Litecoin: MimbleWimble update is ready.

Litecoin is rolling out the highly anticipated MimbleWimble update via the MimbleWimble Extension Block (MWEB). 

This is the first ever LTC MWEB address, created by LTC MWEB dev, David Burkett. Code drop tomorrow, mainnet activation will happen in few months.@DavidBurkett38 started this effort in the summer of 2019. A truly herculean effort. Kudos. Remember this address and use it 🙂 https://t.co/tsgp7vp43l

— Guy Corem (@vcorem) January 30, 2022

The MimbleWimble code implemented on Litecoin. 

The code will be released today, while the activation of the mainnet will take place in a few months. 

So, for now there is just the code presumably definitive that will be tested in the coming months, and if the tests are successful, this code will be implemented in the mainnet. 

It’s been many months now that there have been discussions about this long-awaited update for Litecoin, a project that in recent times had remained a bit in the shadows, due to a poor evolution. 

The fact is that this update took a good two years of development, but it will finally allow transactions with a higher level of privacy. 

The evolution of Litecoin

Litecoin was even born in October 2011, which is less than three years after Bitcoin, and has always proposed itself as a transactional alternative to BTC with faster transactions. However, from this point of view, it has recently lost a lot of appeal, also and above all thanks to the success of Lightning Network. 

It is enough to think that currently there are rarely more than 150,000 transactions registered per day on the Litecoin blockchain, compared to over 200,000 for Bitcoin. In other words, LTC as a transactional alternative to BTC has failed. 

Now the idea is to make it a cryptocurrency with a high level of privacy, also because it is already much more widely used than the most famous among similar cryptocurrencies, namely Monero (XMR). It is enough to think that the transactions recorded daily on Monero’s blockchain rarely reach 40,000. 

Thus, it is expected to turn LTC’s relative success over the years as a transactional currency into a starting point to impose it on the market as the main high-privacy cryptocurrency. 

The price of Litecoin

LTC’s current price is 74% lower than the all-time high of $410 recorded in May 2021, and is even 20% lower than it was twelve months ago. 

In recent months, it has followed much the same trend as the price of ETH, with -27% in the last 30 days. 

It is also worth noting that the May 2021 peak was only slightly higher than the previous peak in December 2017, when it exceeded $350 for the first time. 

This dynamic really makes one believe that LTC may have a second life of sorts thanks to MimbleWimble.