Litecoin Moves A Step Closer To Confidential Transactions With The Latest Agreement With Beam

Litecoin is looking to use the Mimblewimble protocol to enhance the fungibility and privacy of Litecoin (LTC). Notably, this implies that users will be able to convert a “regular LTC into a Mimblewimble variant of LTC and vice versa.” The ultimate goal is to enhance the confidentiality surrounding transactions in LTC. 

In a statement, Litecoin said that they wish to implement the Mimblewimble protocol through Extension Blocks on Litecoin. Interestingly, this is a move aimed at leveraging Beam’s desire to deliver complete privacy in cryptoverse. Ultimately, Beam is interested in promoting the Mimblewimble protocol such that it can the industry standard for security.

The Litecoin-Beam partnership is mutually beneficial

Notably, Litecoin got interested in the protocol a while back and has since been exploring the different ways it can leverage it. According to Charlie Lee, Litecoin’s creator, the addition of the confidential transactions feature will only require a soft fork. In particular, a soft fork of a network implies that the process is so trivial that users even won’t realize something happened.  This is of course different from a hard fork where a whole new network forks from the parent to make it two.

Commenting on the developments, Keyser Söze of Beam said Litecoin’s interest is huge boost for Mimblewimble protocol. Notably, this will offer the protocol an opportunity for peer review. Further, it offers the team at Beam a challenge to put their “baby” to use in a major project. In particular, the implementation process of the project is a daunting one and it might take over a year. Therefore, it is evident that both Litecoin and Beam stand to gain from the partnership.

Monero already implementing the Mimblewimble protocol

While agreeing with the Beam executive, Charlie Lee said that they will tweak the Mimblewimble protocol to be bulletproof. Further, Lee observed that adding fungibility to cryptocurrency will soon be a matter of necessity.

In a tweet, he said, “Fungibility is the only property of sound money that is missing from Bitcoin & Litecoin. Now that the scaling debate is behind us, the next battleground will be on fungibility and privacy. I am now focused on making Litecoin more fungible by adding Confidential Transactions.”

Interestingly, Mimblewimble is a fairly new kid on the block that injects a new life in cryptoverse. The protocol already boasts of privacy coins like Beam and Grin. Further, Monero is using a sidechain called Tari to implement the Mimblewimble protocol.