address.  All Bitcoin sees is 100BTC going to 2 addresses, how is it supposed to know to only charge the fee on 1BTC as opposed to the full 100BTC?

[amazingrando]

Yes, I think that's right.  By "deal with it" I mean that a percentage fee won't be possible due to such technical limitations.