The current situation with Litecoin (LTC) and what the future holds for the altcoin
"Digital silver," as crypto-enthusiasts call Litecoin, is among the top 20 largest cryptocurrencies, indicating that the altcoin's demand among investors and traders is relatively high.
Litecoin (LTC) halving
On August 2, 2023, on block 2,520,000 in the Litecoin network, another third halving occurred, resulting in a halving of the reward to miners from 12.5 to 6.25 LTC.
After the halving, the price of Litecoin cryptocurrency fell from $94 to $65 — almost by a third. The decline continued until October 2023, when the LTC rate reached $61. The altcoin then began to recover and reached a new yearly high of $109 in March 2024 before returning to decline: as of August 2024, LTC is at $63, 84% below its all-time high (ATH) of $412 in May 2021 during a global bull cycle in the cryptocurrency market.
If the earlier trend continues, Litecoin could set new highs during the next bull cycle, given that the altcoin has managed to maintain a high position in the cryptocurrency rankings. In contrast, other major altcoins have long lost their top spots.
According to the analytical service OKLink, the next Litecoin halving should take place tentatively on July 30, 2027.
Litecoin outlook and updates
Litecoin differs little from the leading blockchain, Bitcoin, and other similar altcoins besides the hashing algorithm, block size, and some other technical details. The protocol itself is not developing very fast, although developers periodically introduce new features into the blockchain and expand its capabilities.
One of the latest significant updates to the Litecoin blockchain is the MimbleWimble (MWEB) protocol, which allows data about transactions to be hidden and thus increases their confidentiality. The MimbleWimble protocol is used in blockchains such as Grin and Moonbeam and has proven effective. One of the critical elements of the MWEB protocol in the Litecoin network is CoinJoin. This feature allows LTC payments to be aggregated and then distributed to different addresses, obfuscating the trail for an outside observer, thus achieving high transaction confidentiality.
Litecoin developers are also working on introducing new features to the blockchain to increase its functionality and reliability.
The first such feature was Atomic Swap, which allows trading exchanges directly through smart contracts in the blockchain. The developers want to extend Atomic Swap to cross-chain swaps, which will allow assets to be exchanged between different blockchain networks. This will enable the creation of decentralized exchanges (DEXes) based on the Litecoin blockchain and integrate the network into existing DeFi trading solutions.
Litecoin developers introduced an advanced Litecoin Space blockchain observer, which displays detailed data for analyzing network transactions, including unconfirmed ones. Litecoin Space is an analog of Mempool Space for Bitcoin. In the future, the developers plan to add support for MWEB transactions and inscriptions (similar to Bitcoin) and OmniLite assets — tokens based on the Litecoin blockchain.
Of course, the number of updates to the blockchain is small, but they are large enough to allow the Litecoin network to cover a vast DeFi sector.
