MWEB stands for Mimblewimble Extension Blocks, an optional privacy layer added to Litecoin on 19 May 2022. It runs beside the main chain, and users choose which side to transact on. Amounts and participants on MWEB are hidden. Ordinary Litecoin transactions stay public. Five South Korean exchanges delisted Litecoin the following month.
MWEB is Litecoin's optional privacy layer. It was deployed on 19 May 2022 as Mimblewimble Extension Blocks, a second set of blocks running beside the ordinary Litecoin chain where amounts and participants are not published. Using it is a choice. Most Litecoin activity has stayed on the public chain. Within weeks, five South Korean exchanges had removed the coin.
This guide explains the feature, the process that turned it on, and what followed.
What MWEB actually is
Litecoin launched in October 2011 as a fork of the Bitcoin code, created by Charlie Lee. It kept proof-of-work mining, changed the hashing algorithm to scrypt, shortened the time between blocks and capped supply at 84 million coins. Like Bitcoin, every transaction on its main chain is public: anyone can read the sending address, the receiving address and the amount.
MWEB adds a second place for transactions to live. The name comes from two parts.
Mimblewimble is a transaction design in which amounts are hidden and transactions are combined together, so the individual payments inside a block are hard to separate. The name is a joke: it is a tongue-tying spell from the Harry Potter books, chosen because the design ties up the information a chain normally reveals.
Extension block means a block attached alongside each ordinary block rather than inside it. Older software that does not understand the extension can still follow the main chain and treat those blocks as valid. This is what allowed MWEB to arrive as a soft fork, a change written so that nodes which have not upgraded still accept the new blocks. A change that splits the network into two incompatible chains is a hard fork. This was not one.
The practical result is two ways to hold the same coin. Coins are moved into the extension block, transacted there without the amounts being visible, and moved back out. The moves in and out are recorded on the public chain.
The purpose stated in the proposal was better privacy and better fungibility. Fungibility means one unit being fully interchangeable with another. When a coin's whole history is readable, some coins can be treated differently from others because of where they have been, and the units stop being equivalent.
How a change gets switched on without anyone approving it
MWEB was published as Litecoin Improvement Proposal 0003 in 2019, written by Charlie Lee, Andrew Yang and the developer David Burkett. A proposal on its own changes nothing. Two more things had to happen.
First, the code had to ship in the software that node operators and miners actually run. Operators choose whether to install it.
Second, mining power had to signal support. In this activation model, miners mark the blocks they produce to show they are ready for the change. If the share of marked blocks passes a set threshold inside a set window, the change locks in and switches on at a later block. Litecoin's threshold was 75 per cent of blocks. That level was reached on 2 May 2022, and MWEB locked in at block height 2,257,920, going live seventeen days later.
No regulator granted permission. No company signed anything. No exchange was consulted. The people who decided were the ones running the software and the ones producing blocks, which is how consensus changes on a public chain work. Litecoin has been the place where such a change went first before: Segregated Witness activated there in May 2017, about three and a half months before it activated on Bitcoin.
The activation timeline
| Date | Event |
|---|---|
| October 2011 | Litecoin launches as a fork of the Bitcoin software |
| 2019 | MWEB published as Litecoin Improvement Proposal 0003 |
| 2 May 2022 | Miner signalling passes 75 per cent; locked in at block 2,257,920 |
| 19 May 2022 | MWEB deployed on the network |
| June 2022 | Five South Korean exchanges delist Litecoin |
Is Litecoin private?
Only if a sender puts it there, and only as far as the number of other people doing the same allows.
Because MWEB is opt-in and separate, the great majority of Litecoin activity has remained on the transparent main chain. That matters more than it first appears, because of something called the anonymity set: the group of transactions yours could be confused with. Privacy on a shared ledger comes from being indistinguishable inside a crowd. A small crowd gives weak privacy no matter how good the cryptography is, and a large one gives strong privacy for the same design.
So the honest description of Litecoin is a public chain with a private option attached, where the strength of the option depends on how many people use it. The two figures a reader would need to judge that are the share of coins held in the extension block and the share of transactions using it, both of which change over time.
Why five South Korean exchanges removed it
In June 2022, weeks after MWEB went live, Upbit, Bithumb, Coinone, Korbit and Gopax all delisted Litecoin. They acted within days of each other.
