Litecoin

Litecoin is a Layer 1 blockchain launched in October 2011 that functions as a decentralized, peer-to-peer payment network, allowing anyone with internet access to send and receive value globally without relying on a bank or other intermediary. It was designed to make small, everyday payments practical by keeping transaction fees low and confirmation times short. The fixed maximum supply of 84 million LTC is central to its design, positioning it as a scarce digital currency rather than a platform for general-purpose applications.

Litecoin uses a Proof of Work consensus mechanism with the Scrypt hashing algorithm, meaning miners run specialized computers that compete to solve mathematical puzzles, and the winner adds a new block to the chain approximately every 2 minutes and 35 seconds — the 24-hour average block time recorded is 155 seconds. Miners who successfully add a block receive newly issued LTC as a reward; that reward is periodically cut in half in events called halvings, and with 92.5 percent of the maximum supply already in circulation, the remaining issuance is modest. MimbleWimble Extension Blocks are available on the network as an optional layer that allows participants to obscure transaction details for greater privacy.

Fees on Litecoin are paid by users who want their transactions included in a block, and miners collect those fees alongside the block reward. Over the trailing 30 days the network collected 15,498 USD in total fees, which annualizes to approximately 188,559 USD; the 24-hour average transaction fee was 0.00275 USD and the median was 0.000508 USD, reflecting the network's emphasis on low-cost payments. The protocol itself retains nothing — there is no treasury or protocol-level fee capture — so the market-cap-to-fees ratio of roughly 25,428 times and the fee yield of about 0.004 percent reflect how small the fee stream is relative to the asset's overall market capitalization of approximately 4.79 billion USD. Fees grew 20.26 percent over the last 30 days, which provides a baseline for observing whether that pace continues.