Litecoin Aims For a Cross-Chain Communication with Cardano
David Burkett, the core developer of Litecoin (LTC), released an update on the progress of MimbleWinble. The developer cleared that the deployment of the first MimbleWimble test network is still happening in September. Burkett explained that the priorities and progress the project made in July.
MimbleWimble is a protocol for Litecoin that is in development to provide more privacy and fungibility to the network. The project began its construction during the second half of 2019. During that time, the founder of Litecoin, Charlie Lee, proposed a MimbleWimble funding initiative that included crowdfunding.
Furthermore, the main focus of the project was the initial block download. Conceived as a feature that will enhance the scalability of Litecoin’s network, the initial block download will enable transactions to be verified by checking the chain’s state. So, MimbleWimble will have a different verification mechanism compared to Bitcoin. The miner will not need to download all blocks on Litecoin to verify transactions. Also, Burkett described the new verification mechanism that would be imposed with MimbleWimble.
He said, “We use a different structure to commit to the transactions. Each MibleWimble header commits to the root of 2 different Merkle Mountain Ranges (MMRs).”
Also, Burkett explained that one of that represents the whole historical kernels up to that block. Then, the other represents all historical outputs or coins.
In addition to that, he mentioned that Merkle Mountain Ranges are a different kind of tree that supports pruning – which indicates that they can verify the root of the structure without determining all of its members, called leaves.
Aside from MimbleWimble
The developer of Litecoin reiterated that the initial state download is a more precise verification mechanism when it comes to the sync process. And this is especially compared to Bitcoin’s verification mechanism that needs to download all old blocks from the blockchain.
In July, Burkett focused on defining 5 Initial State Download P2P messages – the GETMWSTATE, MWSTATE, kernels, utxos, unspent_bitmap, parent_hashes. But other requirements occupying the attention of the developers delayed July’s progress. One of these is a hard fork of the cryptocurrency Grin that will implement MimbleWimble. And this month, the project will focus on finishing the MWSTATE message processor and cleaning up the code.
The developer of Litecoin said, “The plan was to spend August focusing on reorg logic, but I’m just going to delay that until September.”
Burkett wants to focus on wrapping up the MWSTATE message processing and cleaning up the code. Also, he plans to add more tests and some documentation. With that, he hopes for a smooth first testnet launch by the end of September.
With Cardano
Charles Hoskinson, IOHK CEO and maker of Cardano, announced that he intends to establish cooperation with the creator of Litecoin, Charlie Lee. On Twitter, Hoskinson expressed his love for the idea of a cross-chain communication between Litecoin and Cardano.
Also, he stated that there are a lot of possible ideas that need discussion, and Lee answered him with a ‘Sure.’ As of now, everyone is waiting if there will be an agreement and, indeed, the development of cross-chain communication among the two cryptocurrencies.
