After the boom, hype and success that Ordinals NFTs are having on the Bitcoin blockchain, a developer brought this project to the Litecoin blockchain. Today on NFTexpress I will tell you what this new innovation in the NFTs ecosystem is all about.
Today it became known that Litecoin will begin supporting NFTs on its blockchain after developer Anthony Guerrera accepted a challenge from Indigo Nakamoto, who offered 22 LTC (over $2000 USD) to whoever could bring Ordinals to the Litecoin network.
Anthony, known on Twitter as anthonyonchain and on GitHub as ynohtna92, achieved this milestone by forking the Bitcoin Ordinals protocol to support Litecoin and subsequently coined a copy of the MimbleWimble project’s whitepaper, a Litecoin upgrade that improves privacy and transaction size.
Everything was done in a legal way, since, Anthony used open source tools. This means that anyone can audit, copy, fork and consequently create new versions with different modifications.The Ordinals code for Litecoin is also open source and published in a Github repository, so anyone will be able to run a Litecoin node and make use of the Ordinals protocol.
Although, they are called NFTs because of their essence as non-fungible tokens, there is still no browser in which the created NFTs can be viewed. However, by means of a full Litecoin node and execution of Ordinals code it could be viewed locally.So far there are no Litecoin wallets that support NFTs either. Litecoin wallets that support NFTsbut there are already more than 1000 Ordinals NFTs created on the Litecoin network.
The first NFT in Litecoin. Mimblewimble privacy protocol whitepaper. Source: Anthony Guerrera
Litecoin currently ranks 14th among cryptocurrencies by market capitalization, with $6,765,442,010, according to CoinMarketCap.
About Litecoin
Litecoin is a secure network that allows for much simpler processes than other blockchains and also has low fees. The latter is one of the main reasons why it could be a viable option when minting NFTs.
The founder of the project is the developer and scientist known as Charlie Lee. He previously worked on Web2 projects such as Google and Web3 projects such as Alphabet’s Coinbase.
In addition, the Litecoin network is used as a payment method, so many cryptocurrency payment processors have this currency as their main asset. Consequently, we can expect it to be the gateway for artists and creators to enter this ecosystem in a simpler way.
On the other hand, Litecoin, like any other project, has its own native token in its own network called LTC. This asset can be mined, since, it uses the Proof of Work (PoW) consensus mechanism.
Also, anyone can easily connect to a Litecoin node using various tools such as Now Nodes, subsequently being able to get all the blockchain data they need.
Advantages of NFTs in Litecoin
One of the advantages of NFTs in Litecoin is the underlying software that powers the network, which has proven over time to be extremely reliable as it is one of the oldest cryptocurrencies active to this day.
In addition, the performance of this blockchain is constantly undergoing multiple improvements in order to compete with Bitcoin. Currently, its transactions take approximately 2.5 minutes to verify, which makes it more scalable over time.
Finally, Litecoin’s reputation is very good in the crypto industry as a whole, since it is possible to develop and easily create other services such as NFTs.
Disadvantages of NFTs in Litecoin
The disadvantages of creating NFTs on the Litecoin blockchain is based on the fact that it is not as popular as other blockchains, nor is it popular in the NFT ecosystem like Ethereum (its main competition in this non-fungible token ecosystem).
Also, being PoW it is slower than other blockchains that use PoS or Proof of Stake. Networks that are based on Proof of Stake are usually much faster in terms of performance and therefore, for cryptos users are usually more attractive when it comes to minting NFTs.
All investment or financial opinions on behalf of NFTexpress should not be taken as recommendations. This article is informational/educational material. Before making any type of investment do your own research.
Written by Rodrigo Catalan (TW: @RodrigoCatalanB) for NFT Express.