The Litecoin Association has released a roadmap for the hereafter of the well-known cryptocurrency, introducing novel software clients, protocol improvements, as well as the expansion of the diverse communication as well as governance structures. The primary points of the roadmap draw of piece of occupation organisation software for both consumers as well as miners, touching on a novel membership campaign for the Litecoin Association (LA), legal issues, as well as communication amongst the Litecoin community. Litecoin Is Back amongst a New Roadmap
The document may signal the outset of a comeback for litecoin — fifty-fifty though it never actually went away. LTC prices inwards recent months cause got hovered around the $4-5 USD mark, later lying depression for much of 2015.
Litecoin has historically been the cryptocurrency amongst the highest name recognition as well as marketplace seat cap after bitcoin, but has fallen out of the limelight inwards recent times thank y'all to other projects promising features beyond mere currency transactions — namely Ethereum. The Litecoin community has also suffered tike setbacks, such equally a hack resulting in stolen login credentials from its primary online forum, LitecoinTalk.
In Nov 2015, the project had to fight an application from a High German citizen to trademark the give-and-take “litecoin” inwards the European Union — nether classes that look to cause got nix to make amongst cryptocurrency. Despite never achieving the same levels of consumer as well as merchant credence equally bitcoin, Litecoin remains popular in China, where it is traded on all major exchanges as well as enjoys an exalted status inwards a higher house other altcoins. About 75 per centum of all LTC trading happens inwards Chinese yuan (CNY), amongst the remaining quarter coming to a greater extent than oftentimes than non from USD markets. The iii most active LTC exchanges are BTC-e, Bitfinex as well as OKCoin.
New Wallets for iOS, Android
One hindrance to Litecoin consumer adoption has been a lack of wallets on the iOS platform, but this is about to change.
Developed inwards cooperation amongst the squad that produced bitcoin’s Bread wallet, “LoafWallet” is a “Simple Payment Verification” (SPV) wallet designed for piece of cake mobile purpose amongst safety features such as AES hardware encryption as well as app sandboxing. It also promises a elementary user interface, integration amongst Apple Watch as well as Siri, as well as the mightiness to buy coins from within the app.
A version of Electrum-LTC for Android devices is scheduled for belatedly July, complementing the desktop customer already available for all major operating systems. Electrum-LTC for Android volition also cause got SPV, keeping an indexed re-create of the blockchain on Electrum’s servers. Wallets volition characteristic encrypted mortal keys as well as cause got a mutual depression temperature storage option.
Other Online Services
The Litecoin Association volition bring over responsibleness for the project’s social media tipping bot “LiteTip,” previously an independent projection that has overstep inactive equally of late. The roadmap also gives evolution updates for Litecoin Node, a tool that simplifies the deployment as well as maintenance of Litecoin supernodes. Online wallet LiteVault is scheduled for an update equally well. Improvements to Litecoin Core
A major loose of reference client Litecoin Core v0.13.x is due inwards 2016, featuring the next notable improvements: - Faster signature validation using the libsecp256k library developed past times Bitcoin Core developers.
- Wallet pruning to trim block size storage.
- Memory usage improvements including amend mempool filtering of transactions.
Inbuilt Tor command socket API support if Tor is running as well as also flow isolation for
Tor communication.
- Functionality to trim upload traffic.
Segregated Witness to allow for greater transaction output as well as mitigation of
transaction malleability.
ZMQ support – ZeroMQ is a high performance asynchronous messaging library,
aimed at purpose inwards distributed concurrent connections. Litecoin volition back upward ZMQ for
broadcasting block as well as transaction data.
Hierarchical Deterministic wallets – Litecoin Core volition back upward hierarchical
deterministic wallets (a.k.a. HD wallets).
Obfuscated blockchain data – Several antivirus applications honour the Litecoin
stored blockchain information equally a malware threat. Litecoin v0.13 volition obfuscate the blockchain information to rid these faux positives.
Keeping inwards draw amongst proposed improvements to Bitcoin, Litecoin’s ain protocol volition adopt a number of changes to facilitate the features listed above. These modifications volition also brand the currency compatible amongst complex smart contracts as well as the Lightning Network.
The most up-to-date, stable releases of Litecoin Core are available for download at Litecoin.org. Community Issues
The roadmap promises a novel version of the once-active forum, LitecoinTalk. The master was hacked inwards March 2016 as well as has been relegated to a read-only archive e'er since.
The Litecoin Association itself, nether the leadership of 5 directors, including Andrew Vegetabile, is inwards the procedure of re-engaging the community later lying dormant for a time. The Association is developing a novel website designed to live on a community information hub. H5N1 fundraiser as well as novel membership campaign are also inwards the works.
In add-on to money for daily operations such equally hosting, communications as well as DDoS protection, the Association requires funds to hire specialized evolution talent as well as to struggle the battle inwards Europe over command of the Litecoin trademark.
The LA also announced Robert English linguistic communication (AKA Red as well as KSAREDFX) equally the new Systems Administrator next the divergence of Ryszard Mielcarek. English linguistic communication volition laid to operate on the LA’s novel forums. Meanwhile, Rishi Nair of Chicago-based Nair Law LLC. volition draft novel organisation bylaws that provide governance for the Association as well as its operations.
A Brief History of Litecoin
Litecoin was initially developed as well as released inwards 2011 past times Charlie Lee, intended to cause got like utility to Bitcoin spell addressing what Lee believed were shortcomings of the Bitcoin network.
Litecoin processes novel transaction blocks every 2.5 minutes, equally opposed to Bitcoin’s 10 infinitesimal intervals, as well as its memory-hungry Scrypt encryption algorithm is designed to overstep along the network decentralized past times slowing the growth of ASIC mining hardware. The altcoin also has a larger supply, amongst the full number of litecoins available for mining laid at 84 million.
Often touted equally the “silver to Bitcoin’s gold,” litecoin’s toll has traditionally been lower but has followed trading patterns like to bitcoin. Its toll reached a zenith inwards Nov 2013, ascent over to $40, mirroring bitcoin’s $1300 peak, but has since fallen downwards.
With the publication of its shiny novel roadmap, the Litecoin Association as well as community is hoping for a LTC renaissance — amongst increased value as well as a render to prominence exterior China, onboarding novel consumers, merchants as well as speculators.
