There were two proposals drafted on GitHub: LIP-0002 Extension Block and LIP-0003 MimbleWimble for establishing privacy features for the network, a technique originally designed for Bitcoin. The proposals were authored by Andrew Yang, Litecoin Creator Charlie Lee, and Grin Developer David Burkett in a bid to reduce the risks associated with a publicly-traceable transparent ledger.
This is a huge step for Litecoin since extension blocks have never been implemented on a live network and despite risks associated with it, Lee was positive about Litecoin’s fate following the implementation of the privacy protocol. In an interview for Grin Talk, Lee said,
“We have like a lot of liquidity and Litecoin is on all major exchanges, it’s one of the most liquid coins out there and it has a history of eight years history of running flawlessly and just works really well.”
Litecoin already listed on major cryptocurrency exchanges and being traded by a significant number of users already has an added advantage than rolling-out a “new version” of the coin altogether through a hard fork. Lee stated,
“The reason why we decided to do extension blocks is because we want to do it in a soft fork, where existing nodes wouldn’t have to upgrade mean obviously over time they should upgrade it up to the latest code but they’re not forced to right away”
The upgrade being a soft-fork would mean there would not be any need for “another version of Litecoin”. MW via extension block proposal could be implemented earlier if it gets a perfect number of heads up from the community and can be activated a year after the release of the program code.
