$ETH Differences between Bitcoin and Litecoin

Despite being almost identical to Bitcoin in technical aspects, the Litecoin network differs from it due to changes in some variables such as: It processes a block every 2.5 minutes on average instead of every 10 minutes, which allows for a shorter wait for transaction confirmation.

It will produce approximately 4 times more units than the Bitcoin network, around 84 million litecoins.

It uses the scrypt function in its proof-of-work algorithm: a sequential memory-hard function first conceived by Colin Percival, facilitating mining, as it does not require sophisticated equipment like in the case of Bitcoin.

Mining and Inflation

Transactions, balances, and emissions of Litecoin are managed by a P2P network through scrypt, and its proof-of-work scheme, very similar to Bitcoin. The emission rate of Litecoin is decreasing and tending to zero, forming a geometric series. This rate is halved every 4 years on average, reaching a final total of 84 million LTC.

The memory-intensive nature of scrypt means that (unlike Bitcoin) Litecoin production is memory-intensive, making it suitable for mining with GPUs and making it costly to create implementations with FPGAs or ASICs.