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Actually, fundamentals radically changed. Last year, litecoin was stilll "the first altcoin historically, which is just a duplicate of bitcoin and is mostly un

Actually, fundamentals radically changed. Last year, litecoin was stilll "the first altcoin historically, which is just a duplicate of bitcoin and is mostly unmaintained". This year, it suddenly became bitcoin's staging area. For those not aware, there's an ongoing heated debate in bitcoin about scalability issues that just seems to be unable to find consensus between several concurrent solution propositions. Litecoin came and implemented one, so we now can see how it performs. They are now moving on to implement lightning network, which is an other feature proposed for bitcoin for a long time. That being said, it will stop being "bitcoin's staging area" the minute bitcoin will go with an other choice that the one that was tested in litecoin. What litecoin would do? I don't see it asking miners to rollback a feature. There's an other fundamental to consider : as for now, litecoin is more scalable than bitcoin. This means that should bitcoin fail spectacularly because of its scaling problems, litecoin would be the safe replacement choice, as it's exactly the same thing, but without scalability issues - due to mentioned features recent add. It would be a bit sad not to replace bitcoin with a more modern coin, like ethereum, but that's still something that could make litecoin relevant.

runeks 9y ago
> Last year, litecoin was stilll "the first altcoin historically, which is just a duplicate of bitcoin and is mostly unmaintained". This year, it suddenly became bitcoin's staging area. Bitcoin already has a staging area, called testnet3. The coins in this network are worthless.
- oelmekki 9y ago
  The difference between both is that you can actually use litecoin, so we have an idea how features perform in real conditions. Call that a beta area rather than a staging area if you prefer, but I guess you see the difference between litecoin and testnet.
  - runeks 9y ago
    You're right. The fact that litecoins have monetary value means that real merchants and consumers have an interest in participating (beta testers), as opposed to testnet3 where no actual value can be transferred.

runeks 9y ago

> Last year, litecoin was stilll "the first altcoin historically, which is just a duplicate of bitcoin and is mostly unmaintained". This year, it suddenly became bitcoin's staging area. Bitcoin already has a staging area, called testnet3. The coins in this network are worthless.

oelmekki 9y ago
The difference between both is that you can actually use litecoin, so we have an idea how features perform in real conditions. Call that a beta area rather than a staging area if you prefer, but I guess you see the difference between litecoin and testnet.
- runeks 9y ago
  You're right. The fact that litecoins have monetary value means that real merchants and consumers have an interest in participating (beta testers), as opposed to testnet3 where no actual value can be transferred.