Litecoin Activates Privacy Upgrade Mimblewimble That Support Anonymous Transactions

  • Litecoin has activated the privacy protocol Mimblewimble.
  • Mimblewimble allows the obfuscation of sender and recipient addresses, as well as transaction amounts.
  • Privacy coins are frowned upon by the governments, so it remains to be seen how they will react.

The Litecoin network has officially activated privacy protocol Mimblewimble, the Litecoin Foundation announced on May 20. The privacy feature has long been in the works, and now allows holders to hide the sender and receiver addresses, and transaction amounts like other privacy coins.

With Mimblewimble enabled, transactions can now be anonymous on the Litecoin network. Additionally, tokens now become fungible, meaning that it is far harder to track assets across the network.

Mimblewimble was first designed far back in 2016 and has been used in a handful of projects. However, Litecoin has become the biggest network to implement the protocol so far. Mimblewimble should also result in better security on the chain because it uses discrete logarithms.

The upgrade was activated at block 2,265,984, and the Litecoin community joined a livestream party to celebrate the occasion. The upgrade comes over ten years after Litecoin first launched.

Litecoin’s hash rate has remained steady since the event took place, but the general sentiment is one of optimism. The LTC token has gone up nearly 5% over the past 24 hours — nothing to write home about, but perhaps a sign of things to come.

mimblewimble
LTC hashrate: CoinWarz

Grin++ founder David Burkett was grateful for a smooth launch, thanking testers for their efforts. Litecoin creator Charlie Lee, meanwhile, expressed his emotions in the form of several GIFs.

Privacy Coins, a Space To Watch

Privacy coins are popular among ardent crypto enthusiasts and have remained a mainstay of the market for years. Zcash and Monero are among those popular privacy tokens. Zcash, in particular, has been making the headlines as it was revealed that Edward Snowden played a key role in its launch.

This has happened despite a growing crackdown on these assets by lawmakers, who fear they might be used to fund crimes. South Korea has banned privacy coins altogether, and other countries are considering the same.

Of course, it is impossible to completely ban the assets. At most, they can be delisted from centralized exchanges. They can still continue to operate on decentralized platforms, so it will be interesting to see how lawmakers respond to the development of these unique assets.

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