LBRY (pronounced “Library”) is a decentralized digital content distribution protocol and a marketplace for the same. It supports a variety of content which includes but not limited to videos, songs, ebooks, etc. LBRY uses blockchain at its core, which enables content to only be controlled by its author/ publisher, not by any third party, effectively eliminating issues like censorship and copyright strikes. Since the code of the LBRY project is open-source, developers can create their own decentralized apps (dApps). Content creators can use these apps to upload their content on the LBRY network and monetize it by setting a fee. LBRY credits or simply LBC is the cryptocurrency created by the LBRY network to fuel its entire digital content market. The LBC coin is required by consumers to access the monetized content on LBRY network. The LBRY platform also allows LBC mining by giving block rewards. Jeremy Kauffman co-founded LBRY Inc. with the vision of a decentralized global content hub, controlled and owned by no one. Currently, Jeremy is the chief executive officer of LBRY Inc. Before working on the LBRY project, Jeremy founded TopScore, a million dollars event and activity registrations startup. There are three other co-founders who serves on different positions in LRBY Inc: Alex Grintsvayg (Chief Technical Officer), Josh Finer (Director of Operations and Analytics), and Jack Robison (Protocol Developer). LBRY provides its own official app, which can be used to store LBC. The LBRY app is available for multiple operating systems such as Windows, MacOS, and Linux. Android and iOS versions are still in development. Other than its official LBRY wallet, users can opt for the Coinomi mobile wallet, which is recommended by LBRY. LBC can only be obtained through exchange. Users can also take advantage of LBC mining and various rewards given in LBC coin by LBRY network to its users. Although the concept behind the LBRY network has a lot of potential for growth, it faces competition directly against the entertainment giants such as YouTube and Netflix, and some of these platforms have been around for more than a decade.
Litecoin is a peer-to-peer cryptocurrency created by Charlie Lee. It was created based on the Bitcoin protocol but differs in terms of the hashing algorithm used. Litecoin uses the memory intensive Scrypt proof of work mining algorithm. Scrypt allows consumer-grade hardware such as GPU to mine those coins. Why Litecoin? Litecoin is a cryptocurrency that has evolved from Bitcoin after its own popularity in the industry, this alternative, or ‘altcoin’ has emerged to allow investors to diversify their digital currency package, according to Investopedia. Litecoin is one of the most prominent altcoins and was created by former Google employee and Director of Engineering at Coinbase, Charlie Lee. Litecoin was the first to alter Bitcoin and the most significant difference is that it takes 2.5 minutes for Litecoin to generate a block, or transaction, in comparison to Bitcoin's 10 minutes. ‘While this matters little to traders, miners who use hardware to run Bitcoin's network cannot switch over to Litecoin. This keeps bigger mining conglomerates away from Litecoin because they cannot easily optimize their profits by swapping to another coin, contributing to a more decentralized experience. Litecoin also has bigger blocks, and more coins in circulation, making it more affordable and swift when transacting,’ Investopedia explained. As explained above, Litecoin can transact a lot faster than Bitcoin, but there are also a number of other characteristics that investors need to know before trading. Litecoin can handle higher volumes of transactions because of the capability of transacting faster and if Bitcoin attempted to transact on the scale of its altcoin, a code update would be needed. However, Litecoin’s blocks would be larger, but with more ‘orphaned blocks'. The faster block time of litecoin reduces the risk of double spending attacks - this is theoretical in the case of both networks having the same hashing power. Litecoin Technical Details: The transaction confirmation time taken for Litecoin is about 2.5 minutes on average (as compared to Bitcoin's 10 minutes). The Litecoin network is scheduled to cap at 84 million currency units. Litecoin has inspired many other popular alternative currencies (eg. Dogecoin) because of its Scrypt hashing algorithm in order to prevent ASIC miners from mining those coins. However it is said that by the end of this year, Scrypt ASIC will enter the mass market.