The Litecoin Development Club

[StewartJ]

** UPDATED, as of 3/2/12 **

*** I will be updating on a regular basis the status of projects listed below. There is progress, slowly but surely ***


I want to create a gathering of like-minded Litecoin "Angels" who want to see this coin succeed and become just as popular as Bitcoins.
Essentially, I would like to see discussions and promotion of ideas for LTC adoption in the greater Bitcoin community and/or beyond.

Along those lines, some ideas for consideration...

- Work on projects to increase the Litecoin Client Base, something like an LTC Faucet.
---- LTC Faucet: volunteer(s) to code/design/host a 1 page front-end like BTC Faucet, appreciate LTC donors for faucet pool.
------ Update: the Litecoin Faucet is now up and running, check it out here: http://freelitecoins.appspot.com/
------ A great thanks to Bitcoinsarefun on this Forum, for taking the time and effort to make this happen!
------ If you want to donate the Faucet Pool, the LTC address is: LVjTGE71w5UQj5bedEQNoVoxcXidBAbJ1D
------ We have 61 Users who have downloaded from the Faucet, with 200+ LTC donated in the Faucet Pool. (as of 2-28-12)

- Develop online betting / gambling games  that use LTC such as Poker, Blackjack (see the LiteJack21 thread)
---- LTC Poker Lounge has been started, ran into coding issues with the github poker script, on hold for while.
---- Renewed interest for LTC Poker has been shown on the this thread: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=66809.0 (3-2-12)
---- The LiteJack21 Blackjack game thread can be found here: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=63043

- Create a better LTC/BTC/USD Exchange to encourage trading, volume, liquidity.
---- There's work being done on a P2P Crypto-Coin Exchange, check it out: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=62879
---- BTC-E is a decent working exchange for LTC; wonder if we could petition them to fix their slow/timing-out server issues?

- Find and develop niche markets online that could use LTCs unique currency and mining features
---- Java/Javascript Web Surfer Mining:
-------- This site provides code to embed on your web site so visitors can mine Litecoin for you with their spare CPU cycles:
------------ http://www.litecoinpool.org/embed  Thanks to the Litecoinpool for making this available.
-------- How about a blog or forum where you give positive feedback to comments/users using cpu-mined LTC "Rewards" ?

- Develop Online / Flash Games that use LTC currency in innovative ways (revised 2-28-12)
---- There's been interesting discussion about this aspect of Litecoin, here are two LTC gaming ideas worth considering:
------- Pay-LTC-as-You-Play Online/Flash Game
------------ Put up a flash/online game on a web page, embed a javaminer script to create LTC  income for the author of the game.
------------ Players of the flash game create the LTC with spare CPU cycles, with players permission.
------- LTC Reward / Treasure Online/Flash Game
------------ Create an online "mining/treasure" game where LTC is given as a reward for reaching a level, reaching your quest. Player has an
------------ LTC account while they are playing game, gaining/losing LTC as they play.
---- Building LTC-based games of this sort would go a long way to help build potential demand and prove the viability of Litecoin.

- Create Showcase online applications/businesses that use Litecoins for payment

- Incentive BTC-based businesses to adopt LTC as another form of payment

- (insert your ideas here.....)
 
Welcome any and all feedback.


FYI:
If you gathered that I am an early adopter and have a vested interest in seeing LTC succeed, then you are correct.

[btc_artist]

- Develop just-for-fun, non-profit games that use LTC such as Poker, Blackjack (see the LiteJack21 thread)

Link?

Edit, found: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=63043.0

[StewartJ]

- Develop just-for-fun, non-profit games that use LTC such as Poker, Blackjack (see the LiteJack21 thread)

Link?

Edit, found: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=63043.0

Yes, I believe this is a for-profit game proposal, probably using his Bitcoin Blackjack site as model.

[Remember remember the 5th of November]

Here is another idea.

A light database. Something that will add to the name. BDB seems to be slow, as I've been told.

[cbeast]

If a major player offered to "buy out" all existing Litecoin only if 90% of all accounted for coins were included, would you sell at least 90% of you holdings? I would like to see someone try this just to see if a big company could outperform Bitcoin with even an arguably superior code.

[StewartJ]

If a major player offered to "buy out" all existing Litecoin only if 90% of all accounted for coins were included, would you sell at least 90% of you holdings? I would like to see someone try this just to see if a big company could outperform Bitcoin with even an arguably superior code.

An interesting concept, but wonder if that does not defeat the purpose of a crypto-currency.

Your suggesting that a corporate entity would manage a crypto-coin better than the peer-to-peer network itself.

