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 instructed Cointelegraph.
On Feb. 18, an Australian software program engineer by the title of Anthony Guerrera posted a repository to GitHub that forked the Bitcoin (BTC) Ordinals protocol to Litecoin. This allowed for nonfungible token (NFT)-like property on the Litecoin community in a lot the identical manner 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 consequence of a 5 LTC bounty posted by the pseudonymous Twitter person 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 $LTC @finitemaz https://t.co/7X4JfMzq97— Indigo | Nakamotoist (@indigo_nakamoto) February 16, 2023
“I knew it was doable as a result of Litecoin has taproot in addition to SegWit,” Guerrera mentioned, including:
“I used to be in a little bit of a mad rush to attempt to get it accomplished as quick as I might.”
Taproot and SegWit are the names given to the Bitcoin protocol updates that aimed to enhance the privateness and effectivity of the community but in addition allowed for NFT-like buildings referred to as “inscriptions” to be hooked up to satoshis.
The price to inscribe a picture onto the Bitcoin blockchain can cost tens of dollars relying on its dimension however Guerrera mentioned the price to inscribe a litoshi — the LTC equal to a satoshi — is “about two cents.”
A degree of competition amongst Bitcoiners is the block space Ordinals take up on the community as a consequence of their knowledge dimension being far better than transactions. Guerrera doesn’t assume this concern might be as distinguished on Litecoin as a consequence of its bigger block dimension however might nonetheless probably eventuate.
“Pandora’s Field has already been opened and somebody was going to do it so it could as properly be me.”
Guerrera mentioned his LTC fork took round one week to create as “the modifications have been fairly easy.” He defined he up to date the Ordinals code to work with inputs from the Litecoin community as an alternative of the Bitcoin community.
Parameters that differed between the blockchains akin to the whole doable variety of cash and block time creation variations additionally needed to be accounted for within the fork.
In a Feb. 19 tweet, Guerrera mentioned he’d inscribed the primary ever Litecoin Ordinal, placing the MimbleWimble whitepaper onto the blockchain within the so-named “inscription 0.”
The primary #Litecoin #Ordinal has been inscribed on the Litecoin blockchain.
The mimblewimble whitepaper will dwell inside Litecoin without end Ⓜ️ #MWEB!$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 Might 2022 Mimblewimble Extension Blocks (MWEB) upgrade that enables Litecoin customers to opt-in to confidential transactions and different blockchain enhancements akin to serving to cut back extra and pointless transaction knowledge.
Associated: How the Ordinals movement will benefit the Bitcoin blockchain
“I wished to dedicate the primary inscription to that and make it conscious that Litecoin now has this privateness sidechain hooked up to it,” Guerrera mentioned.
“I am a fan of the expertise and I like that privateness can develop into a factor on these public ledgers.”
As for the way forward for the forked protocol, Guerrera will “preserve contributing to this fork as a lot as I can” and port throughout updates from the unique Ordinals.
“I in all probability wish to hand over this as I do not need it to take an excessive amount of of my time,” he added. “I am doing different issues. I’ve received different issues on my plate.”
