Litecoin Network Adopts Ordinal Inscriptions, Following Bitcoin’s Lead

Following a growing trend of Ordinal inscriptions on the Bitcoin blockchain, the technology has been ported to the Litecoin network, and the number of onchain Litecoin inscriptions has surpassed 13,000. Software developer Anthony Guerrera made Ordinal inscriptions on the Litecoin network possible by receiving 22 Litecoin to port the technology to the proof-of-work (PoW) blockchain.

Proponents of the cryptocurrency network Litecoin (LTC) were pleased to hear that Ordinal inscriptions are now possible on the network. Software developer Anthony Guerrera accepted a challenge to port the technology to Litecoin after the offer grew from five LTC to 22 tokens.

While Litecoin’s network has a number of differences, its codebase shares similarities with Bitcoin, including additions like Segregated Witness (Segwit) and Taproot, which make Ordinal inscriptions possible on the Litecoin network.

“JUST IN: BTC Ordinals are now on Litecoin,” Guerrera tweeted on Feb. 18. The coder also shared the open-source codebase hosted on Github and further explained that he inscribed the first Ordinal onchain. The developer said:

The first Litecoin Ordinal has been inscribed on the Litecoin blockchain. The mimblewimble whitepaper will live within Litecoin forever.

Since the codebase was released and the first Litecoin-based Ordinal inscription was shared on Twitter by Guerrera, the number of LTC-based Ordinals has grown significantly. At the time of writing, there are approximately 13,211 Ordinals on the Litecoin blockchain. Many people are sharing their Litecoin Ordinal inscriptions on social media and promoting their newly launched LTC-based collections.

Meanwhile, the number of Ordinal inscriptions on the Bitcoin blockchain has surpassed 160,000, and the growing trend shows no sign of slowing down. Furthermore, people are building infrastructure around Bitcoin-based Ordinals, such as minting tools that can issue an Ordinal inscription without a full node for a base fee, wallets, and marketplaces.

There are also numerous collections competing to be the ‘blue-chip’ non-fungible tokens (NFTs) on the Bitcoin blockchain. It’s hard to say whether the trend will grow on Litecoin as it did on the Bitcoin network, but after Guerrera minted the first one, thousands have followed. It will be interesting to see if digital collectibles minted on either Bitcoin or Litecoin will enter the established NFT market economy dominated by chains such as Ethereum.

What do you think about Litecoin-based Ordinal inscriptions? Share your thoughts in the comments section below.