Litecoin is a one of my favorite coins. One of the reasons is that I have used it in multiple transactions in real life and had no issues. It was fast and fees were very negligible. Another reason is that I have a friend who is obsessed with Litecoin and never stops talking about it if the topic is cryptos. Today, there are many more interesting projects in crypto world. Most attention is given to NFTs, Defi, Web3, etc. There is still value in veteran crypto projects like Litecoin. Like bitcoin they have gone through the test of times.
You man have heard about Mimblewimble, the new feature that has been in works on for a while now. Mimblewimble is a tongue tying spell from Harry Potter that ties the target's tongue to keep them from exposing information. As a protocol that provides privacy by a unique way of structuring and storing transactions on the blockchain. Implementing this protocol in the Litecoin blockchain, will give people an option to use privacy feature when sending transactions. This in essence will make Litecoin a privacy coin. However, this feature is only optional, transactions can still remain public if that's what people choose.
At the end of January 2022, Litecoin Foundation announced the release of Mimblewibmle Extension Block Upgrade. This was confirmed by the lead developer behind Litecoin's MWEB, David Burkett, and was included in Litcoin Core 0.21.2 release candidate. This indeed was a great news. Finally, something is happening in Litecoin world. It wasn't clear to me thought if it was in a test phase or ready to be activated on mainnet.
Three days ago there was another news on the progress, that states MWEB had successfully activated on testnet and chain is progressing forward. It looks like there were some bugs discovered since January announcement and there were fixed. While everything seems to be ready now, they will continue testing and present final release candidate for node operators to upgrade and miners to start signaling.
It is still not completely clear to me, if at this current moment all tests are complete and they have the release candidate. If not, how long more will it take. Even after that, how long will it take for this new feature to be activated on the mainnet.
Privacy is a great feature for a network to have, especially a network like Litecoin that has proven to be secure and worked without any issues for so many year. I believe this will be a great addition to Litecoin and it will make it more useful. However, there may also be concerns in the future that some exchanges may delist privacy coins. Even if that happens, I doubt it will hurt Litecoin much as it already has a global brand recognition.
I like Litecoin. But I do like Bitcoin more. The fact that Litecoin never even tried to compete with Bitcoin but rather served as a testing playground of new possibilities with blockchain technologies, and when bitcoin was compared to gold, litecoin compared itself to silver. With this point of view, I can see bitcoin as a store of value and litecoin used for daily small transactions. I can be completely wrong. But the fact remains, litecoin is not going anywhere and will be around for a while.
Litecoin also has served as a good trading coins. I did have profitable trades with litecoin and tend to buy more when I get a chance. While its price may not have performed as well as bitcoin or ethereum, it tends to surprise market participants from time to time. I think I will always hold some litecoins, just in case.
Mimblewimble - don't tell anyone.