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Charlie Lee Sums Up Litecoin’s 10 Years History. Part Four: SegWit Activation

Today is the day, Litecoin’s 10th anniversary. Congratulations to Charlie Lee and everyone involved in the project over the years. We are exploring Litecoin’s history through the eyes of its creator. We covered its fair launch, the long-hard road to exchanges adopting LTC, and we introduced the SegWit story. It’s time to finish it. 

The last time, we introduced Bitmain’s co-founder Jihan Wu. Reportedly, he was singlehandedly stopping SegWit adoption in the Bitcoin blockchain. Lee’s plan was to use Litecoin as a Testnet of sorts for SegWit. “I realized that here’s a chance for Litecoin to do something to help Bitcoin. If we can get SegWit on Litecoin, it can clear out all the FUD and prove that SegWit is safe and a good upgrade for Bitcoin.” To accomplish that, he had to convince miners to side with him and not with the manufacturer of the most efficient ASICs.

Related Reading | New To Bitcoin? Learn To Trade Crypto With The NewsBTC Trading Course

According to Coindesk, there was another important incentive for Litecoin to adopt SegWit:

“Since SegWit could potentially pave the way for technologies that expand the value proposition of cryptocurrencies, the move toward accepting the upgrade has reignited excitement around the normally less-popular cryptocurrency. Litecoin’s price has nearly tripled since the end of March as a result.”

And this is where today’s story starts.

LTC price chart for 10/13/2021 on FX | Source: LTC/USD on TradingView.com
Charlie Lee Talks To Litecoin‘s Miners

During the end of 2016 and the beginning of 2012, Lee talked to everyone. One of his first victories was to get “Innosilicon, another LTC ASIC maker,” to his side. In this part of the story, we can see how hard Jihan Wu was playing. A “huge LTC Miner” was ready to signal for SegWit in principle, but, since his machines were in a farm controlled by Jihan Wu, he was afraid that he might lose access to cheap electricity.

Innosilicon was immediately on board with SegWit. They agreed with me that it's the best path forward. And they were able to convince some of their customers to support SegWit.

One of their customers was a huge LTC miner. He owned about 5% of the hashrate. Having him was huge.

— Charlie Lee (@SatoshiLite) October 8, 2021

The objective was to get “75% of blocks signal for SegWit within a 2-week timeframe.” Easier said than done. LitecoinPool was the first great pool to side with SegWit. Another big mining pool, F2pool, also promised to do it, but they didn’t right away. This turned out to be great for the cause because they provided a clear signal that the market supported the SegWit transition. Lee narrates, “over the next month, F2pool actually flipped flopped. They would signal and then stop signaling. The market reacted accordingly. When F2pool started signaling, the price will go up, and vice versa.” 

To complicate things, “Jihan wanted me to personally visit him and the miners in China to convince them about SegWit.” Lee didn’t like the power-play, but that was nothing. As more and more miners signaled for SegWit, Jihan turned to the ace up his sleeve. There was a rumor that “Bitmain was building a ton of LTC miners and was going to turn them all on themselves to block the upgrade.”

Over the next week, more and more miners started signaling for SegWit and it started to look inevitable. And then this happened. Bitmain was building a ton of LTC miners and was going to turn them all on themselves to block the upgrade. 😡https://t.co/Zvs9srExJJ

— Charlie Lee (@SatoshiLite) October 8, 2021

It was time for Charlie Lee to call in the big guns.

The User Activated Soft Fork

Since both the miners and the market were clearly signaling in support of SegWit, Charlie Lee felt he had the right “to pull the UASF trump card out.” One of the wonders of decentralized organizations is that the users can also activate a soft fork. “If the majority of users and exchanges run the UASF code, SegWit will activate.” If that happened, miners had to comply and adopt SegWit as well.

UASF stands for User Activated Soft Fork. What it means is that instead of having the soft fork (SegWit) being miner activated, the user decides to activate the soft fork in a future date. If the majority of users and exchanges run the UASF code, SegWit will activate.

