General Data and Information
The Litecoin software was released on the 7th October 2011 by Charlie Lee, with the network going live roughly a week later on the 13th of October 2011. As a fork of Bitcoin Core, Litecoin featured several improvements upon the original Bitcoin protocol including reduced blocktimes (decreased to 2.5 minutes instead of 10 minutes), increased total supply and a different proof of work algorithm (scrypt vs SHA-256).
The adoption of a faster blocktime meant that transactions were quicker to settle and be written into the blockchain, whilst the adoption of the memory intensive scrypt algorithm was intended to defeat the ASIC dominance of mining (due to the added financial costs of producing specialized mining machines with the required extra memory). However, due to the popularity of Litecoin, ASICs have been already developed and deployed that are able to mine the scrypt algorithm.
Often considered to be the silver to Bitcoin’s gold status, improvements and upgrades are often rolled out to the Litecoin network before they reach the Bitcoin network (such as the SegWit and Lightning Network upgrades). This practice has also led to some people derisively calling Litecoin the test-network for Bitcoin.
Milestones
7th October 2011 - Open Source software for Litecoin released. 13th October 2011 - Litecoin network goes live. May 2017 - Segregated Witness (SegWit) implemented. First Lightning Network transaction completed on the Litecoin network.
Utility
Litecoin serves a similar use-case function as Bitcoin, attempting to be a digital store of value and medium of exchange but with the advantage of faster block times (which makes transactions faster to settle). In addition (due to lower network usage), it has lower transaction fees than the better known flagship crypto-currency. However, it suffers from a smaller market capitalization and liquidity which makes it much less useful as a pairing partner for other crypto-currencies.
Significant Features
- Average Blocktime of 2.5 minutes; Total supply of 84 million LTC; Proof of Work consensus based on scrypt algorithm. - Transactions are pseduo-anonymous. Funds are sent address to address, but an owner identity can eventually attributed to an address given enough data and analysis. - Whilst sharing many decentralized attributes of consensus and governance as Bitcoin, Litecoin does have a known creator who can provide vision and guidance for the direction of the project. - Decentralized access allowing any party with the open-source software and internet access to send and receive Litecoin irreversibly without third party interference or trust. - Decentralized governance via open-source development and forking.
