What is Litecoin?
Litecoin is a peer to peer currency and an open source software platform launched under the license of MIT/X11. It inspiration arose from the similar Bitcoin, the creation of Litcoin and transfer is based on a protocol of an open source and it is decentralized in control. The idea behind Litecoin by its developers was to enhance upon Bitcoin, it provides various key diferences. As of Nov. 2013, Litecoin had been spread by Medias with institutions like Wall Journal, CBNC, and the New York Times making citations that’s similar to Bitcoin which may possibly be successor. In the cryptocurrency market capitalization, Litecoin is the second largest.
HISTORY
Litecoin was launched by an open source client on GitHub On the 7th of Oct. 2011 by Charles Lee, who has worked with Google before. It was a fork of the Bitcoin Qt client, making differences primarily by having reduced block generation time, to increase the maximum number of coin, different Hashing algorithm, and a slightly modified. As of 2013, Litecoin was mentioned by the Economist as an alternative to Bitcoin, and it has notably shot up in price recently. During Nov. 2013, the total value of Litecoin increases in growth dramatically and included a 100% leap in less than 24 Hrs.
DEVELOPMENT
The version 0.8.5.1 of Litecoin was launched in Nov. 2013. The releases made some changes and added an enhanced security to the network of Litecoin. Version 0.8.6.1 was released earlier in Dec. 2013 by the Litecoin team. The new version of Litecoin provides a 20 times reduction in transaction fees, and also include security and performance enhancement in the network and client. The binaries and source codes were earlier released in the #litecoin IRC channel, on official forums of Litecoins, and on reddit, with details on power users to enable a Litecoin supernode to the configuration file, while the main site was to be updated after much of the network were operating on the new version. This update was used to make sure that transaction at low rates from 0.8.6.1 version clients would not be affected by clients using older versions. In April year 2014, another version of Litecoin was also launched, which was version 0.8.7.1, and it amended some few errors and also included a fix that relates to Heartbleed security bug.
DIFFERENCES OF LITECOIN FROM BITCOIN
Litecoin provides three major differences from Bitcoin, its developers hopes it will make it super than Bitcoin. The Litecoin network’s target is to process a block in every 2.5 minutes, while Bitcoin is in 10 minutes per block. The developer shows it is faster in confirming transactions. The issue of faster block times is inflated by the size of block chain, and a rise in the number of lost blocks. The benefit is that a greater resistance is included to a double spending attack over the same time as Bitcoin, if the computing power of both networks is the same. Litecoin makes use of scrypt in proof of work algorithm, a sequence of memory hard function that requires an asymptotically more memory than easy algorithm memory hard. The network of Litecoin will produce 84 million litecoins and or more than 4 times as many units of currencies issued by Bitcoin Network.
The main purpose of making use of scrypt was to give room to miners to mine Bitcoin and Litecoin at the same time. The decision to use scypt was also avoided partially to giving an advantage to video card (GPU), FPGA and ASIC miners above CPU miners. It is around 1,000 times slower to mine Litecoins with CPU or video card more than mining Bitcoin with the same video card or CPU. Because of the algorithm scypt used by Litecoin, FPGA and ASIC devices that was made for mining Litecoin are hard to create and higher in cost to produce compared to Bitcoin that uses SHA-256.
TRANSACTIONS
A peer to peer work network just like Bitcoin controls the transactions of Litecoins, balances and clarifies via scrypt, the scheme of proof of work meaning that Litecoins are used when a minimum hash value is found, at which a block point is formed, the process of locating the hashes and creating the blocks is called mining. A geometric series formed by the issuing rate and the rate half of every 840,000 blocks, per 4 years, totaling around 84 million of Litecoins.
ADDRESSES
Payments in Litecoin network are done by transferring to addresses that are based on the digital signature. With strings of 33 numbers and letters that always start with L.
CONFIRMATIONS
Transactions of Litecoin are stored in the Litecoin blockchain. A new block is combined with the blockchain around 2.5 minutes when a small hash value is located for the scheme of proof of work. A transaction is termed completed after 6 blocks or 15 minutes, but for smaller transactions, lesser than 6 blocks may be required for security reasons.
