As seen here: https://vertcoin.org/pow-algorithm-upgrade-lyra2/Vertans,
I am pleased to announce Vertcoin will be changing its Proof of Work algorithm to Lyra2. Lyra2 is a password hashing scheme much like Scrypt that is not easily parallelizable and has scaling hardware difficulty that depends on memory and processing power.
Vertcoin has always been and will continue to be the leader in decentralization of cryptocurrency. Lyra2 is a natural successor of Scrypt providing an improvement on the same fundamental purpose – scaling hardware difficulty. The decision to move to this algorithm comes as a preemptive strike against ASICs and a move against Multipools. As many of you know, we have several concepts in the hopper to remain in step with the Vertcoin charter – Vertcoin’s [algorithm] is designed to resist the development of custom mining hardware and multipool mining, ensuring that transactions are validated by a widely distributed network and avoiding the selling pressure when large mining pools indiscriminately flood the market with freshly mined coins.
The Lyra2 whitepaper details its performance against custom hardware and offers a comparison to Scrypt. Most notably, Lyra2 improves on Scrypt by offering separate control over memory and processing difficulty where in Scrypt they are tightly coupled. This level of control is important when reacting to specialized hardware that comes to market.
There is still much work to be done before we roll it out. Here is a approximate timeline:
Derive appropriate initial memory and cpu levels to roughly match the current level (8/15/2014)
Implement the new algo in all the wallets including mobile (10/15/2014)
Run final testing on testnet (11/15/2014)
Final release to mainnet (11/30/2014)
- These are estimates, we may move faster -
Bushido and I will be running point on this effort. During this time we are looking to add a developer to our ranks. The reality is that even developers have lives ( believe it or not :-D ) and can’t always dedicate tons of time to these projects. Diversifying our resource pool will only strengthen and quicken us.
If you have experience in C/C++, ObjC or Java and would like to join the team, please email
a432511@vertcoin.org.
Cheers!
a432511
