Charlie Lee Sums Up Litecoin’s 10 Years History. Part Four: SegWit Activation

In the present day is the day, Litecoin’s tenth anniversary. Congratulations to Charlie Lee and everybody concerned within the undertaking through the years. To rejoice, we’re exploring Litecoin’s historical past by way of the eyes of its creator. We lined its fair launch, the long-hard road to exchanges adopting LTC, and we introduced the SegWit story. It’s time to complete it.

The final time, we launched Bitmain’s co-founder Jihan Wu. Reportedly, he was singlehandedly stopping SegWit adoption within the Bitcoin blockchain. Lee’s plan was to make use of Litecoin as a Testnet of types for SegWit. “I noticed that right here’s an opportunity for Litecoin to do one thing to assist Bitcoin. If we are able to get SegWit on Litecoin, it may filter out all of the FUD and show that SegWit is protected and a very good improve for Bitcoin.” To perform that, he needed to persuade miners to aspect with him and never with the producer of essentially the most environment friendly ASICs.

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In line with Coindesk, there was one other essential incentive for Litecoin to undertake SegWit:

“Since SegWit might probably pave the best way for applied sciences that broaden the worth proposition of cryptocurrencies, the transfer towards accepting the improve has reignited pleasure across the usually less-popular cryptocurrency. Litecoin’s value has almost tripled because the finish of March consequently.”

And that is the place as we speak’s story begins.

LTC value chart for 10/13/2021 on FX | Supply: LTC/USD on TradingView.com

Charlie Lee Talks To Litecoin‘s Miners

Throughout the finish of 2016 and the start of 2017, Lee talked to everybody. Certainly one of his first victories was to get “Innosilicon, one other LTC ASIC maker” to his aspect. On this a part of the story, we are able to see how exhausting Jihan Wu was enjoying. A “big LTC Miner” was able to sign for SegWit in precept, however, since his machines have been in a farm managed by Jihan Wu, he was afraid that he would possibly lose entry to low cost electrical energy.

Innosilicon was instantly on board with SegWit. They agreed with me that it is the greatest path ahead. They usually have been in a position to persuade a few of their prospects to assist SegWit.

Certainly one of their prospects was an enormous LTC miner. He owned about 5% of the hashrate. Having him was big.

— Charlie Lee (@SatoshiLite) October 8, 2021

The target was to get “75% of blocks sign for SegWit inside a 2-week timeframe.” Simpler mentioned than carried out. LitecoinPool was the primary nice pool to aspect with SegWit. One other massive mining pool, F2pool, additionally promised to do it, however they didn’t straight away. This turned out to be nice for the trigger as a result of they supplied a transparent sign that the market supported the SegWit transition. Lee narrates, “over the following month, F2pool truly flipped flopped. They might sign after which cease signaling. The market reacted accordingly. When F2pool began signaling, the worth will go up, and vice versa.” 

To complicate issues, “Jihan needed me to personally go to him and the miners in China to persuade them about SegWit.” Lee didn’t just like the power-play, however that was nothing. As increasingly more miners signaled for SegWit, Jihan turned to the ace up his sleeve. There was a rumor that “Bitmain was constructing a ton of LTC miners and was going to show all of them on themselves to dam the improve.”

Over the following week, increasingly more miners began signaling for SegWit and it began to look inevitable. After which this occurred. Bitmain was constructing a ton of LTC miners and was going to show all of them on themselves to dam the improve. 😡https://t.co/Zvs9srExJJ

— Charlie Lee (@SatoshiLite) October 8, 2021

It was time for Charlie Lee to name within the massive weapons.

The Person Activated Tender Fork

Since each the miners and the market have been clearly signaling in assist of SegWit, Charlie Lee felt he had the proper “to drag the UASF trump card out.” One of many wonders of decentralized organizations is that the customers may also activate a gentle fork. “If nearly all of customers and exchanges run the UASF code, SegWit will activate.” If that occurred, miners needed to comply and undertake SegWit as effectively.

UASF stands for Person Activated Tender Fork. What it means is that as an alternative of getting the gentle fork (SegWit) being miner activated, the person decides to activate the gentle fork in a future date. If nearly all of customers and exchanges run the UASF code, SegWit will activate.

— Charlie Lee (@SatoshiLite) October 8, 2021

The specter of a UASF was an excessive amount of to bear, so the miners agreed to satisfy with Charlie Lee on-line and work issues out. 

Sure we are going to do roundtable on-line with @SatoshiLite ASAP, not want to attend for June. https://t.co/rVWQjLu5kJ

— Jiang Zhuoer BTC.TOP (@JiangZhuoer) April 20, 2017

And the remainder is history, “On April 21, I met with Jihan, Innosilicon, and miners for over 8 hours IIRC. It was exhausting.“ They reached an settlement, this is the blog post asserting it. Amongst different issues, it says:

“We agree that protocol improve needs to be made below group consensus, and shouldn’t be unilateral motion of builders nor miners. We advocate that Litecoin protocol improve resolution needs to be made based mostly on the wants of the customers, by way of the roundtable assembly voting course of, and activated by miner voting.”

Charlie Lee reflects, “Though this appears so dangerous for a decentralized cryptocurrency to have a closed door assembly to make choices that have an effect on the way forward for Litecoin, I felt prefer it was a compromise I’m prepared to take. It’s higher than an all out battle between the miners and I.”

On Might tenth, 2017, SegWit was activated on Litecoin.

SegWit has activated on Litecoin! 💥😁 pic.twitter.com/lpeklpQpZe

— Charlie Lee (@SatoshiLite) May 10, 2017

After that, a number of historic transactions occurred

“Lots of people have been saying that segwit is unsafe as a result of segwit cash are “anyone-can-spend” and may be stolen. So lets put this to the check. I put up $1MM of LTC right into a segwit deal with. You possibly can see it’s a segwit deal with as a result of I despatched and spent 1 LTC first to disclose the redeemscript.”

• Just a few months later, Bitcoin activated SegWit by way of a UASF. “It’s exhausting to know precisely how a lot Litecoin helped with this. I really feel prefer it positively has helped.”
• Days later, Charlie Lee and Strike’s Jack Mallers starred in the first Lightning Network request/ payment transaction on Litecoin. That man Jack Mallers has a option to get entangled in historic transactions, like this one, and this one.
• That very same month, Lee did his first Atomic Swap transaction. “This exhibits how one can transfer cash between totally different chains in a decentralized manner. It was an incredible proof of idea and paved the best way for decentralized exchanges.”
• And later, he did another Atomic Swap however this time with Bitcoin.
• And the following month, Lee did “the primary ever cross-chain swap between BTC and LTC through Lightning.” This time it was with the now world-famous Lightning Labs.

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Wasn’t that a tremendous, superb story? We realized a lot. And, despite the fact that we mentioned this was the final chapter within the Litecoin 10-year historical past, Charlie Lee has one other anecdote to inform. Be a part of us tomorrow for an additional legendary second in crypto land. The notorious story of when Charlie Lee offered all of his Litecoin.

Featured Picture: Charlie Lee's image from this tweet | Charts by TradingView