Project Name: Litecoin
Ticker: LTC
Website: litecoin.org/
Twitter: twitter.com/LitecoinProject
Whitepaper: Click here for the whitepaper.
What Is Litecoin (LTC)?
Founded in 2011 by former Google employee Charlie Lee, Litecoin is a Peer-to-Peer (P2P) cryptocurrency that allows anyone in the world to make instant and extremely cheap payments. With a successful launch, Litecoin has gained a prominent place among cryptocurrencies. It is a completely decentralized, open source, and global payment network. The native token of the Litecoin network is LTC.
What Does Litecoin Offer?
Litecoin is one of the most popular cryptocurrencies after Bitcoin because of its simple functionality and benefits. Fast and low-cost transactions are among the benefits it provides. Litecoin transactions are often confirmed within a few minutes and transaction fees are extremely low.
Let’s suppose that Person X in Norway wants to send money to Person Y in Ghana. If the transfer is done through a corporate intermediary, it will involve high fees, long transfer time and paperwork. With Litecoin, the process will involve none of that. Thanks to Litecoin, you can make fast transfers at low costs and perform your transactions no matter who or which location you are sending to. In short, transferring Litecoin instead of fiat currency is cheap, fast, and easy.
Litecoin’s Technology
As a blockchain-based cryptocurrency, Litecoin is secured by strong cryptographic defenses. Like Bitcoin, Litecoin uses the Proof of Work (PoW) mechanism to ensure that transactions are validated quickly and without errors. Let’s examine Litecoin’s technology in terms of its 6 distinctive features:
Blockchain Transaction Speed
The Litecoin blockchain is capable of processing higher transaction volume than Bitcoin, its counterpart. Thanks to more frequent block creation, the network supports more transactions and there is no need to modify the software in the future to do so. The block confirmation time of Bitcoin is 10 minutes, while Litecoin only needs 2.5 minutes. Within the time that Bitcoin receives a block confirmation, Litecoin receives 4 block confirmations. Additional confirmations from users can provide extra security.
Scalability
Scalability is one of the three key issues for blockchains, the other two being Security and Decentralization. The Mimblewimble Extension Blocks (MWEB), which is an interchangeability and scalability upgrade that Litecoin had worked on for 2 years, was carried out on January 31, 2022. MWEB is Litecoin's most significant upgrade to date. MWEB, which founder Charlie Lee said is a candidate for the Litecoin Core 0.21.2 release, includes some of the important privacy and security enhancements made with the Bitcoin Taproot Upgrade. Click here to learn more about scalability, security, and decentralization.
Mining
Litecoin mining is carried out through a Proof-of-Work (PoW) consensus mechanism. The Litecoin blockchain uses a scripting algorithm, so expensive ASIC mining devices are not required. Users can use GPUs (Graphics Processing Units) for mining, and more miners can perform mining activities as GPUs are less costly. Anyone can mine Litecoin on their personal computer. Miners were earning 25 LTC per block. This amount is halved every 4 years (every 840,000 blocks). With the 2019 halving event, the mining reward was reduced from 25 LTC to 12.5 LTC. Litecoin is expected to generate 84 million LTC compared to Bitcoin, which has 4 times more coins. The total supply of Litecoin is 84 million LTC. The generated Litecoin blocks are validated by miners. Miners complete the validation process and move on to the next block to perform the same process.
Security
Almost all operations we perform daily are connected to a central server system. This means that in case of any failure, the entire system can be disabled. The projects in the cryptocurrency ecosystem, including Litecoin, are decentralized. Therefore, for Litecoin to be hacked and the security of your account compromised, 51% of the mining nodes on the entire network need to be taken under control, which is almost impossible. For example, carrying all your money in your wallet can cause you to lose it all in the event of a theft, but depositing your money in a bank or storing it at home can reduce the risk by splitting it. In the Litecoin network, the risk is also divided as security is provided by different mining nodes.
Wallet Encryption
With wallet encryption, you can secure your wallet to view transactions and your account balance. However, you need to enter your password before spending Litecoins. Wallet encryption protects against wallet-stealing viruses and trojans, as well as a sanity check before sending payments. Litecoin gives you the power to operate, modify, and copy the software and distribute modified copies of it. Litecoin is an open-source software project released under the MIT/X11 license. The software is released in a transparent process that ensures independent verification of the binaries and their corresponding source codes.
Litecoin’s Digital Asset Economy
Approximately 500,000 LTC were mined by miners the day after the LTC Genesis Block was formed.
Maximum Supply: 84 million LTC
Litecoin Transaction Time: 5 minutes
Maximum Transactions Per Second: 56
First Transaction: October 13, 2011
Mining: Proof of Work (Scrypt)
The Litecoin Team & Company
Litecoin was founded in 2011 by Charlie Lee. Charlie Lee, also known as Chocobo, who has worked as a software engineer at Google, is a Bitcoin miner and a computer scientist. Charlie Lee also serves as the Director of the Litecoin Foundation, a non-profit organization with the Litecoin Core Development team to improve Litecoin. Besides Lee, there are three prominent names on the board of the Litecoin Foundation: Xinxi Wang, Alan Austin, and Zing Yang.
Litecoin Collaborations
Litecoin, the first altcoin of the cryptocurrency industry, which became popular as soon as it entered the market, has signed many collaborations. Litecoin embraces the vision of integrating with the platforms to enhance the Litecoin ecosystem and provide users with up-to-date, widespread, innovative systems. Mimblewimble, PayPal, Nefarious, Function X, mobile cryptocurrency wallet BRD, Block Banks, Newegg, Voyager Digital Ltd., Odysee, Hub, Cipsoft, Revolut, Ternio, Centercoin, Atari, BitGo, BitcoinReward, MeconCash, Storm, and BlockFi are among the companies that Litecoin has collaborated with.
Evaluation of Litecoin
Litecoin, the first altcoin, has become one of the most widely accepted cryptocurrencies in the world. There are currently more than 2,000 companies in the world that accept LTC payments. Litecoin is one of the most preferred cryptocurrencies for money transfers. Because Litecoin, which is fast and cost-effective, can process a higher transaction volume than its blockchain counterpart, Bitcoin.
