By Alicia Maher
Just as authorities keep studying anonymity-boosting techniques, Litecoin is getting confidentiality opt-ins.
Litecoin’s Massive Mimblewimble Upgrade Now Live
Litecoin (LTC) officially released its much-anticipated Mimblewimble upgrade, allowing further privacy-oriented operations on the blockchain after 2 years of growth.
The Mimblewimble Extension Block, often called MWEB, integrated Mimblewimble inside Litecoin. It0 enables network members to opt-in to private transactions. The improvement increases Litecoin’s feasibility as a fungible token that could be utilized during daily transactions, paying staff wages, and also purchasing real estate, according to MWEB principal programmer David Burkett, which the LTC Foundation had supported.
Mimblewimble is a confidentiality-focused decentralized technology that takes its moniker from a tongue-twisting spell popularized by J.K. Rowling’s Harry Potter series. Customers can hide transaction details using the protocol’s secrecy functionality. It also offers a platform for various blockchain networks to improve their crypto’s usefulness.
Mimblewimble incorporation was first proposed in a set of LTC Improvement Proposals in October 2019. Following subsequent setbacks due to poor community involvement, the system released the 1st Mimblewimble testnet around October 2020. The testnet was also introduced when European regulators, most notably Europol, were raising concerns about privacy currencies.
Worldwide, privacy currencies that encourage secrecy and conceal digital ledger operations have received criticism. Numerous exchanges stopped supporting major privacy cryptocurrencies XMR, ZEC, and DASH at the beginning of 2021, according to Cointelegraph.
In conjunction with confidentiality and secure transactions, Mimblewimble’s protocol prioritizes fungibility and scalability, which are crucial aspects that several blockchains are presently lacking. Litecoin Foundation hopes that the Mimblewimble incorporation would help Litecoin achieve good funds status; that’s a general term for stable currencies that are least subject to depreciation as well as monetary policy impact.
Litecoin Over the Years
Litecoin’s a cryptocurrency that attempts to outperform BTC in terms of transactions pace and price. After Bitcoin, Litecoin is among the oldest cryptocurrencies, designed to be somewhat of a companion than a competitor to Bitcoins.
In essence, LTC is a method of transferring currency around the world. LTC is traded on various networks and has become a part of the most widely used cryptocurrencies for the majority of the cryptocurrency industry’s history. Litecoin can be more valuable than BTC because of its quicker, more affordable transactions, even though it has a smaller currency circulation and is less well-known.
Although being among the initial cryptos to enter the market, LTC has battled to maintain relevance over time. With a market capitalization of $7.5B, Litecoin is now placed twenty-first in the market valuation ratings.