An Australian software engineer named Anthony Guerrera revealed that he was able to fork the Ordinals protocol to Litecoin (LTC), the second-largest cryptocurrency network in the world. This achievement was made possible by a small monetary reward and Guerrera’s coding skills. He posted a repository on GitHub on February 18, which allowed for the creation of nonfungible token (NFT)-like assets on the Litecoin network, similar to what had been done on Bitcoin earlier in the year.
In an interview with Cointelegraph, Guerrera explained that he was motivated to create a Litecoin Ordinals fork by a bounty of 5 LTC, initially posted by the pseudonymous Twitter user Indigo Nakamoto on February 11. The bounty eventually increased to 22 LTC (approximately $2,000) for the first person to successfully create a fork. Guerrera was confident in his ability to achieve this because Litecoin has Taproot and SegWit, which are Bitcoin protocol updates that not only improve network privacy and efficiency but also allow for the attachment of NFT-like structures called “inscriptions” to satoshis.
While the cost to inscribe an image on the Bitcoin blockchain can be quite high, Guerrera stated that inscribing a litoshi, the LTC equivalent of a satoshi, only costs about two cents. One concern among Bitcoin enthusiasts is the amount of block space that Ordinals take up on the network, as their data size is significantly larger than regular transactions. Guerrera believes that this issue may not be as problematic on Litecoin due to its larger block size, but he acknowledges that it could still potentially arise.
Creating the LTC fork took Guerrera approximately one week, as the necessary changes were relatively simple. He updated the Ordinals code to be compatible with inputs from the Litecoin network instead of the Bitcoin network. Additionally, he had to account for parameters that differed between the two blockchains, such as the total possible number of coins and block time creation differences.
On February 19, Guerrera announced on Twitter that he had inscribed the first-ever Litecoin Ordinal, which involved putting the MimbleWimble whitepaper on the blockchain in what he called “inscription 0.” This inscription follows the May 2022 Mimblewimble Extension Blocks (MWEB) upgrade, which allows Litecoin users to opt-in to confidential transactions and other blockchain improvements aimed at reducing excess and unnecessary transaction data.
Guerrera stated that he wanted to dedicate the first inscription to raise awareness about Litecoin’s newly attached privacy sidechain. As for the future of the forked protocol, he plans to continue contributing as much as possible and incorporate updates from the original Ordinals. However, he eventually hopes to hand over the project to someone else as he has other commitments and does not want it to consume too much of his time.