The final time we checked with Litecoin, its creator Charlie Lee left Coinbase to deal with his personal venture. The mission at hand was implementing SegWit within the Litecoin blockchain, which is simpler mentioned than accomplished. This story is as thrilling as they come. It has twists and turns and it ends with a bang. Through the next story, we’ll be taught loads about consensus. One of essentially the most mysterious points of the cryptocurrency area is how choices are made. Are you prepared to be taught by a sensible instance?
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But earlier than we get into it, let’s let Mr. Lee himself define SegWit:
“SegWit stands for Segregated Witness. It’s basically an upgrade that would separate out the signature (i.e. witness) from the transaction.”
By extracting the signature, transactions occupy much less area. So, every block can maintain extra transactions. SegWit successfully will increase the block dimension restrict of the blockchain.
That being mentioned, let’s get again to Litecoin ’s 10-year historical past.
Why Did Charlie Lee Wanted Litecoin To Implement SegWit?
At the time, within the Bitcoin community, miners have been blocking SegWit. “Basically the fear was that once SegWit is activated, miners can steal any coins sent to SegWit addresses. Anyone technical enough knows that this was not true.” So, Lee’s plan was to implement SegWit on Litecoin to present everybody that the improve was secure, and thus assist clear up the FUD that surrounded it.
Basically the worry was that after SegWit is activated, miners can steal any cash despatched to SegWit addresses. Anyone technical sufficient is aware of that this was not true. It was not potential for miners to steal cash that approach. Unfortunately Bitcoin testnet was not helpful right here.
— Charlie Lee (@SatoshiLite) October 8, 2021
Bitcoin’s Testnet wasn’t useful on this case as a result of its cash are nugatory, so it doesn’t present an incentive for dangerous actors to assault it. It couldn’t “test out the game theory of the blockchain.” On Litecoin, on the other hand, there can be (*10*) Besides serving to Bitcoin beat the FUD, Charlie Lee had other reasons to implement SegWit in his venture.
“So you may wonder why I’m pushing for SegWit. Litecoin does not have a block size problem. That’s right, and SegWit is not just a block scaling solution. I would even say block scaling is just a side benefit of SegWit. The main fix is transaction malleability, which would allow Lightning Networks (LN) to be built on top of Litecoin.”
LTC worth chart for 10/12/2021 on Gemini | Source: LTC/USD on TradingView.com
The Foundation Of The Litecoin Foundation
A fast subsection, as a result of this sequence is about Litecoin’s historical past. While the SegWit story advanced, Warren Togami stepped down as lead developer. Shaolin Fry joined the group particularly “to help us get SegWit activated on Litecoin.” Loshan and Thrasher additionally joined to assist with the code.
Xinxi Wang (@TheRealXinxi) and Franklyn Richards (@LitecoinDotCom) joined me as Director to the Litecoin Foundation and we had Loshan (@loshan1212) and Thrasher (@thrasher_au) as builders engaged on the code.
People began to turn into enthusiastic about Litecoin once more!
— Charlie Lee (@SatoshiLite) October 8, 2021
At the identical time, they created The Litecoin Foundation with Xinxi Wang, Franklyn Richards, and Charlie Lee himself as Directors.
Enter The Bad Guy Of The Movie
It’s time for the Litecoin and SegWit story to meet that legendary interval generally known as The Blocksize War. At the time, mining was a comparatively centralized affair and Bitmain was the… important participant. They produced the “most efficient ASICs” and miners have been closely incentivized to vote with them… or else.
“The co-founder of Bitamin, Jihan Wu,is a big supporter of scaling Bitcoin onchain,” Lee informs. That means, he was in opposition to SegWit and in opposition to The Lightning Network as scaling options. Jihan Wu was within the camp of merely forking Bitcoin to improve block sizes, a notion that the group ended up rejecting. However, on the time, Wu was singlehandedly stopping SegWit adoption in Bitcoin. And he had nice affect over Litecoin too.
Unfortunately that turned very contentious. Because Jihan had a whole lot of affect, he single-handedly was ready to block SegWit activation on Bitcoin. And as a result of Bitmain additionally made one of the vital environment friendly Litecoin miners, he had a whole lot of affect on Litecoin miners additionally.
— Charlie Lee (@SatoshiLite) October 8, 2021
So, how may Charlie Lee and his band of misfits circumvent this large impediment blocking their approach? “The difference between Bitcoin and Litecoin is me,” he said. “Bitcoin is more decentralized. There’s no one to come out to speak on what their vision of Bitcoin is.” Lee may and did promote his help of SegWit among the many miners and tried to seduce a few of them to vote his way. “Anyways, this was what I set out to do. I met and talked to many miners throughout the end of 2016 to early 2017.”
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We know that his plan labored, but it surely was loads tougher than anticipated. Jihan Wu had the assets and affect to render his efforts out of date, plus he had an ace up his sleeve. How did Charlie Lee proceeded? How did he make SegWit on Litecoin occur and who stepped up to the plate to assist him? Find all of that and extra in tomorrow’s subsequent and ultimate episode of Litecoin ‘s 10-year historical past.
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