Would the LTC miners approve of such centralization, if the rewards were great enough for them?

With the initial cost of Alt Coins relatively cheap, guess there is no stopping one company/entity from buying up any
coin en-masse and doing what they want with it.

[Lord F(r)og]

Matoking is going to dev a mining frontend: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?&topic=62414

[StewartJ]

Matoking is going to dev a mining frontend: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?&topic=62414

I imagine this would make LTC mining more popular, accessible?

[1QaZxSw2]

My goals for litecoin development is strategic.

Rather than postion LTC as a me-too, johnny come lately, I want to appeal to a position where LTC is clearly a favorite. Until a few days ago, it was the 2.5m confirmation. My guess is, that will be a moot point once instant confirmations on BTC work.

Think about it this way: If whatever we do can also be done by BTC and say, SolidCoin, I fear it may not develop a critical mass.

I was thinking more in terms of this:

mine LTC on web pages (javascript miner), games, etc where CPU coin is stronger. Then the website/game developer can pay rewards in terms of LTC. Bitcoin wont be able to compete here. Other alt-coins (including custom altcoins by game owners) may indeed enter here, but its unlikely if they can use our LTC miners/ libraries for free.

I'm sure you or others could come up with other solutions but they should appeal to LTC strengths and BTC weakness. (Forget about the rest of the alt coins)

Strengths of LTC:

* cpu vs gpu (wont slow down games)
* comparitively more bountiful to mine
* alternative, easier way to accumulate currency (i.e. by surfing websites and playing games)

So yes, we appeal to the lazy and leisurely folks who are glad to surf the web but cannot be bothered / are motivated enough to setup a mining rig. But they do care about points on their website/game/etc. and how cool would it be if you could actually do something with those points? Exchange it for cash or BTC? Perfect.

Convince facebook to award LTC for every "Like" someone gets (Ok, facebook probably wont care, but other sites may). Just the fact that its easier to award 1LTC rather than 0.003 BTC should be a motivation to pick LTC for such a role.

If we could have an online wallet for LTC just like blockchain's wallet, people wouldnt even need to download anything. They could just play games, spend their LTC on merchandise (or whatever).

[StewartJ]

My goals for litecoin development is strategic.

Rather than postion LTC as a me-too, johnny come lately, I want to appeal to a position where LTC is clearly a favorite. Until a few days ago, it was the 2.5m confirmation. My guess is, that will be a moot point once instant confirmations on BTC work.

Think about it this way: If whatever we do can also be done by BTC and say, SolidCoin, I fear it may not develop a critical mass.

I was thinking more in terms of this:

mine LTC on web pages (javascript miner), games, etc where CPU coin is stronger. Then the website/game developer can pay rewards in terms of LTC. Bitcoin wont be able to compete here. Other alt-coins (including custom altcoins by game owners) may indeed enter here, but its unlikely if they can use our LTC miners/ libraries for free.

I'm sure you or others could come up with other solutions but they should appeal to LTC strengths and BTC weakness. (Forget about the rest of the alt coins)

Strengths of LTC:

* cpu vs gpu (wont slow down games)
* comparitively more bountiful to mine
* alternative, easier way to accumulate currency (i.e. by surfing websites and playing games)

So yes, we appeal to the lazy and leisurely folks who are glad to surf the web but cannot be bothered / are motivated enough to setup a mining rig. But they do care about points on their website/game/etc. and how cool would it be if you could actually do something with those points? Exchange it for cash or BTC? Perfect.

Convince facebook to award LTC for every "Like" someone gets (Ok, facebook probably wont care, but other sites may). Just the fact that its easier to award 1LTC rather than 0.003 BTC should be a motivation to pick LTC for such a role.

If we could have an online wallet for LTC just like blockchain's wallet, people wouldnt even need to download anything. They could just play games, spend their LTC on merchandise (or whatever).

I love these ideas for LTC niche market outside of Bitcoin realm.... huge possibilities!

What could we do to develop these ideas into reality?

[Lord F(r)og]

Matoking is going to dev a mining frontend: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?&topic=62414

I imagine this would this make LTC mining more popular, accessible?

This would at least attract people to ltc-mining who are not experienced in setting up a miner via command line/batch file or aren't able to gpu-mine for whatever reason. Like btc-guiminer it would become an entry point in mining ltc and this supports ltc on the "miner-side". Surly those people are a minority jet because I allege a minimum technical computer knowlege to get interested in ltc or lets say btc, because it has the higher media attention. Attention on alternate currencies follows afterwards.

