The Litecoin Community Tests an LTC-20 Standard

Recently, a developer from Litecoin Labs has proposed an interesting experiment to the Litecoin community. His suggestion involves testing a new experimental protocol known as LTC-20, a construct derived from the BRC-20 protocol using the LTC Ordinals system. Although the proposal likely came from Anthony Herrera, the creator of Litecoin Ordinals, this can't be confirmed as the message wasn't signed. On the Litecoin Labs technical documentation website, he describes the experiment as follows:

This is just a fun experimental standard demonstrating that you can create off-chain balance states with inscriptions. It by no means should be considered THE standard for fungibility on bitcoin with ordinals, as I believe there are almost certainly better design choices and optimization improvements to be made. Consequently, this is an extremely dynamic experiment, and I strongly discourage any financial decisions to be made on the basis of it's design. I do, however, encourage the bitcoin community to tinker with standard designs and optimizations until a general consensus on best practices is met (or to decide that this is a bad idea altogether!).

After setting up the LTC-20 standard, the developer urges the creation and distribution of a specific amount of experimental tokens, to transfer this asset amongst wallets, and then to scrutinize the outcome.

The purpose of the experiment

The original Ordinals protocol launched a numbering system that allocates a unique serial number (ordinal) to each satoshi to trace its movement during transactions. An equivalent in Litecoin, named LTC Ordinals, was introduced by Anthony Herrera. This protocol makes every litoshi (the Litecoin equivalent to satoshi) unique by affixing additional data such as text or an image. Essentially, it's akin to an NFT.

Litecoin's most recent privacy enhancement is MimbleWimble. When compared to BTC, it can handle significantly more data using LTC Ordinals.

What is the LTC-20 standard?

LTC-20 is a variant of the BRC-20 protocol, which enables the creation of interchangeable tokens through Ordinals within the Bitcoin network.

This development has received public endorsement from the team at Litecoin Punks, as stated on their Twitter account. They have already begun creating their collection using the LTC-20 standard.

The level of attention that LTC-20 can garner compared to the Bitcoin-NFT Ordinals remains to be seen. But it's worth remembering that Litecoin, often referred to as ‘digital silver', is one of the oldest cryptocurrencies in the market, with a substantial fan base and significant influence within the crypto industry. Therefore, a potential NFT surge among the numerous LTC holders isn't out of the question.

The timing for the LTC-20 hype seems rather opportune

This newfound hype might get an additional boost due to the forthcoming Litecoin halving event. The halving is slated to occur on August 3, 2023. As per tradition, after the halving, the reward for mining each block will reduce from 12.5 to 6.25 LTC. In previous halving cycles, the coin's value typically rose significantly over the course of 1 to 1.5 years. Whether this trend will repeat itself and how the buzz surrounding the upcoming LTC-20 standard tokens will affect it remain to be seen.