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.
æternity is a public, open-source blockchain protocol that enables a platform for next-generation decentralized applications with high scalability. Its core components are written in the functional programming language Erlang and its smart contract language - Sophia - is also functional. æternity has a stellar team of developers including Robert Virding - co-creator of Erlang, John Hughes - co-designer of Haskell, and Ulf Norell - co-designer of the Agda programming language for formal verification. Unlike other blockchain platforms, the æternity protocol itself incorporates a number of essential technological features. State channels for off-chain scaling, oracles for real-world information, and a naming system for increased user-friendliness are all implemented on Layer 1. æternity also features SDKs in Javascript, GO, Phyton, Java, as well as a middleware and a development suite that streamline smart contract development. æternity incorporates the Bitcoin-NG consensus algorithm developed by academics from Cornell University and uses the Cuckoo Cycle mining algorithm for Sybil attack protection. AE tokens, the native cryptocurrency of the æternity platform, is used for both - an economic unit of account and as ballots in the community-driven on-chain governance votes.