One problem of Bitcoin is that only ASIC mining is really profitable. Since those ASICs are relatively expensive, mining is not really a distribution mechanism anymore. ASICs for Litecoin and all the other scrypt coins is currently rumored about. Now I present you a coin which attacks this problem in a unique way and launched on February 23.

Hash algo Scrypt, SHA256D, Qubit, Skein, or Groestl Premine None Transaction Speed 30 sec (2.5 minutes per algorithm) Difficulty retargeting Every block Developers Need to improve

Instead of simply one hash algorithm, MyriadCoin allows you to choose one of five algorithms for mining. If you own a SHA256 ASIC, you can use that. If you own a GPU mining rig for Scrypt, you can use that. If you just have a CPU, you can use that and still be profitable. This is what they mean by “A coin for everyone”.

The five algorithms compete for each block. Each algorithm has its own difficulty, which targets 2.5 minutes per minute. This means each 0.5 minutes one of the algorithms solves a block and we have a 30sec per block transaction speed. The SHA256 ASICs compute much more per second and Watt, but thanks to difficulty they still only contribute one fifth of the blocks.

So the theory is nice. How is the practice?

Looking at the Github repository, I am skeptical about the developers. The coin is forked from Zetacoin and only shows a few commits. Basic software development practice (like proper commit messages) is violated.

The soft skill developer attributes are also bad. For example, there is no official website. Apparently, I missed that official website. Let me use another example: The subreddit has 35 readers. Far away from popular.

Overall this coin feels like an interesting and successful case study, but not a strong coin in itself. Since I like the idea behind the coin, I hope the community can fix the problems. In the current state, I do not see much success in their future.