Review on Litecoin by Sharron Robertson

Name: Litecoin
Item: Litecoin
Rating: 4

June 16, 2019

Litecoin Project Review

Litecoin is often labelled as the younger sibling of Bitcoin. It is a peer-to-peer cryptocurrency that requires Blockchain technology to keep a transparent ledger of all digital transactions completed between individuals and organisations, without the need for third-parties such as payment processing firms or high street banks.

Although Litecoin uses the same open source code as Bitcoin, there are some subtle differences between the two. In fact, Litecoin processes transactions faster and at higher volumes than Bitcoin and can generate new blocks four times quicker than Bitcoin.
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Litecoin was to create a cryptocurrency that would minimise the time it takes to confirm new blocks from ten minutes to two-and-a-half minutes, allowing for a greater volume of transactions. 
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Litecoin has a supply limit of 84 million Litecoins. Once the market cap has been met, no other Litecoin blocks can be mined. Apparently, more than 55 million Litecoins have been released or mined to date.
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The mining procedure of Litecoin differs significantly from that of its older brother, Bitcoin. Although both utilise a proof-of-work consensus where computational power is needed to resolve difficult cryptographic puzzles, Litecoin goes about its proof-of-work a little differently. While Bitcoin uses the well-known SHA-256 algorithm which requires heaps of processing power, Litecoin has sought to find a workaround to avoid wasting energy by using the Scrypt algorithm.
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Pros

With its ability to complete digital transactions four times faster than Bitcoin, Litecoin is becoming a popular choice for everyday payments.
Litecoin mining is more accessible to everyday people thanks to its new Scrypt algorithm.
Another decentralised cryptocurrency, overseen by the community of coders that patrol the Litecoin Blockchain.
Operational for more than six years, which is far longer than most altcoins.

Cons

As a modified version of Bitcoin, Litecoin could face an uncertain future if Bitcoin’s scalability issues are resolved.
The integration of Segwit in Bitcoin has enabled a greater number of transactions in Bitcoin blocks, already watering down Litecoin’s benefits.