A small financial bounty and a flair for coding have been all it took to fork the Ordinals protocol to the world’s second-ever cryptocurrency community, Litecoin (LTC) earlier this week, its creator informed Cointelegraph.
On Feb. 18, an Australian software program engineer by the identify of Anthony Guerrera posted a repository to GitHub that forked the Bitcoin (BTC) Ordinals protocol to Litecoin. This allowed for nonfungible token (NFT)-like belongings on the Litecoin community in a lot the identical approach it had made it to Bitcoin earlier within the yr.
In an interview with Cointelegraph, Guerrera mentioned he was spurred to make a Litecoin Ordinal fork as a result of a 5 LTC bounty posted by the pseudonymous Twitter consumer Indigo Nakamoto on Feb. 11 that rose to 22 LTC, or about $2,000, to anybody who was first to efficiently create a fork.
22 $LTC to port Ordinals to #Litecoin from:
+ 5 $LTC @indigo_nakamoto
+ 5 $LTC @ryanwrights
+ 5 $LTC @MASTERBTCLTC
+ 2 $LTC @ChiefLitecoin
+ 5 $LTC @finitemaz https://t.co/7X4JfMzq97— Indigo | Nakamotoist (@indigo_nakamoto) February 16, 2023
“I knew it was possible because Litecoin has taproot as well as SegWit,” Guerrera mentioned, including:
“I was in a bit of a mad rush to try and get it done as fast as I could.”
Taproot and SegWit are the names given to the Bitcoin protocol updates that aimed to enhance the privateness and effectivity of the community but in addition allowed for NFT-like buildings referred to as “inscriptions” to be connected to satoshis.
The price to inscribe a picture onto the Bitcoin blockchain can price tens of {dollars} relying on its measurement however Guerrera mentioned the fee to inscribe a litoshi — the LTC equal to a satoshi — is “about two cents.”
Some extent of rivalry amongst Bitcoiners is the block house Ordinals take up on the community as a result of their knowledge measurement being far higher than transactions. Guerrera doesn’t assume this challenge will likely be as outstanding on Litecoin as a result of its bigger block measurement however might nonetheless probably eventuate.
“Pandora’s Box has already been opened and someone was going to do it so it may as well be me.”
Guerrera mentioned his LTC fork took round one week to create as “the changes were quite simple.” He defined he up to date the Ordinals code to work with inputs from the Litecoin community as a substitute of the Bitcoin community.
Parameters that differed between the blockchains comparable to the whole attainable variety of cash and block time creation variations additionally needed to be accounted for within the fork.
In a Feb. 19 tweet, Guerrera mentioned he’d inscribed the primary ever Litecoin Ordinal, placing the MimbleWimble whitepaper onto the blockchain within the so-named “inscription 0.”
The first #Litecoin #Ordinal has been inscribed on the Litecoin blockchain.
The mimblewimble whitepaper will reside inside Litecoin perpetually Ⓜ️ #MWEB!$LTC $BTC #NFT @SatoshiLite @finitemaz @ryanwrights @MASTERBTCLTC @ChiefLitecoin @indigo_nakamoto pic.twitter.com/ICLkTMjwRW
— Crypto Anthony (@anthonyonchain) February 19, 2023
The inscription of the whitepaper is within the wake of the May 2022 Mimblewimble Extension Blocks (MWEB) improve that permits Litecoin customers to opt-in to confidential transactions and different blockchain enhancements comparable to serving to cut back extra and pointless transaction knowledge.
Related: How the Ordinals motion will profit the Bitcoin blockchain
“I wanted to dedicate the first inscription to that and make it aware that Litecoin now has this privacy sidechain attached to it,” Guerrera mentioned.
“I’m a fan of the technology and I like that privacy can become a thing on these public ledgers.”
As for the way forward for the forked protocol, Guerrera will “keep contributing to this fork as much as I can” and port throughout updates from the unique Ordinals.
“I probably want to hand over this as I don’t want it to take too much of my time,” he added. “I’m doing other things. I’ve got other things on my plate.”
