Litecoin Successfully Activates SegWit – CoinDesk

An extended-debated change initially supposed to enhance bitcoin has now locked in on the lesser-identified cryptocurrency community litecoin.

Segregated Witness (SegWit) has been the topic of bitcoin’s notorious scaling debate for a few years now, however it’s now getting a possibility to shine on litecoin, or so its supporters argue, main some to consider that it’ll now assist reveal whether or not issues about the change are legitimate for bitcoin.

The change first locked-in two weeks in the past, main to 2 extra weeks of ready to make sure demand for the improve remained constant. Earlier in the present day, the change activated at block 1201536.

What does that imply? Litecoin customers can now start utilizing the brand new model of transaction, and there was at the least one such transaction to date.

However, most advocates are excited in regards to the new applied sciences that may now be constructed on high of a community with SegWit. For instance, the Lightning Network, which may increase litecoin transactions by as a lot as one million instances, can now hypothetically be used to maneuver actual cash.

Litecoin developer Loshan T advised CoinDesk:

“I think today will be a great day for pushing more awesome tech into Litecoin. With SegWit activated on litecoin’s mainnet, I cannot wait until we deploy confidential transactions, Lightning Networks, MAST and Schnorr signatures.”

Still, these tasks are quite early stage. Developers from the startup Lightning Labs, at the least, appear to assume that it’s too early to speak about sending cash over the nonetheless-experimental community and plan to proceed enhancing their code first.

Uncertain future

It’s unclear what precisely this activation means and what function litecoin will play sooner or later.

Loshan talked about that some onlookers are skeptical that litecoin actually wants the Lightning Network, since litecoin transaction blocks should not but full, however pointed to trustless cross-chain transactions between bitcoin and litecoin as a possible Lightning use case that the developer believes may benefit each cryptocurrencies.

One piece is that wallets might want to improve to assist the kind of transactions. Multi-signature pockets mSIGNA, for instance, has done so.

Further, there have been some worries in regards to the activation – some logistical and a few political. Earlier excessive-degree analysis confirmed that builders are not sure whether or not all miners and exchanges are fully ready for the change.

Time will inform if these issues imply something. Less than an hour after the change, the cryptocurrency seems to be working usually.

Litecoin picture through SegWit tracker web site