How Litecoin came to be and Charlie Lee's suggestion for enhancing BTC & LTC fee mechanism

Did you know, that Litecoin, from it's structure, is nearly identical to Bitcoin? That's right - Charlie Lee, the creator of Litecoin, simply copied the Bitcoin code, modified and tweaked it to his liking and shared his creation on Bitcointalk.org forums. A little digging around reveals this post on October 9th, 2011.

So what are the things he changed in Litecoin? Let's head on to wikipedia for a quick reference. Only 2 bullet points? Litecoin is practically Bitcoin.

As you can see, not much, besides faster block generation - 2.5 minutes versus the 10-minute timespan for Bitcoin. According to the devs, this feature allows transactions on LTC network be confirmed faster than on the Bitcoin network. A higher number of coins and a some changes to hashing algorithm. Let's leave the full tecnical mumbo-jumbo out.

And the development of new features for Litecoin has never been hard either. Litecoin dev team would just have to wait, until the Bitcoin devs implement new features and they could take these changes and implement them on Litecoin too.

As time passes, new enhancements appear and this time, the Segwit update, that allows for cheaper and faster transactions, was implemented on Litecoin network before Bitcoin. This was part of the idea behind Lee's thought process - that Litecoin could be a testing ground for features, that will be implemented into Bitcoin eventually. He wrote about how he would like Litecoin to come out of its comatose state and start leading Bitcoin, on segwit.org, on January 2017.

_{Via segwit.org}

So Lee and Litecoin are not piggybackers. Charlie Lee and Litecoin have given their contribution to the blockchain tech. And now, Charlie Lee is out with another potential solution for a better and more accurate transaction fee estimation on the Litecoin and Bitcoin networks.

At the current state - you can easily leave your transaction in a limbo on the blockchain if you estimate your fee wroong and set the transaction with a fee, that is too low. Sure, it might go through or bounce back eventually, but that could take days, if not longer.

And who wants to overpay? Why pay more than the other guys paid? This is the worst part. You are sending a minuscule amount of BTC, yet you pay an enourmous amount of tx fees for the payment to reach its destination.

So Lee's suggestion is that miners broadcast the lowest fee, that is included in a mined block, in it's header. New upcoming transactions with lower fees than the one in the header won't be included. Since the minimum fee is included and publicly broadcasted, clients will be able to calculate and estimate the needed transaction fee more easily and accurately.

_{Via Charlie Lee [LTC]}

Those who still stubbornly low-ball with their tx fees, will have to wait though.

Follow Charlie Lee on Twitter here: https://twitter.com/SatoshiLite

---

Earlier Charlie Lee has been heavily criticized on pushing Litecoin to grow the value of his own holdings and when he wanted to clear the air and sold his holdings, he got even more criticism.

Nevertheless, the man has clear goals and wants to help Litecoin to climb past it's previous ATH (all time high).

_Source

So stack up on your Litecoin holdings, 2018 is going to be a good year for LTC.

---

Also, my mate @forexbrokr posed a question i should have covered in this post - will the implementation on Lightning Networks make BTC and LTC payments equal? I have no idea before this gets implemented, but in one the links below, Lee pondered the same question. Here's what he said:

_{Via segwit.org}

So it's a waiting game, for now.

---

Sources used in this publication:

Charlie Lee Wants to Test a New Solution for Bitcoin Fee Estimation on Litecoin

My Vision For SegWit And Lightning Networks On Litecoin And Bitcoin

Litecoin on Wikipedia

[ANN] Litecoin - a lite version of Bitcoin. Launched!

---

---

Check out Chainbb, an alternative frontend for STEEM network. If you like forum style, that's the platform for you.

---

_{Title image from pixabay}

Are you looking for Minnowbooster, Buildteam or Steemvoter support? Or are you looking to grow on Steemit or just chat? Check out Minnowbooster Discord Chat via the link below.




BuildTeam