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14:26 * cperciva waves
14:27 < cperciva> aspect_ invited me in here to talk about scrypt
14:35 < cperciva> here's what I wrote in reply to an email from him
14:36 < cperciva> The distinction between SHA256 and scrypt is in the cost to compute a single
14:36 < cperciva> hash; since bitcoin (and I assume litecoin) scales the number of hashes needed
14:36 < cperciva> to create a block, this balances out the increased computational complexity.
14:36 < cperciva> What you are left with then is the fact that (for optimal efficiency) scrypt
14:36 < cperciva> requires more RAM, which makes it harder to put onto an ASIC.
14:36 < cperciva> What constitutes "fair" is, of course, an entirely political question, not a
14:36 < cperciva> cryptographic one.
14:36 < cperciva> If your goal is to have something which works well on GPUs but is hard to put
14:36 < cperciva> onto an ASIC, your current "small scrypt" approach is probably about right.
14:36 < cperciva> You won't block ASICs completely of course, but you've reduced their advantage
14:36 < cperciva> by ~ a factor of 10, which may be enough to keep them away for now at least.
15:25 <@aspect_> hi! thank's for stopping by!
15:27 <@pooler> cperciva: as someone who spent many hours trying to optimize scrypt for CPUs, I must say I'm honored to see you here :)
15:28 < cperciva> pooler: I'm honoured that people spend many hours trying to optimize my code :-)
