What's most needed for Litecoin to be successful?

[miracle.max]

What sorts of things could a programmer do that would be most helpful for making litecoin a successful currency (i.e. what would support merchant and customer adoption the most)?  I'd be willing to work on just about anything, and I'm not looking to collect bounties up front.  If people find something useful, that's enough for me, and donations are just a nice side effect. 

Most of my "day job" programming experience to date has been scientific computing and some real-time image data processing, with a little bit of hobbyist web development in the distant past, but I'm fine with trying out something new.

If nothing else, I'd be happy to be paid in litecoin for non-litecoin related development tasks.

[passerby]

Let's imagine a person, male or female, who sells... I dunno, blivets.
Finest dimensionally challenged satan forks that a man could desire.



Huge blivets.

Let's say that person accepts bitcoin.

Adding litecoin is trivial, but it's fuss.
It requires setting up a new daemon, fiddling with shopping cart... watching two exchange rates instead of one, if nothing else.

What exactly would motivate this person to go through the (mild) inconvenience of accepting two cryptocurrencies instead of one?
Slightly (oh so slightly ) faster confirmations?

[EskimoBob]

someone who sells goods and services for LTC
Everything else is fun but at some point, completely useless. You can build huge highways for cars but if there are no cars, its all useless.
Goods and services for LTC is the key!

[miracle.max]

It requires setting up a new daemon, fiddling with shopping cart... watching two exchange rates instead of one, if nothing else.

What exactly would motivate this person to go through the (mild) inconvenience of accepting two cryptocurrencies instead of one?
Slightly (oh so slightly ) faster confirmations?

I can't tell if you're just generally criticizing the existence of litecoin, or trying to get me to go down a certain path of thought to figure out what you'd suggest working on, but in either case:

I presume we are early enough in the history of cryptocurrencies where most merchants support neither bitcoin nor litecoin, and then the choice for them is most likely to be,"which one should I choose?" instead of the choice you present.  What are the most painful parts when a merchant tries to adopt either coin?  Are there ways to make the process less painful if they choose litecoin?

[miracle.max]

Everything else is fun but at some point, completely useless. You can build huge highways for cars but if there are no cars, its all useless.

That's really what I was trying to get at: there are lots of things that would be fun to play with (tweaking the OpenCL miner code, for example), but that doesn't make the currency any more useful in the long run.  So I'm really offering to do some of the un-fun things; I just wanted to get a better idea of what those were.

[NASDAQEnema]

Everything else is fun but at some point, completely useless. You can build huge highways for cars but if there are no cars, its all useless.

That's really what I was trying to get at: there are lots of things that would be fun to play with (tweaking the OpenCL miner code, for example), but that doesn't make the currency any more useful in the long run.  So I'm really offering to do some of the un-fun things; I just wanted to get a better idea of what those were.

Any successful concept resonates and self-propels once it gets going.
For resonance you need a general motivation, a specific motivation, a way to maintain momentum, and an application of that momentum.
Once you have figured out what they are:
1. Engage the general motivation.
2. Moderate to maintain momentum.
3. Satisfy the specific motivation.
4. Use momentum to achieve your general motivation. See it wraps around.

The unfun stuff... let's find out.

[Tachikoma]

Like most people pointed out we need more merchants.

There is a page on the Wiki with some merchants and other services. If you accept Litecoin please consider adding yourself.

[Tittiez]

My head hurts, ugh

[miracle.max]

Like most people pointed out we need more merchants.

There is a page on the Wiki with some merchants and other services. If you accept Litecoin please consider adding yourself.

Thanks, I added a link there. 

[passerby]

It requires setting up a new daemon, fiddling with shopping cart... watching two exchange rates instead of one, if nothing else.

What exactly would motivate this person to go through the (mild) inconvenience of accepting two cryptocurrencies instead of one?
Slightly (oh so slightly ) faster confirmations?

I can't tell if you're just generally criticizing the existence of litecoin, or trying to get me to go down a certain path of thought to figure out what you'd suggest working on, but in either case:

I'm kinda trying to nudge people into thinking in a particular direction.

Bluntly put, it is "for shit to be popular, shit's gotta do something that's needed and that other shit doesn't do or does much worse or more expensive"

Right now, the only thing Litecoin does differently is hashing, which (even if we ignore the fact that it ain't all that CPU-centric as expected) is completely irrelevant to Jane the blivet merchant. And John the blivet fan who wants to buy blivets online.

Okay, Litecoin also operates slightly faster (not by very much mind you). I am unconvinced being a little bit faster constitutes doing "something that's needed" much better.

