Coder Brings Ordinal Numbers to Litecoin as Bitcoin Inscriptions Surpass 154,000

Ordinal inscriptions and the ability to mint content other than transactions on the Bitcoin network have taken the blockchain by storm, with over 154,000 inscriptions created, according to Dune Analytics. Now a developer has adapted the Ordinals project for the competing proof-of-work blockchain, Litecoin.

Launched in 2011, Litecoin is a peer-to-peer cryptocurrency that is said to process transactions faster than Bitcoin. Litecoin was created by Charlie Lee, a former Google employee who sold all of his Litecoins in 2017 to avoid potential conflicts of interest.

The quest to bring ordinals to the Litecoin blockchain began on Feb. 10 when a pseudonymous Twitter user, Indigo Nakamoto, offered 5 LTC (around $500) to anyone who could port ordinals to Litecoin.

On Sunday, software developer Anthony Guerrera launched the Litecoin Ordinals project on GitHub after forking the Bitcoin Ordinals GitHub repository that Casey Rodarmor published in January.

Litecoin was chosen because it’s the only other blockchain that ordinals could work on, Guerrera said, due to its soft forks of the SegWit and Taproot technology found in Bitcoin — both of which are essential for ordinals to work.

“Basically, I was motivated by the bounty that Indigo and a few others placed on someone to port Ordinals to Litecoin,” Guerrera Decrypt said via Twitter DM challenge.”

Guerrera says the premium for porting ordinals to Litecoin has increased from 5 LTC to 22 LTC, or around $2100.

Guerrera says that when he started working on the project, he found problems with his dependency on Rust bitcoin, which didn’t support the MimbleWimble upgrade to Litecoin.

Rust is a programming language designed for security and performance. In September 2021, cryptocurrency exchange Kraken created the internal Tamás Blummer Memorial Fund to support the development of Rust, named after a deceased Bitcoin Rust contributor.

“I forked Rust-Bitcoin to make one that can work with Litecoin MWEB,” Guerrera said. “[This allows] Ordinals to decode the block data and safely ignore the MWEB extension block.”

May 2022 launched MimbleWimble—named after a spell cast by Harry Potter – is an upgrade to the Litecoin blockchain that aims to improve network privacy and transaction size.

With MimbleWimble as the secret ingredient, Guerrera says the Litecoin blockchain is the perfect place for ordinals because it can handle more data in a single transaction at a lower cost than Bitcoin.

“By integrating MWEB into the chain, users can transfer funds privately before enrolling,” he said. “For example, a statement piece while respecting privacy; is a major benefit, unlike bitcoin, which is a fully public ledger.”

Litecoin is currently the 16th largest cryptocurrency by market cap at $6.89 billion, according to CoinGecko.

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