Is Litecoin classified as either a hard fork or soft fork? If neither, what is considered as?
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It's an altcoin. A fork implies that a split occurs, they thus have a shared transaction history. Litecoin, afaik, started with a completely new genenesis block.– PenquinCommented Jan 23, 2018 at 11:47
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2 Answers
It's considered a source code fork, or an altcoin, neither a hard fork nor soft fork of bitcoin. To be classified as a soft/hard fork, it should share some of the same chain from the genesis block. LN has a completely different chain right from the start so it's not a fork of the bitcoin chain.
Note that even coins sharing the same chain as bitcoin from the genesis block, e.g. BCH, are not considered hard forks by most people because they are not "bitcoin". They are generally termed "forkcoins"
answered Jan 23, 2018 at 9:54
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Appreciate the explanation--just to check on the last point--does that essentially mean 'forkcoin' potentially synonymous with something being a soft or hard fork depending on who you ask?– vw88Commented Jan 23, 2018 at 10:05
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@jlw yes I'm sure some hardcore BCH supporters would call it a hardfork rather than an altcoin, but to most people it's clear it's an altcoin Commented Jan 23, 2018 at 13:35
Litecoin is neither a hard or a soft fork. The codebase is a fork from Bitcoin codebase but it by no means share any history with the Bitcoin blockchain and thus considered as a separate alternative cryptocurrency to Bitcoin.
It is now trading at $179 https://www.coingecko.com/en/price_charts/litecoin/usd