I think some new cool functionality is needed for it to amount to anything.

What is it - I don't know, but hey, programmers are supposed to be cunning, so the ball is kinda in your playground here...

I presume we are early enough in the history of cryptocurrencies where most merchants support neither bitcoin nor litecoin, and then the choice for them is most likely to be,"which one should I choose?" instead of the choice you present.  What are the most painful parts when a merchant tries to adopt either coin?  Are there ways to make the process less painful if they choose litecoin?

Thing to keep in mind - theoretically one can adopt both, so "bitcoiners" aren't lost to you guys.

But your direction of thought is becoming interesting.

Identifying major merchant grudges against crypto-coin adoption and resolving them is a nice direction to investigate.

See, we're starting to move someplace constructive already  !

[markm]

Look at all the security problems bitcoin has been having.

It is trivially easy to plug in any of the altcoins given code that talks to a coin daemon, so any of the insecure frequently hacked web-based applications for coins could use pretty much any coin easily.

For quite a while now there has been an exchange where you can trade litecoins for bitcoins, litecoins for namecoins, litecoins for devcoins, litecoins for groupcoins, litecoins for ixcoins, litecoins for i0coins and so on and so on, but not by using the web's man in the middle certificates system where some man in the middle provides server and browser with known-to-be-insecure certificates and not by storing a hash of the user's password on the server.

The core functionality has been the main focus of development for the last year; what is needed now is people to make end-user front-ends that are "nicer" for users than the current "test GUI" client and the scripting system.

I am of course talking about my Open Transactions server. A summary of the security goals of the Open Transactions system has its own thread at https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=95745.0

The system supports many languages, what is your favourite programming-language?

-MarkM-

[miracle.max]

The core functionality has been the main focus of development for the last year; what is needed now is people to make end-user front-ends that are "nicer" for users than the current "test GUI" client and the scripting system.

I am of course talking about my Open Transactions server. A summary of the security goals of the Open Transactions system has its own thread at https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=95745.0

The system supports many languages, what is your favourite programming-language?

Thanks, I'll have a look over the weekend.  Python is probably my favorite language, but most of my day jobs have been with C and C++, so I can get by pretty well in any of those three as needed.

[Vladimir]

Many will not like what I have to say. So I just suggest to take it easy, it is just one man opinion that could be just wrong.

Watch this http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qp0HIF3SfI4

Then ask yourself WHY Bitcoin is here. It is here to give honest money to the humanity. That is the great idea of Bitcoin which inspires large number of very motivated and talented people.

WHAT is litecoin? It is just a "me too" attempt motivated IMO to large degree by greed and hubris.

Now let's get back to the question:

What's most needed for Litecoin to be successful?

The answer is simple. Litecoin to be successful needs an inspiring purpose. What is the purpose of Litecoin? Another set of "early adopters"?

[Etlase2]

Golly gee look at the honesty bitcoin has engendered around here.

[smoothie]

Many will not like what I have to say. So I just suggest to take it easy, it is just one man opinion that could be just wrong.

Watch this http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qp0HIF3SfI4

Then ask yourself WHY Bitcoin is here. It is here to give honest money to the humanity. That is the great idea of Bitcoin which inspires large number of very motivated and talented people.

WHAT is litecoin? It is just a "me too" attempt motivated IMO to large degree by greed and hubris.

Now let's get back to the question:

What's most needed for Litecoin to be successful?

The answer is simple. Litecoin to be successful needs an inspiring purpose. What is the purpose of Litecoin? Another set of "early adopters"?

I hear you Vladimir. I just think having alternatives isn't a BAD thing to have or even try.

I still consider bitcoin as an experiment...hence then litecoin is just another bitcoin-like experiment.

[markm]

Bitcoin is just like all the state-controlled currencies, even to the extent of committing violence to suppress alternatives.

Litecoin on the other hand one maybe could hope embraces the proliferation of alternatives...

-MarkM-

[DiCE1904]

someone who sells goods and services for LTC
Everything else is fun but at some point, completely useless. You can build huge highways for cars but if there are no cars, its all useless.
Goods and services for LTC is the key!

this!!

[Vladimir]

BTW I am not saying Litecoin is bad or not bad. I am saying that it is not inspiring.

[bitcoiners]

A Silk Road. (Not that I condone this type of activity.) 

I don't think Bitcoin would be where it's at right now had SR not happened.

[str4wm4n]

A Silk Road. (Not that I condone this type of activity.) 

I don't think Bitcoin would be where it's at right now had SR not happened.

gonna have to agree with this