Litecoin Segregated Witness Blocked, Founder Considers User-Activated Soft Fork

In the world of cryptocurrency, it’s only a matter of time before a new conspiracy theory emerges. As Litecoin gets closer to the threshold for activating Segregated Witness (Segwit), the hashrate of some mining pools that oppose Segwit has suddenly increased. As a result, some people are very worried.

It is clear that some mining pools that oppose Litecoin SegWit have suddenly seen a significant increase in their hashrate, including Antpool and LTC1BTC, both of which have seen explosive growth in Litecoin hashrate. Considering that this change is very close to the time when Litecoin is approaching the SegWit activation threshold, conspiracy theories are not without basis. It is not clear whether this behavior is malicious.

Litecoin Segregated Witness Stuck, Founder Considers User Activated Soft Fork (UASF)

The hashrate of Litecoin (LTC1BTC) has suddenly increased to 404 GH/s, while a few days ago, the hashrate of the mining pool was much lower than this figure. AntPool, which currently has a Litecoin hashrate of more than 200 GH/s, has an interesting timing. This means that the hashrate supporting Litecoin SegWit has dropped to 62.5% , while a few days ago, the hashrate supporting Litecoin SegWit accounted for 70%.

Blocking SegWit, is this an “attack” or a smart move? It depends on who you ask. While it’s clear that the majority of the hashrate on the network wants SegWit activated, some Chinese mining pools clearly have a financial incentive not to allow that to happen.

In response to this situation, Litecoin founder Charlie Lee began to consider the controversial user-activated soft fork solution. He said on Twitter:

“If you support SegWit for Litecoin, talk to wallets and exchanges and ask them to support a User Activated Soft Fork (UASF)”

What do you think?