As a result of the meme coin craze and the resulting high fees on the Bitcoin network, the number of transactions on the Litecoin blockchain has skyrocketed. Blockchain data from BitInfoCharts shows that on May 8, Litecoin processed over 525,000 transactions, approaching close to Bitcoin’s 575,000 daily transactions. These current stats are more than twice the all-time high seen in January 2018, which was around the pinnacle of the bull market, and five times the average amount of transactions on the Litecoin blockchain from earlier this year.
On that day, the number of LTC active addresses as well as the number of addresses that had just been generated achieved new record highs. This should be connected to the Litecoin community’s proposal to create the LTC-20 by modeling it after the BRC-20. There are over 840 LRC-20 Tokens in existence, however, the vast majority of them have not been manufactured.
Bitcoin network facing congestion
The surge of new Bitcoin-based BRC-20 tokens has led to tremendous congestion on the Bitcoin blockchain, the foundation of Bitcoin (BTC), the biggest cryptocurrency by market capitalization. Using the Bitcoin network, tokens built using the BRC-20 standard may be created and transferred between users on the Ordinals Protocol.
Since May 2021, when Bitcoin touched its all-time high of roughly $64,000, the adoption of BRC-20 tokens has increased Bitcoin transaction costs to their greatest level ever. Even the biggest cryptocurrency exchange, Binance, had to briefly block Bitcoin withdrawals on Monday morning due to the situation.
Congestion on the Bitcoin network has prompted users to seek out cheaper alternatives, such as stablecoins and the Lightning network for blockchain-based value transfers.
There has been a renewed flurry of interest in Litecoin as well. In addition to a record number of transactions, Glassnode statistics reveal that the number of active wallet addresses hit a new high of 718,000 on Monday. Glassnode was referenced in a tweet from the Litecoin Foundation, which said that around 500,000 new Litecoin addresses were produced in a single day.
