Hard forks have become very common in the crypto space lately. Recently, a new coin - Litecoin Cash - has been launched after hard forking from the popular Litecoin Blockchain .
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Many in the crypto community raised their eyebrows at this project, as unlike with Bitcoin Cash and Ethereum Classic, there were no serious arguments within the Litecoin community. However, this type of split is completely legitimate and even very common in the crypto industry.
Tech specs: similar to Litecoin?
Late on Sunday, February 18th (EST), Litecoin Cash (LCC) was formed after a hard fork on the Litecoin blockchain at block number 1,371,111. Similar to other hard forks, each Litecoin holder is entitled to have LCC at a ratio of 10:1 i.e. 10 LCC for every 1 LTC.
Unlike Litecoin, LCC is using SHA-256 hashing algorithm similar to Bitcoin. This is probably to attract the miners with obsolete hardware, which are now outdated for mining Bitcoin. Litecoin uses Scrypt for hashing.
Moreover, with a view to prevent pool hopping, LCC has implemented DarkGravity V3 algorithm from Dash to recalculate the mining difficulty at every block.
The miners can mine the first 24 blocks with minimum difficulty, which will reduce the disproportionate advantage to the early miners. However, the devs have premined less than 1% of the circulating supply and kept them for development funds.
Similar to Litecon, the block creation time of LCC is mere 2.5 minutes, however, LCC team is claiming that LCC transactions will be 90% cheaper than LTC. Moreover, LCC has implemented Segregated Witness (SegWit) since its inception.
Is it a scam or legitimate?
Unlike forks on Bitcoin or even Ethereum, Litecoin had no need to conduct a hard fork, at least for now. So the announcement of Litecoin Cash on February 3rd created a lot of stir in the community, as the team did not offer an exact reason for the fork. Litecoin creator Charlee Lee himself tweeted that he and his team have nothing to do with the upcoming hard fork and warned about the possibility of it being a scam.
PSA: The Litecoin team and I are not forking Litecoin. Any forks that you hear about is a scam trying to confuse you to think it's related to Litecoin. Don't fall for it and definitely don't enter your private keys or seed into their website or client. Be careful out there! https://t.co/qXbiIxp5Al
— Charlie Lee (@SatoshiLite) February 4, 2018
However, the LCC team is not doing anything wrong as far as the creation of a new coin by hard forking a previous one is concerned, as this is a very common practice.
Moreover, LCC team took to Twitter to call out scammers and announced that LCC will never store or ask for private keys.
We will never ask you to enter private keys on the website!
— Litecoin Cash (LCC) (@LitecoinCash) February 18, 2018
This is not us!!!https://t.co/8NDAy0nSdN#LitecoinCash #SCAM
The team assured that they will soon put the source code of the project on Github for public display. The project is also getting support from the wallet platform Coinomi, however, the team is developing their own wallet.
Announcing support for $LCC Litecoin Cash, $LTC's upcoming fork. To receive your free $LCC make sure you keep your $LTC inside you #Coinomi wallet at block 1,371,111. You will receive 10 #LitecoinCash for every $LTC you hold inside Coinomi during the fork! #litecoin #fork pic.twitter.com/TVojAmZhI9
— coinomi (@CoinomiWallet) February 18, 2018
At this initial stage, four crypto exchanges - Yobit, MercatoX, TradeSatoshi, MeanXTrade and CryptoBridge - listed the coin. Except for CryptoBridge, all will automatically credit LTC holders with LCC.
Though most of the development team has included their names and photos on the official LCC website, they did not share their public profiles. Though this does not in itself add or detract from the legitimacy of the project, with so many scam projects floating around, it has become crucial to be able to check the credibility of the team backing a project.
Final take
Since 2017, 'initial fork offerings' have become very popular in the crypto space. Many developers launch forked versions of already popular coins to get an initial boost in the market.
After the success of Bitcoin Cash, many side projects like Bitcoin Gold, Bitcoin Diamond and Bitcoin Candy have popped up. Litecoin also has its fair share of spin projects like Litecoin Plus and Litecoin Gold. Litecoin Cash seems to be one of these attention seeking stunts.