[coblee]

mine LTC on web pages (javascript miner), games, etc where CPU coin is stronger. Then the website/game developer can pay rewards in terms of LTC. Bitcoin wont be able to compete here. Other alt-coins (including custom altcoins by game owners) may indeed enter here, but its unlikely if they can use our LTC miners/ libraries for free.

Vanderbleek (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?action=profile;u=44378) was working on a game that uses litecoin as a currency and generates litecoin in the background. I don't know the current status of it. You may want to contact him.

If we could have an online wallet for LTC just like blockchain's wallet, people wouldnt even need to download anything. They could just play games, spend their LTC on merchandise (or whatever).

There's already a litecoin instawallet created by g2x3k: http://wallet.it.cx/

[1QaZxSw2]

There's already a litecoin instawallet created by g2x3k: http://wallet.it.cx/

That's great. I hope he will add the ability to import vanity and other addresses.

[Tittiez]

What about a Chrome extension or Firefox plugin that mines in the background with your spare cpu cycles?

[StewartJ]

What about a Chrome extension or Firefox plugin that mines in the background with your spare cpu cycles?

I really am liking this spare mining LTC approach to generate money to pay for online stuff.

Wonder if we could setup some beta projects along these lines and test this concept.

[1QaZxSw2]

What about a Chrome extension or Firefox plugin that mines in the background with your spare cpu cycles?

I really am liking this spare mining LTC approach to generate money to pay for online stuff.

Wonder if we could setup some beta projects along these lines and test this concept.

All we need to do is to convince Vanderbleek to package the mining part of his game as a javascript library and open it up.

i.e. I should be able to say something like:

var LTCaddress = "LTCaddressForMyGame324yshkkss67";
<script src="http://blah.net/ltcminer.js">

And my web page should generate LTC and feed it to the address above.

Secondly we need an ecommerce library which manages the overall LTC accounts of members, the website, etc.

[pooler]

All we need to do is to convince Vanderbleek to package the mining part of his game as a javascript library and open it up.

Unfortunately a pure-Javascript miner would be too slow. For this reason, Vanderbleek decided to use Java instead. We were both working independently on the development of a Java miner back in November, but he stopped working on his version when I released mine (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=52386.0), so that he could focus on the game proper. The source code to both miners is now available at GitHub.

I should be able to say something like:

var LTCaddress = "LTCaddressForMyGame324yshkkss67";
<script src="http://blah.net/ltcminer.js">

And my web page should generate LTC and feed it to the address above.

Something like that has been available for two months now:
http://www.litecoinpool.org/embed
This embeddable miner is discussed in the same forum thread linked above, starting here:
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=52386.msg632047#msg632047

[btc_artist]

All we need to do is to convince Vanderbleek to package the mining part of his game as a javascript library and open it up.

i.e. I should be able to say something like:

var LTCaddress = "LTCaddressForMyGame324yshkkss67";
<script src="http://blah.net/ltcminer.js">

There's already the in-browser Java miner from litecoinpool.org

Edit: Pooler was faster than me.

[StewartJ]

All we need to do is to convince Vanderbleek to package the mining part of his game as a javascript library and open it up.

Unfortunately a pure-Javascript miner would be too slow. For this reason, Vanderbleek decided to use Java instead. We were both working independently on the development of a Java miner back in November, but he stopped working on his version when I released mine (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=52386.0), so that he could focus on the game proper. The source code to both miners is now available at GitHub.

I should be able to say something like:

var LTCaddress = "LTCaddressForMyGame324yshkkss67";
<script src="http://blah.net/ltcminer.js">

And my web page should generate LTC and feed it to the address above.

Something like that has been available for two months now:
http://www.litecoinpool.org/embed
This embeddable miner is discussed in the same forum thread linked above, starting here:
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=52386.msg632047#msg632047

Pooler, for gamers who know very little about alt-coins/bitcoins, let alone mining them, what approach would you take
to get the gaming community to adopt Litecoin mining with spare CPU time?

[1QaZxSw2]

Unfortunately a pure-Javascript miner would be too slow. For this reason, Vanderbleek decided to use Java instead. We were both working independently on the development of a Java miner back in November, but he stopped working on his version when I released mine (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=52386.0), so that he could focus on the game proper. The source code to both miners is now available at GitHub.

What exactly is the boundary of too slow? Even if it can do one share in one hour, that should be plenty for a site like facebook where people have it open all the time and has millions of customers.

Some sites where a low intensity mining can occur:
User generated sites: reddit, stumble upon, forums
Video and porn sites: youtube, *tube
Flash game sites
download sites