Litecoin Undergoes Third ‘Halving,’ in Milestone for 12-Year-Old Blockchain

The Litecoin blockchain has officially cut its block subsidy – the predetermined reward miners receive for processing transactions and securing the network – from 12.5 litecoin (LTC) to 6.25 LTC.

The reduction took place on Wednesday around 15:06 UTC (11:06 am ET) at block height 2,520,000 according to the website litecoinspace.org. It was the network’s third halving since its inception in 2011.

Litecoin, a “fork” or clone of Bitcoin, is sometimes affectionately referred to as “digital silver.” Both blockchains reward “miners” who process transactions and secure the network, with a reward – a combination of variable transaction fees and a predetermined “subsidy” that gets halved approximately every four years. (With Litecoin, they happen every 840,000 transaction blocks, and the average time to generate each block is about 2.5 minutes.)

On Wednesday, that subsidy was officially reduced by 50%, meaning that miners have basically received a pay cut, albeit one they were already expecting.

Litecoin founder Charlie Lee says these disinflationary halvings help achieve mass adoption without sacrificing network security.

“Satoshi chose four-year block halving so that it gives enough time for the network to grow in time for the fees to eventually take over.” Lee explained during a Twitter livestream last week. “The idea is that there will be enough usage on-chain creating enough fees. The fees will be enough to pay the miners to continue to help secure the network.”

At the time of reporting, LTC was trading at $89.02, down 4% in the past 24 hours.