The reason each gave was legal rather than commercial. South Korea's Act on the Reporting and Use of Specific Financial Transaction Information sets the rules exchanges operate under. It requires know your customer checks, meaning a business must identify the people it deals with, along with anti-money-laundering obligations, and it prohibits platforms from supporting anonymous transactions. Coinone's own notice named the MimbleWimble de-identification feature and money-laundering risk as its reason.
None of the exchanges alleged misconduct or cited an incident. The coin acquired a capability that the exchanges read as incompatible with the law they operate under, and the capability alone was enough. Listing decisions are made by each venue under its own regulator, and they change over time, so the position on any given exchange today is a question for that exchange's own notices.
What this case shows
Two properties of a public chain sit awkwardly together here, and Litecoin is the clearest documented example of them meeting.
A permissionless network can change itself. No permission is sought, and the process that switched MWEB on took a proposal, some code and a majority of mining power. That is the design working as intended.
The places most people reach the asset are not permissionless at all. Exchanges hold licences, answer to regulators and can be required to remove something. Distribution can be withdrawn far faster than a protocol change can be reversed, and it can be withdrawn for a technical property rather than for anything the asset or its holders did.
Litecoin is not alone in carrying features regulators treat differently from the market. Dogecoin, which began as a fork of Litecoin, went the other way and stayed entirely transparent.
Where to look next
- Litecoin price in Australian dollars for the live figure and the coin's key facts.
- Crypto prices in AUD for the other coins tracked here.
- Glossary for plain definitions of the terms used above.
- Guides for the rest of the explainers.
General information about how a public blockchain and its upgrade process work, not a recommendation of any asset, exchange or feature, and not guidance on using a privacy feature. Tradergy holds no assets, keeps no account and collects no personal data. Reviewed by the Tradergy editorial team, September 2026.
Sources
- Elliptic, Explaining MimbleWimble: the privacy upgrade to Litecoin, June 2022
- CryptoSlate, Top 5 Korean exchanges delist Litecoin, label it 'dark coin' following MWEB upgrade, June 2022
- crypto.news, South Korean Exchanges Delist Litecoin (LTC) After Privacy-focused MimbleWimble Upgrade, June 2022
- LIP-0003: MimbleWimble via Extension Blocks (Consensus layer), Andrew Yang, David Burkett and Charlie Lee, October 2019 - the proposal itself.
- LIP-0002: Extension Blocks (Consensus layer) - how an extension block ships as a soft fork.
- Coinone trading support termination notice for LTC, June 2022 - an exchange's own published reason, in its own words.
- MIMBLEWIMBLE, Tom Elvis Jedusor, July 2016 - the original paper, and the author's own explanation of the name.
Common questions
What is Litecoin MWEB?
MWEB is short for Mimblewimble Extension Blocks. It is an optional part of the Litecoin network, deployed on 19 May 2022, where transaction amounts and the parties involved are not published. It sits beside the ordinary Litecoin chain rather than replacing it, and using it is a choice each sender makes.
Is Litecoin a privacy coin?
Litecoin's main chain is public. Every transaction on it can be read by anyone with a block explorer, the same as Bitcoin. Since May 2022 the network has also carried an optional private layer called MWEB, so Litecoin has a privacy feature without being a privacy-only coin.
Why was Litecoin delisted in South Korea?
In June 2022, Upbit, Bithumb, Coinone, Korbit and Gopax removed Litecoin. They cited the Act on the Reporting and Use of Specific Financial Transaction Information, which requires identity checks and prohibits anonymous transactions on exchange platforms. Coinone's own published notice named the MimbleWimble de-identification feature and money-laundering risk.
Who approved the MWEB upgrade?
No company, board or regulator approved it. The design was published as Litecoin Improvement Proposal 0003 in 2019, written into node software, and then activated by miner signalling. Support passed the 75 per cent threshold on 2 May 2022 and the change locked in at block height 2,257,920.
Are all Litecoin transactions private now?
No. MWEB is opt-in, and most Litecoin activity has stayed on the transparent main chain. Coins have to be moved into the extension block deliberately, and moving them in and out is itself recorded on the public chain.