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| == History == | == History == | ||
| Litecoin was released via an open-source |
Litecoin was released via an open-source client on GitHub on October 7, 2011 by MIT-alumni Charlie Lee, a former Google employee and ex-Director of Engineering at Coinbase. The Litecoin network went live on October 13, 2011. | ||
| Litecoin is a source code fork of the Bitcoin Core client, differing primarily by having a decreased block generation time (2.5 minutes), increased maximum number of coins, different hashing algorithm (Scrypt, instead of SHA-256), and a slightly modified GUI. | |||
| ⚫ | At the time of the launch in 2011, Bitcoin had only existed for a little over a year but had proven itself to be reliable and well-functioning within that time frame. Knowing that Bitcoin had the most proven track record, Charlie Lee decided to base Litecoin off of Bitcoin's code. | ||
| Litecoin was created with the intention of being a fairer alternative to other cryptocurrencies that existed at the time, such as Tenebrix, Ixcoin, Solidcoin, to name a few. In 2011, much as we see today, the cryptocurrency space began to see an influx of experimental coins appear. Many of these coins carried issues with them such as coin creators pre-mining millions of coins for themselves, security issues or bugs in the code. Due to these limiting factors, Charlie Lee decided to follow the path that Bitcoin originally paved by launching Litecoin fairly, meaning, it was widely available for anyone to start mining from the beginning. | |||
| During the month of November 2013, the aggregate value of Litecoin experienced massive growth which included a 100% leap within 24 hours. | |||
| In 2014, Dogecoin, a scrypt-based meme-cryptocurrency created by Jackson Palmer, was experiencing increased risk of becoming 51% attacked due to Litecoin dominating the Scrypt algorithm. Because of this, the Dogecoin community accepted Charlie Lee's advice of hardforking, allowing Litecoin and Dogecoin to be mined together (merge mined). Litecoin, being the Scrypt-dominant coin, now contributed to help secure Dogecoin's network. | |||
| ⚫ | At the time of the launch in 2011, Bitcoin had only existed for a little over a year but had proven itself to be reliable and well-functioning within that time frame. Knowing that Bitcoin had the most proven track record, Charlie Lee decided to base Litecoin off of |
||
| ⚫ | In May 2017, Litecoin played a major role in the Bitcoin block-size wars by becoming the first cryptocurrency in the top 10 by market capitalization to integrate Segregated Witness (SegWit), helping pave the path for Bitcoin to launch it as well. Later that month, the first Lightning Network transaction was completed through Litecoin, transferring 0.00000001 LTC from Zürich to San Francisco in under one second. | ||
| Litecoin is frequently described as the "silver" to Bitcoin's "gold" due to their similarities such as dominance of their respective mining algorithm's, their Proof-of-Work nature, four-year halving cycles and fair launch beginnings. | |||
| In 2018–19, the Litecoin community underwent a major #PayWithLitecoin campaign, resulting in Litecoin becoming the official cryptocurrency of the Miami Dolphins, making it the first-ever crypto sponsor of an NFL team, and also the first official sponsor of the UFC. | |||
| During the month of November 2013, the aggregate value of Litecoin experienced massive growth which included a 100% leap within 24 hours.<ref>{{cite news |url=http://www.ibtimes.co.uk/articles/525867/20131128/litcoin-value-leaps-100-percent-market-cap.htm |title=Litecoin value leaps 100% in a day as market cap passes $1bn |work=International Business Times, UK Edition|first=Alistair|last=Charlton|date=2013-11-28 |access-date=2013-12-16}}</ref>{{better source needed|date=April 2021}} | |||
| On October 2018, a Litecoin Improvement Proposal (LIP) was announced by contributors, suggesting that Mimblewimble Extension Blocks (MWEB) would be the best way forward towards increasing fungibility, privacy and scaling on Litecoin. | |||
| ⚫ | In May 2017, Litecoin |
||
| On March 2021, Mimblewimble expert David Burkett announced that he completed the MWEB code and that it's currently undergoing final reviewal and auditing prior to launch. It's estimated that MWEB will launch on Litecoin towards the end of 2021 with support of the community. | |||
| Litecoin also became one of the four cryptocurrencies adopted by Venmo and parent company PayPal in 2021. | |||
| == Uses, Technology, and Differences from Bitcoin == | == Uses, Technology, and Differences from Bitcoin == | ||
Revision as of 05:32, 15 May 2021
Cryptocurrency Official Litecoin logo | |
| Denominations | |
|---|---|
| Plural | Litecoins |
| Symbol | Ł |
| Code | LTC |
| Precision | 10 |
| Subunits | |
| 1⁄1000 | millilitecoin, mŁ |
| 1⁄1000000 | microlitecoins, photons, μŁ |
| Development | |
| Original author(s) | Charlie Lee |
| Initial release | 0.1.0 / 7 October 2011; 13 years ago (2011-10-07) |
| Latest release | 0.18.1 / 11 June 2020; 4 years ago (2020-06-11) |
| Code repository | github |
| Development status | Active |
| Project fork of | Bitcoin |
| Written in | C++ |
| Operating system | Windows, OS X, Linux, Android |
| Developer(s) | Litecoin Core Development Team |
| Source model | Open source |
| License | MIT License |
| Ledger | |
| Timestamping scheme | Proof-of-work |
| Hash function | scrypt |
| Block reward | 12.5 LTC (approximately till August 2023), halved approximately every four years |
| Block time | 2.5 minutes |
| Block explorer | ltc.bitaps.com explorer.litecoin.net chainz.cryptoid.info blockchair.com |
| Circulating supply | 66,752,415 LTC (3 May 2021) |
| Supply limit | 84,000,000 LTC |
| Administration | |
| Issuing authority | decentralized, block reward |
| Website | |
| Website | litecoin.org litecoin.com |
Litecoin (LTC or Ł) is a peer-to-peer cryptocurrency and open-source software project released under the MIT/X11 license. Litecoin was an early bitcoin spinoff or altcoin, starting in October 2011. In technical details, Litecoin is nearly identical to Bitcoin.
