Segwit, an upgrade originally developed for Bitcoin, is activated on Litecoin on May 10. Prior to this, Litecoin’s scaling debate had been dragging on for weeks and it was unclear whether segwit would be activated in the end. What happened? What made Chinese miners change their mind? You will find everything you need to know in the interview with PZ, general secretary of Litecoin Global Roundtable.

Thank you for taking time from your busy schedule to meet me today.

It’s no big deal. I’d take every opportunity to let the public learn more about Litecoin.

So what’s your story with Litecoin? Why chose to popularize the use of Litecoin in China, why not Bitcoin or other cryptocurrencies?

I’ve been working to popularize the use of Litecoin in China as a Liteocin community member for years. I’m doing this job because I trust Charlie and Warren. I know they will work with Litecoin developers to improve Litecoin and make it great again while remaining committed to justice and transparency.

How come you still support Liteocin when the price of litecoin dropped dramatically from 380 CNY to 5 CNY? Honestly, the performance of litecoin has been disheartening in the past several years.

Many Chinese started investing in Litecoin because of me and some contributed to the thriving of the Litecoin ecosystem. I know there were times when Litecoin had a really bad performance, but I told myself that I would do my best to let Litecoin great again. Those litecoiners who’ve been so supportive, I just don’t want to let them down.

As a litecoiner, I’m really happy to have you with us. I know a lot of development teams of altcoins who simply abandoned their supporters in difficult times.

Persistence is victory in itself. When Litecoin price dropped from 380 CNY to 5 CNY, litecoiners made me a tombstone.

Anyway, the good news is that the long-debated segwit has now locked in on litecoin. What you do think of segwit?

May 11 marks that a new page has been turned in the history of Litecoin. Segwit was originally intended to improve Bitcoin and it has been the subject of Bitcoin’s scaling debate for years. For many reasons, it failed to be activated on Bitcoin. At Litecoin, we have effective developers and we are technically identical to Bitcoin. Plus, with the support of shaolinfry, everything worked out really well and we successfully activated segwit on Litecoin.

Segwit code was completed over one year ago, why it took miners so long to activate it?

For one thing, a great part of Litecoin miners in China are Bitcoin miners, so they criticized segwit from Bitcoin’s perspective. They worry that adding segwit would pose a huge risk to the security of Litecoin network. And I guess we’d all agree that the value of cryptocurrency lies in its very security and stability of the network. For another, they complained about the complexity of segwit code and wanted a simpler upgrade that would not harm the network. We see a lot of argument among developers and miners and sometimes even insults going on all over the forums.

Rumors say miners were not supportive of segwit because they were afraid that what happened to Bitcoin Roundtable Consensus might happen again to Litecoin. Is that true?

Yeah, that’s true. Actually, Bitcoin Roundtable Consensus represented a golden opportunity for Bitcoin developers and miners to tap the potential of scaling technologies and improve the Bitcoin network. Unexpectedly, what happened later profoundly shaken Chinese miners’ trust in Bitcoin Core. Plus, they were concerned that the same thing would happen to L Litecoin. So when Litecoin added segwit to their source code, Chinese miners made their stance clear that they would not support segwit on litecoin. And even when some foreign mining pools signaled for segwit, about 75 percent hash power were still against segwit.

I heard that it’s all your idea to establish a Litecoin roundtable. Why did you want to do that?

Indeed, it was my idea. Actually, I set up a LTChome in China. It took me half a year to make the roundtable happen. Sometimes I was dog-tired for being on the road nonstop. 2017 will witness many upgrades to Litecoin, among which segwit is the most important one. It opens up the possibility of adding new technologies. Unfortunately, because of misunderstandings and varied interests, we were not able to active segwit for many reasons. To seek for common ground, I wanted to coordinate with Litecoin stakeholders about the future of Liteocin. And when I started the initiative, big Chinese exchanges, chip producers, mining machine manufacturers and miners with great hash power were very supportive of me. Without their support, the roundtable would be just an empty talk.

How difficult it was to coordinate the interests of different parties?

It was probably the hardest thing I’ve ever done. The Litecoin community is very diverse with different points of view and different interests. Frankly, if there were not such a roundtable, Litecoin would split. Therefore, participating members of the roundtable agreed and signed that protocol upgrade should be made under community consensus, and should not be unilateral action of developers nor miners. When coordinating with different parties, I realized that seeking for common ground is never an easy job and I should put myself in other people’s shoes instead of convincing them to give up their own interests. Besides, I had to choose a perfect date and a perfect place to bring these CEOs together.

A little bird told me that a company from mainland China was deliberately blocking the development of Litecoin, is that true?

Sheer nonsense. I heard a lot of rumors about people trying to prevent Litecoin being great. But I could not say anything about it out of confidentiality. How could anyone who invested hundreds of millions of CNY in Litecoin try to sabotage the future of Litecoin? Each and every member of the roundtable want the same thing: to make Litecoin great again.

So you mean these CEOs would attend all meetings in person?

Yes, some of them would fly from overseas and fly back when the meeting finished. I’d like to take this chance to thank Wang Chun for being so supportive of me.

How many meeting have you had?

Officially, I’d say three. We worked on the rules and regulations of the roundtable at the first meeting held on Feb 18,2017. And about one month later on March 11, we decided to start a Litecoin blockchain global council, which is the predecessor of the Litecoin Roundtable. The third one and probably the most famous one, was held on WeChat for over eight hours, from 12pm to 8pm Beijing Standard Time on April 21. At the meeting, we reached Litecoin Roundtable Resolution.

Thank you for what you’ve done to improve Litecoin. Now as segwit has been activated on Litecoin, what’s your future plan?