— Charlie Lee (@SatoshiLite) October 8, 2021

The threat of a UASF was too much to bear, so the miners agreed to meet with Charlie Lee online and work things out. 

Yes we will do roundtable online with @SatoshiLite ASAP, not need to wait for June. https://t.co/rVWQjLu5kJ

— Jiang Zhuoer BTC.TOP (@JiangZhuoer) April 20, 2017

And the rest is history, “On April 21, I met with Jihan, Innosilicon, and miners for over 8 hours IIRC. It was exhausting.“ They reached an agreement, this is the blog post announcing it. Among other things, it says:

“We agree that protocol upgrade should be made under community consensus, and should not be unilateral action of developers nor miners. We advocate that Litecoin protocol upgrade decision should be made based on the needs of the users, through the roundtable meeting voting process, and activated by miner voting.”

Charlie Lee reflects, “Although this seems so bad for a decentralized cryptocurrency to have a closed door meeting to make decisions that affect the future of Litecoin, I felt like it was a compromise I’m willing to take. It’s better than an all out war between the miners and I.”

On May 10th, 2017, SegWit was activated on Litecoin.

SegWit has activated on Litecoin! 💥😁 pic.twitter.com/lpeklpQpZe

— Charlie Lee (@SatoshiLite) May 10, 2017

After that, a few historic transactions took place

  • On THE SAME DAY, a notorious Bitcoin developer completed the first Lightning Network transaction.
  • A few days later, Lee posted an anonymous “$1m bounty on a SegWit address:” The text says:

“A lot of people have been saying that segwit is unsafe because segwit coins are “anyone-can-spend” and can be stolen. So lets put this to the test. I put up $1MM of LTC into a segwit address. You can see it’s a segwit address because I sent and spent 1 LTC first to reveal the redeemscript.”

  • A few months later, Bitcoin activated SegWit through a UASF. “It’s hard to know exactly how much Litecoin helped with this. I feel like it definitely has helped.”
  • Days later, Charlie Lee and Strike’s Jack Mallers starred in the first Lightning Network request/ payment transaction on Litecoin. That man Jack Mallers has a way to get involved in historic transactions, like this one, and this one.
  • That same month, Lee did his first Atomic Swap transaction. “This shows how one can move coins between different chains in a decentralized way. It was a great proof of concept and paved the way for decentralized exchanges.”
  • And later, he did another Atomic Swap but this time with Bitcoin.
  • And the next month, Lee did “the first ever cross-chain swap between BTC and LTC via Lightning.” This time it was with the now world-famous Lightning Labs.

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Wasn’t that an amazing, amazing story? We learned so much. And, even though we said this was the last chapter in the Litecoin 10-year history, Charlie Lee has another story to tell. Join us tomorrow for the infamous story of Charlie selling all of his Litecoin. Another legendary moment in crypto land.

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Charlie Lee Sums Up Litecoin ‘s 10 Years History. Part Three: SegWit Intro

The last time we checked with Litecoin, its creator Charlie Lee left Coinbase to focus on his own project. The mission at hand was implementing SegWit in the Litecoin blockchain, which is easier said than done. This story is as exciting as they come. It has twists and turns and it ends with a bang. Through the following tale, we’ll learn a lot about consensus. One of the most mysterious aspects of the cryptocurrency space is how decisions are made. Are you ready to learn through a practical example?

Related Reading | Charlie Lee Sums Up Litecoin’s 10 Years History. Part One: Fair Launch

But before we get into it, let’s let Mr. Lee himself define SegWit:

“SegWit stands for Segregated Witness. It’s basically an upgrade that would separate out the signature (i.e. witness) from the transaction.”

By extracting the signature, transactions occupy less space. So, each block can hold more transactions. SegWit effectively increases the block size limit of the blockchain.

That being said, let’s get back to Litecoin ’s 10-year history.

Why Did Charlie Lee Wanted Litecoin To Implement SegWit?

