Litecoin follows the general sentiment in the crypto market and trades in the green during today’s session. As of press time, LTC is exchanging hands at $110,21 with a 1.7% profit in 24-hours.

Related Reading | Charlie Lee Sums Up Litecoin’s 10 Years History. Part Five: Conflict Of Interest

The increase in the price of Litecoin has been driven by relief in larger cryptocurrencies, such as Bitcoin and Ethereum. The latter has been showing bullish momentum in lower timeframes and could see more profits in the coming weeks.

Selling pressure triggered by macro factors has been and will remain mitigated during February. As NewsBTC reported earlier, this month has been historically bullish for Litecoin and the crypto market.

No doubt, the recent announcement of LTC’s MimbleWimble upgrade as a Release Candidate or beta could have a long-term bullish impact on Litecoin. The upgrade has undergone a multi-year development and stands as one of the most hyped rollouts for this cryptocurrency amongst its community.

The Litecoin Foundation and MimbleWimble’s lead developer David Burkett made the announcement via social media platform Twitter. Burkett published the first LTC addresses using the MWEB extension, seen below.

ltcmweb1qq2aejfd7svtnqk0uq0cfkd9mr9sszypmx2phdu5qwfhlujazv2nxjqstgy3r5gkxesu5vv2v0tmlwdwhat3se36pwzwtlqm8ypxq3d2fggc8d7nq

— David Burkett (@DavidBurkett38) January 30, 2022

The developer started working on this upgrade in 2019, and as the Foundation revealed, MimbleWimble will be part of this cryptocurrency’s Core 0.21.2 release candidate with an additional improvement to its privacy and security. The upgrade is expected to be activated on mainnet in the coming months.

As Guy Corem, co-founder at DAGLabs said, MimbleWimble will be approved by the Litecoin community if the upgrade sees 6,048 nodes signaling for its implementation starting at block heigh 2,217,600. The upgrade needs to be approved by 75% of the LTC nodes before this window closes.

The Foundation said the following on the upgrade as it revealed a report published by Quarkslab about its capabilities:

The protocol provides valuable new security enhancements about the privacy of transactions on the blockchain, in addition to months of further review and testing by Litecoin developers.

LTC MWEB activation rules:
> Every 8064 block window starting at block height 2,217,600 it checks if at least 6048 signaled for bit 4. If yes, it activates in the next window. After 2,427,264, if it still hasn’t met 75%, it activates anyway.

— Guy Corem (@vcorem) January 30, 2022

What Is Next For Litecoin (LTC)?

The Litecoin Foundation clarified that the community and miners can begin signaling for MimbleWimble right after receiving the upgrade’s code. Once the aforementioned threshold is reached, the activation date for the implementation of this proposal will be locked in.

The Foundation also revealed that the signaling process will be based on BIP8, a mechanism to introduced soft forks on the mainnet with a flag day activation that will be set after a determined period of time.

Related Reading | Charlie Lee Sums Up Litecoin’s 10 Years History. Part Two: Exchanges + Betrayal

Miners will be able to vote by using a field called “version” on each Litecoin block to be included in the blockchain. Burkett said the following on the upgrade:

MWEB is a crucial next step in Litecoin’s evolution. The optional confidentiality MWEB provides gives the user notable and needed protections for small everyday items, to salaries, or even buying a home.