Scrypt is the second most popular mining algorithm in the cryptocurrency world. The story of the it is connected with the fact that already in the early stages of the bitcoin, it became obvious that the simplicity of the functions SHA-256 allows to make the hardware that will perform these computations much more efficiently than a conventional computer processor (CPU).

And really, the bitcoin producing is very quickly shifted from CPU to graphic processing units (GPU), then onto programmable hardware (FPGA), and then were released specifically sharpened chips (ASIC). The high concentration of specialized ASIC-power is a problem for a decentralized currency.

The function of hashing the Scrypt was specifically designed to complicate the hardware implementation by increasing the number of resources required for computation. Therefore (at least in a theory) such concentration of mining resources as in bitcoin has not to happen, and it will remain decentralized.

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At its core, the Scrypt mining is not very different from the bitcoin ones. The data block is fed to the input, the hash function applied to it; we are trying to get a “beautiful hash” at the output. Only the hash function is much harder to compute here. This algorithm uses a larger amount of RAM (random access memory) than SHA-256.

Ideally, the mining of coins based on the Scrypt should be carried out on one (or more) computers with lots of memory. Here a great importance is given to the graphics cards.

If you are considering buying GPUs for working using this protocol, then the best option would be to purchase products from the company ATI. Because of the architectural differences, the performance of mining on ATI video cards is now much higher than Nvidia, though in the future things can change.

The perfect solution for getting altcoins will serve the Scrypt Cloud Mining services. For earnings in the cloud you only need to buy a piece of equipment that will work for you. Maintenance and support is provided by the cloud provider. You also have only to observe the daily growth of the balance of cryptocoins.

Ultimately, it all boils down to this: protocols SHA-256 and Scrypt work for one purpose – to get a “beautiful hash” by a brute force, which will give us (or rather a pool, for which we work) the right to extend the blockchain and get a reward. They just solve one task in different ways.

The Scrypt Cloud Mining requires a large amount of memory. Accordingly, the performance depends on the size of random access memory (RAM) and graphics cards installed in the data center.
The most famous of altcoins which uses the Scrypt algorithm is Litecoin. There is Dogecoin, Digitalcoin, Franco, Bottlecaps and many others. The popularity of the crypto coins, especially Litecoin, increased significantly after the bitcoin mining massively migrated to ASIC and former miners with video cards were out of work – their equipment couldn’t compete with the specialized processors. So they have adapted their video cards for litecoin, or for other exotic coins.