At the time, in the Bitcoin network, miners were blocking SegWit. “Basically the fear was that once SegWit is activated, miners can steal any coins sent to SegWit addresses. Anyone technical enough knows that this was not true.” So, Lee’s plan was to implement SegWit on Litecoin to show everyone that the upgrade was safe, and thus help clear up the FUD that surrounded it.

Basically the fear was that once SegWit is activated, miners can steal any coins sent to SegWit addresses. Anyone technical enough knows that this was not true. It was not possible for miners to steal coins that way. Unfortunately Bitcoin testnet was not useful here.

— Charlie Lee (@SatoshiLite) October 8, 2021

Bitcoin’s Testnet wasn’t helpful in this case because its coins are worthless, so it doesn’t provide an incentive for bad actors to attack it. It couldn’t “test out the game theory of the blockchain.” On Litecoin, on the other hand, there would be “incentives for people to attack it. If miners can steal millions from anyone-can-spend coins, they would.” Besides helping Bitcoin beat the FUD, Charlie Lee had other reasons to implement SegWit in his project.

“So you may wonder why I’m pushing for SegWit. Litecoin does not have a block size problem. That’s right, and SegWit is not just a block scaling solution. I would even say block scaling is just a side benefit of SegWit. The main fix is transaction malleability, which would allow Lightning Networks (LN) to be built on top of Litecoin.”

LTC price chart for 10/12/2021 on Gemini | Source: LTC/USD on TradingView.com
The Foundation Of The Litecoin Foundation

A quick subsection, because this series is about Litecoin’s history. While the SegWit story evolved, Warren Togami stepped down as lead developer. Shaolin Fry joined the team specifically “to help us get SegWit activated on Litecoin.” Loshan and Thrasher also joined to help with the code. 

Xinxi Wang (@TheRealXinxi) and Franklyn Richards (@LitecoinDotCom) joined me as Director to the Litecoin Foundation and we had Loshan (@loshan1212) and Thrasher (@thrasher_au) as developers working on the code.

People started to become excited about Litecoin again!

— Charlie Lee (@SatoshiLite) October 8, 2021

At the same time, they created The Litecoin Foundation with Xinxi Wang, Franklyn Richards, and Charlie Lee himself as Directors.

Enter The Bad Guy Of The Movie

It’s time for the Litecoin and SegWit story to meet that legendary period known as The Blocksize War. At the time, mining was a relatively centralized affair and Bitmain was the… main player. They produced the “most efficient ASICs” and miners were heavily incentivized to vote with them… or else. 

“The co-founder of Bitamin, Jihan Wu,is a big supporter of scaling Bitcoin onchain,” Lee informs. That means, he was against SegWit and against The Lightning Network as scaling solutions. Jihan Wu was in the camp of simply forking Bitcoin to increase block sizes, a notion that the community ended up rejecting. However, at the time, Wu was singlehandedly stopping SegWit adoption in Bitcoin. And he had great influence over Litecoin too.

Unfortunately that became very contentious. Because Jihan had a lot of influence, he single-handedly was able to block SegWit activation on Bitcoin. And because Bitmain also made one of the most efficient Litecoin miners, he had a lot of influence on Litecoin miners also.

— Charlie Lee (@SatoshiLite) October 8, 2021

So, how could Charlie Lee and his band of misfits circumvent this huge obstacle blocking their way? “The difference between Bitcoin and Litecoin is me,” he said. “Bitcoin is more decentralized. There’s no one to come out to speak on what their vision of Bitcoin is.” Lee could and did promote his support of SegWit among the miners and tried to seduce some of them to vote his way. “Anyways, this was what I set out to do. I met and talked to many miners throughout the end of 2016 to early 2017.” 

Related Reading | New To Bitcoin? Learn To Trade Crypto With The NewsBTC Trading Course

We know that his plan worked, but it was a lot harder than expected. Jihan Wu had the resources and influence to render his efforts obsolete, plus he had an ace up his sleeve. How did Charlie Lee proceeded? How did he make SegWit on Litecoin happen and who stepped up to the plate to help him? Find all of that and more in tomorrow’s next and final episode of Litecoin ‘s 10-year history.

