Other than being considered a bitcoin silver-counterpart, Litecoin is one of the top ten assets that has never been technically sound, and LTC has always lagged behind in space in terms of development.
Admitted, Litecoin is based out of Bitcoin‘s code but their past protocols have spiraled down into a state of stagnancy. Until now.
According to a recent update from David Burkett, lead developer on the Litecoin Mimblewimble project, he has currently completed the framework that builds valid headers, blocks, and transactions for functional testing and he is going to start integrating the developments on the Litecoin codebase. The update will be initiated with ConnectBlock logic. The post stated,
“This is the part where blocks are validated “to ensure valid UTXOs are being spent, no double-spends, etc, and is also responsible for actually adding the blocks to the chain”.
Burkett indicated that they have set -up a ‘high-level plan for May’ and are aiming to conduct several other forms of testing and integration within the LTC codebase.
Admitting that the update has been long and overdue, David also gave an update on the Grin++ side and suggested that it had achieved a release candidate v1.0.0 status, which made its ‘first non-beta version.’
The idea of MimbleWimble was first revealed in 2016 when a white paper author with a pen name, Tom Elvis Jedusor released it in on a Bitcoin research channel.
The objective of the project was to expand on the efficiency of Litecoin’s blockchain scalability, privacy, and make LTC transactions more fungible in the space. In an earlier blog post, Burkett had stated,
“This will include all block & tx validation rules, basic p2p messaging, transaction pool, syncing, and the ability to mine blocks. This will NOT include a usable GUI wallet for casual users to test it out. Transactions will likely need to be created manually at first, or via a cli or automated tool.”
Additionally, early in March, protocols for one-sided MimbleWimble transactions in the form of a Litecoin Improvement Proposal [LIP] was posted by the developer as well.