Cryptocurrencies such as Bitcoin and Ethereum are currently well known even beyond the crypto scene. Somewhat unknown, but no less interesting is the Litecoin. But what is Litecoin and what makes him?
The Litecoin was released by former Google employee Charlie Lee, who launched the currency in October 2011 and integrated it into an open source software project. In fact, the story of Litecoin began in November 2013.
In the trading area, the Litecoin is often referred to as "crypto-silver". This term is not so wrong: In the Litecoin network significantly more coins can be generated, which is why significantly more coins are in circulation.
Instead of using SHA256, Litecoin uses scrypt in its proof-of-work algorithm. Scrypt is specifically designed to complicate brute-force attacks with specialized hardware, but is very memory-intensive and requires that you need a high-performance GPU for mining.
As mentioned earlier, the Litecoin network can generate significantly more coins - while the maximum number of Bitcoins is 21 million, it is 84 million for Litecoin.
In the medium term, the Lightning Network aims to create a solution for scaling cryptocurrencies. Separate micropayment channels should facilitate the transaction of coins away from the blockchain. Nevertheless, the usability of Litecoin is currently very limited. While many online shops are already accepting payments via Bitcoin or Ethereum, the Litecoin is still in the dark.
Source of info cryptomonday.de.