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Charlie Lee Sums Up Litecoin’s 10 Years History. Part Two: Exchanges + Betrayal

The creator of Litecoin, Charlie Lee, continues to guide us through memory lane. For part one, he took us through Litecoin’s fair launch. Considering the small number of projects that have managed to do this, it’s a pretty big achievement. Today, for part two, we’re going to cover the project’s relation with cryptocurrency exchanges. Charlie Lee wears his heart on his sleeve for this one, and tells a heartfelt story that ends up in betrayal. Can you feel the excitement in the air?

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This part of the story is all about relationships, connections, and the long road to credibility. It’s also about Charlie Lee’s resistance and willpower.

Before we get into the meat and potatoes of the story, though, a light detail that shouldn’t go unnoticed.

Charlie Lee Gives Flowers To The Litecoin Logo Creators

There’s not much story to the logos, but it’s cool that Charlie Lee gives credit where credit is due. The first and the second one show evolution:

The second logo was designed by @mjbmetals. I still like that quite a lot. It looks well next to that Bitcoin logo.https://t.co/T5hzEldonI pic.twitter.com/Uy5qpl8JUP

— Charlie Lee (@SatoshiLite) October 7, 2021

And the final one is a simplification of the second one:

And the current logo is designed by Robbie Coleman (@robertfcoleman) and his team.

Of course being decentralized, there are many other logos that people have created and used. Some are pretty wacky. And people can use whatever logo they want and I can't do anything about it. 😂 pic.twitter.com/M7FgBcGPum

— Charlie Lee (@SatoshiLite) October 7, 2021

That being said, let’s get back to the story.

LTC price chart for 10/09/2021 on Coinbase | Source: LTC/USD on TradingView.com
Litecoin’s Long Hard Road To Exchange Listings

This contradicts the title, but, in 2011 Litecoin was immediately listed in the defunct BTC-e. The site was a pretty successful cryptocurrency exchange that fell into disgrace when the US Justice Department accused them of laundering funds from the Mt. Gox hack, but that’s another story. Regarding Litecoin, Charlie Lee tells us that the listing, “helped a lot as miners had access to liquidity pretty quickly. Litecoin quickly become one of the most popular coin on BTC-e.”

From 2011 to 2013, I spent a lot of time supporting Litecoin's early growth and pushed for adoption wherever I can. I pretty much talked to all the exchanges to support LTC. I realized that liquidity is super important for a coin. Without liquidity, you can't do anything.

— Charlie Lee (@SatoshiLite) October 7, 2021

However, even though Lee “pretty much talked to all the exchanges to support LTC,” it was two years later that the second one listed Litecoin. Bitfinex took a chance on the nascent project, “This was a huge deal for Litecoin. It’s the first major exchange to support LTC.”

At the Bitcoin 2013 conference, I remember attending a talk by Bitstamp Co-Founder and CEO Nejc Kodrič( @nejc_kodric). During the Q&A after the talk, I asked him if Bitstamp will add Litecoin. I think he just chuckled and went to the next question.

— Charlie Lee (@SatoshiLite) October 7, 2021

Then, Charlie Lee remember how he tried to get the CEO of Bitstamp to list them and he laughed him off. Only to list the coin in 2017. The same thing happened with BitPay, who ended up supporting Litecoin only this year. 

The Chinese exchanges, though, listed Litecoin from the beginning. “Sometime late 2012 to early 2013, 2 of the largest exchanges in China, Okcoin and Huobi, added support for LTC. That was huge.” A question arises, did Charlie Lee have to throw shade at those two exchanges this hard? “The trading volume was also pretty crazy, but unclear how much of that was fabricated.”

In 2013, I thought it was time for me to step away from Litecoin. I was very fortunate to find Warren Togami (@wtogami), Founder of the Fedora Project, to take over as Litecoin lead developer. Warren is amazing and we were very lucky to have him at the helm of development.

