The Litecoin privacy proposal adds MimbleWimble, and researchers are worried about being removed from the exchange

On October 23, Litecoin announced a draft privacy upgrade plan, using technology originally designed for Bitcoin. The proposal will allow users to conduct Mimble Wimble (MW) transactions through sidechains like Extension Blocks for alternative privacy.

Litecoin

Claire Lee, the founder of Litecoin, originally announced plans to explore privacy technology earlier this year. He pointed out that "the battle for expansion has passed, and the next battlefield will be fungibility and privacy."

Today, a draft of the Litecoin Improvement Proposal (LIP) has been released, and the project will need to assess community responses before writing, testing, and auditing new code.

What is an extended block and MimbleWimble?

The technology included in the Litecoin proposal was originally developed for the Bitcoin blockchain. The extended block was originally proposed by Johnson Lau in 2013 and is planned as a bitcoin soft-fork expansion solution that enables better interchangeability while minimizing the potential impact on the existing wallet ecosystem. In the end, the proposal was rejected and lost to Bitcoin's SegWit expansion.

MimbleWimble was presented by an anonymous developer in a July 2016 white paper using the pseudonym Tom Elvis Jedusor. The payee can randomly select a series of blind factors (used to encrypt the random number of bitcoins in the transaction) provided by the sender, thereby disrupting the transaction. Mother MimbleWimble has been deployed in two cryptocurrencies, Grin and Beam.

Litecoin privacy program is expected to activate after one year

The Litecoin proposal "joined MimbleWimble, an alternative new trading format, through the extended block." The team stated that “the extension time of the extended block and the main block is 2.5 minutes”. The ability to deploy a private transaction occurs in an "extended block" where users can use MimbleWimble by "transferring their currency into and out of the extended block via a collection transaction."

This sounds complicated, but by moving the privacy part of the transaction to the extended block sidechain, this means that this upgrade can be done with a backward compatible soft fork. This also means that there is no risk of producing two versions of Litecoin.

The Litecoin Foundation has proposed an activation plan one year after the code is released – but if 75% of the computing power supports this improvement, activation may be advanced. As this proposal has just been announced, there will be no changes in the privacy of the Litecoin blockchain until next year.

After the privacy feature, Litecoin may be removed?

However, this proposal is not zero risk. The extended block has never been deployed on other blockchains.

Lite Yang researcher and technology author Andrew Yang said:

“It will take a lot of time, effort and review to ensure that it is fully compliant. If you don’t, you may lose money or expand your supply.”

In addition to technical concerns, Yang also wants to assess the response of government regulators, banks and exchanges.

“In the past few months, we have seen Coinbase remove the privacy of coins like Zcash and Dash; we have seen a similar situation at OKEx. The optional MimbleWimble feature will make Liteco face the same situation. ""

Yang said that this may cause Litecoin to face liquidity risks.

However, the scope of this upgrade may not be limited to Litecoin. More and more blockchain developers are shifting their focus from capacity expansion to privacy measures.

Because of the "Bit Gold, Wright Silver" statement, Yang regards this privacy upgrade as a test field for Bitcoin:

“I want to see something similar on the Bitcoin network. Whether Bitcoin can be upgraded this way will depend on the community – but the upgrade of Litecoin will provide proof of concept and case studies, which I hope will be valuable. ""

We will continue to update Blocking; if you have any questions or suggestions, please contact us!

Share:

Was this article helpful?

93 out of 132 found this helpful

Discover more

Blockchain

After the delisting of FTX, Binance entered the options market, why did it choose the "American option" that is different?

Binance has been very eye-catching recently, withdrawing its own FTX tokens and preparing to launch new businesses su...

Blockchain

Babbitt Column | From Central Bank to Digital Currency Exchange: A Typical Case of Banking Sinking

Author: Sun vice president As the author mentioned in the previous article, the once-populated bottom-level public ch...

Blockchain

The consensus of using "money" to forge coins - a high-tech that condenses developers' miners' exchanges and users

In 1776, the American Revolutionary War broke out. Why is this war going to fight? The American side said that "...

Blockchain

Value capture in the crypto world: who are the supercapturers?

The crypto world is still very early, and the entire industry is still in its infancy. In this case, which tracks are...

Blockchain

The hacker is keeping a close eye on the currency exchange: 5 were killed and 8 were "Lai Lai"

Digital currency is becoming a fertile ground for hackers. The hot exchange is undoubtedly a huge "gold mine&quo...

Blockchain

The first in the industry! US cryptocurrency exchange INX seeks IPO listing

The cryptocurrency exchange attempted to raise funds through IPOs rather than ICOs, and INX was the first. On August ...