Litecoins privacy update

Most of you probably know that the Blockchain of most PoW tokens are transparent. That enables anyone to see the transactions and more importantly the amount of Tokens connected to a certain address.

Some people see a security/privacy issue with that and I can understand why. I don’t necessarily want everybody to know how much Bitcoin or Litecoin for that matter I have stored or sending to different addresses.

Well in May of last year Litecoin actually got an update which addresses this exact problem. It’s called MimbleWimble and it basically added extension blocks kinda like a parallel Blockchain to the mainchain. Any transaction conducted within these blocks will conceal the addresses and amounts involved from everyone except those involved in the transaction, enabling users more transaction privacy than they could easily achieve on the main blockchain. Users can then move their litecoins out from the Extension Blocks and back onto the main chain to conduct transparent transactions again.

The cool thing is that this is completely optional. You can still just use the transparent mainchain but when you want to send a private transaction you have the ability to do so. Since Litecoin often acts as a testbed for new features (like the segwit upgrade in 2017) this may be something that could be implemented for Bitcoin in the future.

What’s your take on this? Do you prefer full transparency or the option of privacy?