Charlie Lee Sums Up Litecoin ‘s 10 Years History. Part Three: SegWit Intro

The last time we checked with Litecoin, its creator Charlie Lee left Coinbase to focus on his own project. The mission at hand was implementing SegWit in the Litecoin blockchain, which is easier said than done. This story is as exciting as they come. It has twists and turns and it ends with a bang. Through the following tale, we’ll learn a lot about consensus. One of the most mysterious aspects of the cryptocurrency space is how decisions are made. Are you ready to learn through a practical example? Related Reading | Charlie Lee Sums Up Litecoin’s 10 Years History. Part One: Fair Launch But before we get into it, let’s let Mr. Lee himself define Segwit: “SegWit stands for Segregated Witness. It’s basically an upgrade that would separate out the signature (i.e. witness) from the transaction.” By extracting the signature, the transactions occupy less space. So, there’s more space in each block to add more transactions. SegWit effectively increases the block size limit of the blockchain. That being said, let’s get back to Litecoin ’s 10-year history. Why Did Charlie Lee Wanted Litecoin To Implement SegWit? At the time, in the Bitcoin network, miners were blocking SegWit. “Basically the fear was that once SegWit is activated, miners can steal any coins sent to SegWit addresses. Anyone technical enough knows that this was not true.” So, Lee’s plan was to implement SegWit on Litecoin to show everyone that the upgrade was ...