With the news of a possible hard fork of bitcoin on August 1st and the uncertainty of it's potential technology route, many coins are attempting to capitalize on this emotional uncertainty and claim more market-share.
Litecoin is no exception to this, and conveniently enough a timer appeared on an MIT website, with the same date as the hardfork. http://litecoin.mit.edu/
So what gives? Why would an academic institution, let alone MIT allow for a hype countdown timer to be put on their website?
Well, one explanation may be that a student could have made the website, and is posting it around to make their lighting holdings go up in this time on uncertainty. Any MIT student can make a website with the MIT domain.
Case and point: http://bitcoin.mit.edu/
So the timer thing is likely a scam, again why would a academic institution put a timer for releasing information.
But on the terms of the lightning network, what is it?
Essentially instead of addressing scalability issues head on, LIT takes a shortcut approach by simply not fully confirming your transactions, or simply not running the transaction through the blockchain entirely. The idea is that you wouldn't need the same amount of security for doing quick payments; things like buying gas or milk. If there is a conflict the problem is solved and verified on the blockchain retroactively. This is done through specialized nodes or partial nodes.
https://www.media.mit.edu/projects/lit/overview/
https://www.weusecoins.com/lightning-network-dryja/
So, who is working on this? MIT media labs lists one person, Thaddeus Dryja, a PHD candidate in Cryptography. Google searches netted optometrists, not crypto coders. This is a student project.
https://github.com/mit-dci/lit/graphs/contributors
13 people are listed as contributors, but only two have contributed any substantial changes in the last 2 months.
So why could lightning be bad? Putting immense responsibility of improving a coin with a 2 billion market cap isn't the easiest thing to do with only 2 active devs isn't the best idea. A big issue is that it will be setting a precedent that it is fine and acceptable to do crypto transactions without blockchain to begin with.
LIT is stated to be opt in, but what will happen if people don't opt in? Will it be forced upon the userbase? Who decides whose transactions are important enough to be verified on the block-chain at that point? Not having every transaction fully verified leaves a potential vulnerabilities.
Litecoin was marketed as a lightweight and fast alternative to bitcoin, and now it has regressed into being a bloated and slow accessory coin. There are countless alternative coins that have successfully addressed bitcoins scalability issues, either by switching node size, block size, using proof of stake...etc.
The fact is people are going to panic before August 1st, and the market cap of bitcoin will undoubtedly fall into other altcoins in the process.
The question is, is a 'fast coin' that isn't all that fast and is relying on a Hail Mary pass from a few MIT students really the solution to this? When the core of the solution is to abandon the core transparency of blockchain?
Let me know what your options are on this matter.
-Tachyonic