About Litecoin
Litecoin launched in 2011 as one of the earliest forks of the Bitcoin codebase, keeping proof-of-work mining but with faster blocks and a different hashing algorithm. Its supply is capped at 84 million coins, four times Bitcoin’s cap.
What the MWEB upgrade added, and what it cost
Litecoin switched on an optional privacy layer called Mimblewimble Extension Blocks, usually shortened to MWEB, on 20 May 2022. It runs as a separate set of blocks beside the ordinary chain. LTC, the network’s own coin, can be moved into it, transacted with amounts and addresses hidden, and moved back out. Nothing is hidden unless the holder chooses it, and the ordinary chain is unchanged for everyone who does not.
How it was switched on says something about the network. It was proposed in 2019 and took effect as a soft fork, a change that older software keeps accepting, once miners representing 75 per cent of the network had signalled support. No authority approved it. The threshold was met and it applied. New LTC arrives on a reward that halves every 840,000 blocks.
The consequences arrived within a month. South Korean exchanges including Upbit and Coinone ended Litecoin trading in June 2022. Upbit’s notice cites the Act on Reporting and Using Specified Financial Transaction Information. Under that Act an exchange has to establish whether an asset carries technology making transfer records unidentifiable, and act if it finds it. Coinone’s notice cites its own delisting policy and money-laundering risk instead. Neither notice alleges misconduct by the project.
Litecoin’s older role, as the chain that ran changes before Bitcoin did, has one clean example behind it. Segregated Witness activated here at block 1,201,536 in May 2017, about three months before it activated on Bitcoin. MWEB is the same pattern applied to privacy, and this time the change carried a cost the earlier one did not.
Longer read: What Litecoin MWEB is and how it was switched on. Litecoin's optional privacy layer, the miner vote that activated it with no company or regulator involved, and the delistings in South Korea that followed a month later.
See more prices on the crypto in AUD hub, and how this figure is struck on the methodology page.