In January, Charlie Lee, the creator of Litecoin, first announced plans to implement Confidential Transactions and the MimbleWimble protocol to give LTC users greater privacy. After that announcement, however, a prolonged period of silence followed and supporters wondered whether the promised privacy features would ever be delivered.
Earlier this year Lee confirmed he was considering integrating MimbleWimble and Confidential Transactions into the Litecoin network to enhance privacy by obscuring Litecoin addresses and transaction amounts. He noted that while the Litecoin GitHub might appear inactive at times, steady progress has continued on improving the cryptocurrency’s protocol.
Hope that both features might still be implemented was renewed when Lee revealed that two new developers had joined Litecoin’s privacy effort. Grin developer David Burkett will be working alongside another developer using the pseudonym “ecurrencyhodler” to strengthen the Litecoin team.
Updates on MimbleWimble progress:@davidburkett38, the main developer of Grin++, is now working with @ecurrencyhodler and I on the design. We’ve been ironing out the mechanism of getting LTC in and out of MW/EB. Also figured out how to handle MW fees in a clean way.
Asparagus! pic.twitter.com/MimlpNbclT
— Charlie Lee Ⓜ️🕸️ (@SatoshiLite) August 20, 2019
David Burkett is closely associated with Grin, which—along with Beam—is one of the two major projects implementing MimbleWimble. While both projects remain relatively small by market capitalization (ranking around #85 and #92), they have helped increase attention on MimbleWimble. Litecoin could potentially become the major breakthrough for broader adoption of MimbleWimble technology.
Litecoin’s renewed commitment to privacy came just eleven days after a leaked conversation in which Lee acknowledged that efforts on the new privacy features had stalled:
I tried to find someone else to lead the project. Progress is being made. Just not as quickly as people would like, I guess.
One day after that leak, Lee publicly said he would try to “get the ball rolling again.” He also emphasized he would not set a hard deadline, which means Litecoin might not deliver privacy features by the end of 2019 as he had once suggested. While many in the crypto community viewed the update as positive, some users cautioned that enhanced privacy features could raise regulatory concerns. For example, Coinbase UK previously halted listing Zcash because of its privacy characteristics.
Litecoin’s new focus on privacy also marks a shift away from its recent emphasis on adoption and awareness. Lee explained on Twitter:
Over the year I was distracted by a lot of other things that required my attention. That included work by the Litecoin Foundation on adoption and awareness: Mammoth Film Festival, Glory Kickboxing, Feel the Kpop concert, Flexa SPEDN support, the Miami Dolphins and more! The purpose of the Litecoin Foundation is twofold: to work on Litecoin adoption and to work on Litecoin development. In recent months I believed adoption and awareness were a more important focus than development. But I agree both are equally important in the long run.
However, I think it is time for me to shift my focus from adoption back to development. I still believe fungibility is extremely important, and I will bring the focus back to MW/CT. This time I won’t make promises about dates.
14/ I dropped the ball on MW/CT. For that, I apologize. But it’s not fair at all to say that I strung people along and tricked them. Except for the initial tweet, I haven’t said 2019. When asked, I have only said things are moving slowly and will give an update when there is one.
— Charlie Lee Ⓜ️🕸️ (@SatoshiLite) August 11, 2019
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