A letter from Litecoin founder to miners: Segregated Witness can help us make a comeback

As we all know, Litecoin (LTC) is very interested in Segregated Witness (SegWit). Currently, the support rate of the scheme in the community has reached nearly 60% (the activation threshold is 75%). Mr. Charlie Lee, the founder of Litecoin, has always been very optimistic about SW's ability to solve transaction scalability. Therefore, Lee and other developers have been trying to deploy SW in the Litecoin system. In order to let miners have a deeper understanding of SW and its advantages, Lee wrote a letter specifically for them.

To all miners and mining pool owners:

I think you are aware that Litecoin developers and I have been working on adding Segregated Witness to Litecoin for the past year. We have spent a lot of time and effort to make Litecoin revived and hope that miners and mining pools will support and activate Segregated Witness as soon as possible. Unfortunately, we have not succeeded in making you realize why Segregated Witness is good for Litecoin. I hope this letter can help.

First, many of the criticisms of SegWit are from a Bitcoin perspective. SegWit is not a good solution to the scaling problem. This is true. Litecoin does not have a block size problem. Litecoin has 4 times the capacity of Bitcoin, so it will not have a block size problem for many years to come. We support SegWit not because of the small block conflict, but because SegWit can fix transaction malleability, which will allow us to add more new technologies such as Lightning Network. SegWit also makes many other upgrades possible, such as Schnorr signatures and anonymous transactions. All of these features will greatly help Litecoin's development. While Bitcoin is stagnant due to the block size problem, if we can activate SegWit on Litecoin, Litecoin will shine.

Many people have complained about the complexity of the Segregated Witness code, but I think this worry is unnecessary. The Litecoin development team is confident that we can handle the Segregated Witness code with ease, and we have never encountered any problems. In a healthy ecosystem, each party contributes their best. We are confident that we can do our best. We also welcome miners and mining pools to introduce more talents to join the development team.

Xinxi is working on registering the Litecoin Foundation. We will work together to raise funds for it to hire full-time developers. I will also become the president of the foundation and work side by side with Litecoin developers to improve Litecoin. However, a large part of our development plan depends on whether Segregated Witness will be activated. PZ is also preparing to set up a foundation in the Cayman Islands. I think this may help Litecoin and its development team in the future.

I believe the market is waiting for Litecoin to activate SegWit, and when that happens, the price of Litecoin will respond positively. It is frustrating to see other altcoins soaring while Litecoin is not moving at all. Let's give the market what the market wants.

I understand the concerns about on-chain expansion, and I promise you that if there is a need for on-chain expansion of Litecoin, Litecoin developers and I will use a hard fork to increase the block size of Litecoin.

Finally, I plan to go to China in June and hope to meet as many miners and mining pool owners as possible. I would like to know your opinions or suggestions on the future work of the Litecoin development team. By then, I hope to spend more time talking to you about the future new features of Litecoin instead of convincing you to activate Segregated Witness.

I sincerely hope that you will believe in me, my vision and the Litecoin development team. We all want Litecoin to be the best and we are all working hard to make it the best. Let Litecoin be the leader!

Sincerely,

Salute to Charlie Lee,
Litecoin creator