Introduction

Litecoin is a peer-to-peer crypto currency that was the vision of Charlie Lee—a former employee of Google In
2011
He created litecoin using the same source code as Bitcoin, this makes litecoin share similar characteristics with Bitcoin.

It was created for cheaper transactions and high efficiency in everyday use. Litecoin was created using the same source code that was used to create Bitcoin. But Bitcoin was created as a means of storing value. The mining process is much faster compared to Bitcoin.
Litecoin also uses blockchain technology, like Bitcoin, for the transfer of funds directly between individuals and businesses, and since it's a form of digital money it makes use of public ledgers which records all the transactions. Since Litecoin operates a decentralized system for processing payments this makes it uncontrollable by government and other entities.

To have a better view of litecoin, there are some aspects that we would talk about. We would appreciate it more when we see the wonders of this coin.

What is litecoin?

Litecoin

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To have a good background of what litecoin is about, let us look at this simple real life situation.
Imagine me here in Nigeria, wants to send money to you @yohan2on in Uganda, if I'm using the centralised financial institutions such as banks and payment portals like Western Union, they would require you to fill out lots of forms, then have to wait for days for the transaction to occur, and then the issue of paying high transaction costs.
But what if I came across litecoin, learnt about it and decided to use it to make the same transfer of funds, all this issues would not be witnessed.
It is relatively cheaper to send litecoin. In fact its cost is just a few cents. The time taken for the transfer to happen is 2.5 minutes which is far quicker than banks. The beauty about it is that it doesn't matter if I'm sending to someone on my street, in my village or in Uganda—it takes minutes to send the funds. And since litecoin utilizes the decentralized blockchain system, you don't have to fill any forms to send or receive funds.

How does litecoin work?

We would be looking at how litecoin run but in it's simplest way.
The technology that litecoin utilizes is not easy to wrap your head around how blockchain technology works, because most of the terms, concepts and usage are new to us.
However we can try to understand it by using real world examples, since we are used to them already.

So going by the example that I used above. If I want to transfer funds to you or anyone in particular. Before that person receive the funds, there is a need to have the litecoin wallet.
This wallet can be likened to a bank account. I log onto my litecoin wallet and send funds to your litecoin wallet address.
Once I send the funds, they are sent to the litecoin blockchain.
Thousands of other litecoin transactions are passing through the litecoin blockchain.
A new block is formed every 2.5 minutes. This block carries lots of transportation recorded on it, including my own transaction. The system then authenticate the transaction by verifying it before it reaches you. There is no single authority to authenticate a transaction because it's decentralized, so a group of miners use their computers a d hence computing powers to solve very difficult puzzles. This is how transaction blocks are verified. In 2.5 minutes the puzzles have been solved by the miners, and all the transactions in the block has been confirmed, you can now receive your funds.

Is litecoin scalable?

Simply put scalability is how litecoin can handle more transaction. For perspective, Bitcoin can handle only 7 transactions every second, Ethereum can handle 15 transactions per second
Then how much can litecoin handle? Litecoin is able to process 56 transactions per minute. This make it really faster than both Bitcoin and Ethereum. It also stands a chance to withstand High demands when the litecoin becomes more popular in the future.

Way litecoin is mined

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In blockchain technology, mining is basically the process by which people can send and receive funds, without needing a third-party. So many types of mining exists but each of them are a type of consensus model.
Litecoin follows the proof-of-work consensus model. This is the type of model that Bitcoin follow, although it is slightly different.
Bitcoin make use of the SHA-256 hashing. This means that as the difficulty of the puzzle gets harder as more transactions are being processed. This makes the miners require more electricity to confirm a block.
Litecoin blockchain technology is different, it relies on my what is known as the Scrypt algorithm. This means that people mining litecoin can use GPUs (graphic processing units).

The way it works is that litecoin needs to be created by means of mining, then those mined coins are transferred via an open source, cryptographic protocols. It uses the decentralized blockchain technology to record and store it's data.

Is litecoin secure?

Most of the applications and businesses are run by centralised servers, which makes it easier for your data to be hacked. We can only trust these third-party companies to prevent such from happening. Also your bank account is another case study of a centralised server. If an individual succeeds in hacking the central servers, they could gain access to your bank account and steal all your money.
Decentralized systems were built to tackle such events and litecoin is one of them. Litecoin is very difficult to hack, you need to have control of more than 50% of the network to be able to hack it. This means that the hacker would have to generate up to 55% of computing powers throughout the network.
It is nearly impossible for any one person to be able to get this much control, because as we have just seen the network is too big.

You should know how to store your coins and in this instance litecoin.
There are two ways in you can store your litecoin.

1. Desktop/mobile wallet (software wallet):
This is one of the easiest way to store you litecoin. It is mostly for those with small amount of litecoin and need to quickly have access to them.
It is only you that can manage the wallet because you are the only one that has the private key.

2. Hardware wallets:
There would be a time when you have a lot of litecoin, which may not be sensible to store in your desktop/software wallet. Just like having a lot of funds with you, which you can't put all in your wallet. You have to store in the bank.
One of the best ways to do this is by employing the use of hardware wallets. Something like storing your money in a vault. Hardware wallets allows you to store coins offline, because there is no connection online.

Conclusion

We can see that there has been some similarities with Bitcoin. After all the creator of litecoin wanted to make something more efficient than Bitcoin.
This is a list that shows the difference between litecoin and Bitcoin.

Litecoin:
Block: 2.5 minutes/block
Max Coin supply: 84 million coins
Hash algorithm: Scrypt
Initial reward: 50coins/block
Current: 50 coins / block
Current coin market cap: $20.89B
Current coin market price: $313.81
Current coin market position: 9
Launch date: Oct 7th 2011
Creator: Charlie Lee

Bitcoin:
Blocks: 10 mins/block
Max coin supply: 21 million coins
Hash algorithm: SHA2560
Initial reward: 50coins/block
Current reward: 25coins/block
Current coin market cap: $1.15T
Current coin market price: $61,408.38
Current coin market position: 1
Launch date: Jan 3 2009
Creator: Satoshi Nakamura