Litecoin

Litecoin has risen massively over last week in part prompted by founder Charilie Lee's appearance on Glenn Beck and CNBC Squawk. He couldn’t have picked a better time with all the buzz surrounding the crypto space. From this seven-day chart on coinmarketcap you can see LItecoin has more than doubled.

However, not soon after his appearance on CNBC, Charlie sent out the following tweet.

My guess is he wants to calm down speculative buying which could potentially send the price mooning before the technological innovations are delivered. Recently an article published online by medium outlined some of the upcoming improvements to Litecoin. Look forward to seeing MAST, Lightning Network, Atomic Swaps, Convenants, Confidential Transactions, and TL&DR being implemented in the next couple years. There’s no indication of a concrete timeline, however you can expect much this innovation to be roll out in the next 12-24 months.

Lightning Network

Lets begin with the Lightning Network, which allows for practically instant transactions to occur at almost no cost. The Litecoin Foundation and MIT are currently developing the network. In November, 90% of the integration past the test successfully, which is up from 62% from October. However, this doesn’t mean implementation is around the corner. The remaining 10% of the code could take just as it took to write the first 90%. Additionally, Jack Mallers is working on a proptype wallet for the LN called ZAP. It’s completely open source. He encourages people who interested in helping the network scale to reach out to him.

Atomic Swaps

The community has long looked forward to the day of P2P transactions, which would circumvent the need for exchanges. This way users could trade freely without having exposure to third party risk. Back in September Charlie was able to successfully execute atomic swaps with DCR, VTC, and BTC.







This was done on-chain and didn’t utilize the lightning network. The hope is to stabilize LN wallets and then integrate atomic swaps into the LN. End result, P2P trades done instantaneously at almost no cost.

MAST – Anonymous Transactions

Merkelized Abstract Syntax Trees is another tech layer for segwit activated coins that allow for faster transactions, increased scalability, and most importantly PRIVACY. In my opinion, LTC desperately needs this added feature to remain competitive with other crypto currencies. People are beginning to understand the benefits of transacting with cryptos and Bitcoin specifically is gaining more merchant adoption. However, come this next tax season uncle Sam will be looking for his cut of the crypto profits. This may push more users towards privacy coins like Monero. In fact many musicians recently announced they would be offering discounts to customer who paid in Monero for their albums. Since there’s no way to track the transactions, it would make it very hard for governments to collect taxes on these sales unless it was charged at register. MAST would give LTC anonymity by reducing different sets into a single compact hash called the Merkle Root. This data will exist somewhere on the MAST but nobody would be able to recreate the data to find the source. Moreover, it would allow for complex smart contract possibilities without slowing down the network. MAST will only reveal executed smart contracts, thus saving space on the blockchain.

The Future for Litecoin

There’s a lot in store for Litecoin in the coming year. My bet is that we haven’t seen anything yet. The space is on the cusp of entering the early adopter stage with institutional money ready at the sideline. Once the infrastructure has been developed to allow institutional and retail buyers to invest more easily, the crypto space is going erupt. With the all tech being developed and Charlie Lee at the helm, LItecoin is well positioned to ride the fiat wave.

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