History
Litecoin was released via an open-source client on GitHub on October 7, 2011 by MIT-alumni Charlie Lee, a former Google employee and ex-Director of Engineering at Coinbase. The Litecoin network went live on October 13, 2011.
Litecoin is a source code fork of the Bitcoin Core client, differing primarily by having a decreased block generation time (2.5 minutes), increased maximum number of coins, different hashing algorithm (Scrypt, instead of SHA-256), and a slightly modified GUI.
At the time of the launch in 2011, Bitcoin had only existed for a little over a year but had proven itself to be reliable and well-functioning within that time frame. Knowing that Bitcoin had the most proven track record, Charlie Lee decided to base Litecoin off of Bitcoin's code. During the month of November 2013, the aggregate value of Litecoin experienced massive growth which included a 100% leap within 24 hours.
In 2014, Dogecoin, a scrypt-based meme-cryptocurrency created by Jackson Palmer, was experiencing increased risk of becoming 51% attacked due to Litecoin dominating the Scrypt algorithm. Because of this, the Dogecoin community accepted Charlie Lee's advice of hardforking, allowing Litecoin and Dogecoin to be mined together (merge mined). Litecoin, being the Scrypt-dominant coin, now contributed to help secure Dogecoin's network.
In May 2017, Litecoin played a major role in the Bitcoin block-size wars by becoming the first cryptocurrency in the top 10 by market capitalization to integrate Segregated Witness (SegWit), helping pave the path for Bitcoin to launch it as well. Later that month, the first Lightning Network transaction was completed through Litecoin, transferring 0.00000001 LTC from Zürich to San Francisco in under one second.
In 2018–19, the Litecoin community underwent a major #PayWithLitecoin campaign, resulting in Litecoin becoming the official cryptocurrency of the Miami Dolphins, making it the first-ever crypto sponsor of an NFL team, and also the first official sponsor of the UFC.
On October 2018, a Litecoin Improvement Proposal (LIP) was announced by contributors, suggesting that Mimblewimble Extension Blocks (MWEB) would be the best way forward towards increasing fungibility, privacy and scaling on Litecoin.
On March 2021, Mimblewimble expert David Burkett announced that he completed the MWEB code and that it's currently undergoing final reviewal and auditing prior to launch. It's estimated that MWEB will launch on Litecoin towards the end of 2021 with support of the community. Litecoin also became one of the four cryptocurrencies adopted by Venmo and parent company PayPal in 2021.
Uses, Technology, and Differences from Bitcoin
There are a few key differences between Litecoin and Bitcoin.
—The Litecoin Network processes a block every 2.5 minutes, rather than Bitcoin's 10 minutes. This allows Litecoin to confirm transactions much faster than Bitcoin.
—Litecoin uses Scrypt in its proof-of-work algorithm, compared to Bitcoin's SHA-256. This makes Litecoin more secure and less prone to being 51% attacked compared to other coins that share Bitcoin's mining algorithm.
—Litecoin has 84 million coins while Bitcoin has 21 million.
Litecoin maintains most of Bitcoin's key features, including 4 year halving cycles in which the amount of new coins gets reduced in half and a limited coin supply.
Due to Litecoin and Bitcoin's code similarities, it's common for updates to be be passed from one coin to the other. Most of Litecoin's code is pulled over from Bitcoin, meaning, Bitcoin developers are indirectly working on Litecoin. Because of this, Litecoin does not require a significant amount of core developers.
Litecoin has become known for being a payments and transaction-friendly coin due to its low fees and high liquidity, being available on nearly every exchange. Litecoin is also the second most available cryptocurrency on crypto-ATM's. Due to its low fees and liquidity, Litecoin is often used for inter-exchange trading and for sending funds from one location to another.
Because of its low fees and high liquidity, Litecoin usually ranks top 3 in 24 hour trading volume, occasionally trading more than its entire market cap. It also consistently trades more volume (in relation to respective market caps, by % basis) than Bitcoin and Ethereum. This transaction-heavy use-case is also what led the Litecoin community to focus on increasing user privacy.
Litecoin's MWEB upgrade will make Litecoin the most fungible cryptocurrency in the top 10 by market capitalization while increasing scalability and hiding transaction amounts from public viewers.
Litecoin is often referred to as a "test-bed" for Bitcoin because it has historically been able to implement certain technologies prior to Bitcoin, such as SegWit in 2017 and potentially once again with the upcoming MWEB upgrade.
Litecoin is also the only coin besides Bitcoin to have an actively running Lightning Network, a second-layer scaling solution.
See also
References
- "Litecoin v0.18.1". litecoin.org. Retrieved 2020-10-08.
- "Ex-Googler Gives the World a Better Bitcoin". WIRED. Retrieved 2017-10-25.
External links
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