— Charlie Lee (@SatoshiLite) October 7, 2021

Charlie Lee And Coinbase, A Love Story

So, in 2013 Charlie Lee steps down as Litecoin’s lead developer and leaves the job to Warren Togami. At the same time, he leaves a high-paying job at Google because they weren’t interested in anything crypto-related. That’s when Coinbase gets into the picture. Lee contacts them to see if they’re interested in listing Litecoin and they end up hiring him instead.

I interviewed at Coinbase and on paper, it sounded like a horrible deal. I would have to commute to SF, which was an hour each way, take a 50% or so pay cut, work twice as hard, and miss out on all the Google perks. But it was a no-brainer for me.

— Charlie Lee (@SatoshiLite) October 8, 2021

According to Charlie Lee, “Coinbase was the hot startup and THE crypto company that is making Bitcoin easy to use. I knew that if Bitcoin didn’t succeed, Litecoin wasn’t going anywhere either.” A cold hard truth that all of the Altcoins have to live with to this day. Besides that, Lee wanted to eventually convince Coinbase to support Litecoin. How could he not?

But at least he created a cool banner for it. 😁https://t.co/7BToh7YNdX

After that, there were rumors of @MtGox finally adding its second coin, Litecoin. At the time MtGox had like 97% of the total Bitcoin trading volume. Support of LTC would be huge for Litecoin's liquidity. pic.twitter.com/rfBhA7z1Pm

— Charlie Lee (@SatoshiLite) October 8, 2021

The Chinese connection paid off and the BTC China, lead by Charlie Lee’s brother, listed the coin. “Although it was a huge news, what took him so long?!,” asks Lee hilariously. Also notice that the banner that he mentions plays on the fact that Charlie and Bobby are brothers. 

In 2015, there were rumors that the infamous Mt. Gox exchange was going to list Litecoin. At the time, this was THE place to be. Charlie Lee finally confirms the story, “The rumors were actually true. I was talking to the CEO, Mark Karpelès almost on a daily basis in mid 2015.” However, the Mt. Gox hack was exposed before they materialized those plans. And all hell broke loose. “In hindsight, it was a blessing in disguise.”

Then, as it happens, things turned sour in the Charlie Lee and Coinbase romance.

That changed though in 2016. The was when Litecoin trade volume exploded on Chinese exchanges and it was clear to me that Coinbase was leaving a lot of money on the table by not supporting altcoins. And it made business sense for Coinbase to add altcoins.

— Charlie Lee (@SatoshiLite) October 8, 2021

The Brian Armstrong tweet he refers to says: “Ripple, Stellar, and Altcoins are all a distraction. Bitcoin is way too far ahead. We should be focused on bitcoin and sidechains.” Wow. What would the Brian Armstrong of the present say about that statement?

Anyway, in 2016 Litecoin’s trading volume was exploding in the Chinese exchanges and Charlie Lee saw his opportunity. “This was also when Ethereum was starting to get big. So I put together a proposal to Brian and Fred Ehrsam to add both LTC and ETH to Coinbase.” The proposal’s thesis was that, since people in the US had no easy way to buy, store, and trade those coins, there was “a lot of unsatisfied demand.” And Coinbase could make a lot of money. 

There was a lot of unsatisfied demand. People in the US had no easy way to store and trade these coins. And Coinbase would steal a lion share of the demand if we added the 2 coins to start.

Both Brian and Fred like the idea but they crossed out LTC. They just want to do ETH.

— Charlie Lee (@SatoshiLite) October 8, 2021

Here it is: betrayal. The two Coinbase executives broke Charlie Lee’s heart by accepting the proposal, but only for Ethereum. “Although I went along with the plan, it kind of rubbed me the wrong way. Litecoin had a much higher global trade volume at the time and was the #2 coin in marketcap.” A little while later, Lee took three months of Coinbase to focus on his project.

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In the next episode, Litecoin’s story intertwines with Bitcoin’s and the controversial Segwit implementation. We’re going to discover that Charlie Lee and his team were instrumental in this. How? Tune in to find out. 

 

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