Quote from: DeathAndTaxes on July 05, 2013, 09:38:19 PM

When you consider the reduced security due to increased orphans and smaller overall network what exactly is the innovation.

I addressed latency and orphans here:

Quote from: acoindr on October 22, 2012, 08:54:37 PM

Now multi-minute propagation is interesting, and something I hadn't considered for Bitcoin or Litecoin, so I can see your point. Invalid blocks do result currently with Bitcoin from latency of miners learning of found blocks elsewhere due to the network effect.

This problem should worsen as Bitcoin adoption grows and the network expands. So this could conceivably be a problem for Bitcoin, Litecoin, or any cryptocurrency with a block creation around 10 minutes or less on average. Mining invalid blocks is a waste of resources for miners, which would be a disincentive where there is supposed to be incentive. Frequently occurring invalid blocks also complicates trust in confirmations.

However, I think there is a simple solution. It's in everyone's best interest to know of a valid found block as soon as possible. This way work can start on the next block with minimal wasted resources for no reward. While it's not called for in the protocol I think there can be developed what I'd call mining block references or MBRs. This is simply one or more online resources (nodes or sites) where miners can report and check for found blocks. Since all miners (or a significant number anyway) would reference only a few nodes, polling say every few seconds, communication of found blocks could be near instantaneous regardless of network size.

The network effect exists now because Bitcoin is designed to be decentralized. However, smart centralization of some aspects, especially non-critical functions like this can be beneficial. Note this doesn't change the protocol. It's just a reference on top of how things already work. Satoshi's white paper says "When a node finds a proof-of-work, it broadcasts the block to all nodes." It doesn't say how to broadcast that information to all nodes. I think optimization of that is easily accomplished with MBRs.

Quote from: DeathAndTaxes on July 05, 2013, 09:38:19 PM

Now you may be right something "significantly" superior to Bitcoin may replace it but that significantly superior solution isn't LTC

Litecoin was never meant to replace Bitcoin. It was meant to be the silver to Bitcoin's gold.

Quote from: DeathAndTaxes on July 05, 2013, 09:38:19 PM

... and the horde of copy cat pump and dump scamcoins don't even have enough momentum to break out of a paper bag.

LOL now that I agree with (note I don't consider some coins like NVC pd/scam).