One of the oldest altcoins, Litecoin’s (LTC) network activity has significantly increased recently. The number of active wallet addresses on the network has reached an all-time high. Data provided by the on-chain data analysis platform IntoTheBlock shows that the number of active wallet addresses in the Litecoin network surpassed 1.4 million on December 8th. Market experts are considering that this increase in network activity could lead to a sharp increase in the altcoin’s price.
Litecoin’s Network Activity is on the Rise
The recent surge in active wallet addresses on the Litecoin network occurred less than a month after the network activity reached its highest level in the past six months. In mid-November, the number of active wallet addresses on the network rose to 979,550, breaking its previous record of 719,300 set in May.
The tremendous growth in active wallet addresses is attributed to the Litecoin Ordinals Protocol, built on the LTC-20 token standard. This standard is seen as an experiment by the community to demonstrate that users can create off-chain assets with ordinals, a branch of Bitcoin‘s BRC-20 standard. As known, this standard was also introduced to the Litecoin network to pave the way for the creation of assets.
In addition to the significant increase in active wallet addresses on the Litecoin network, the number of wallet addresses with a balance above zero also reached new peaks, increasing by over 40% since the start of the year. Moreover, the number of transactions on the network hit an all-time high of 1.09 million on November 14th, surpassing Bitcoin’s transaction count of approximately 523,284. On December 8th, the number of transactions on the Litecoin network reached 846,561, once again exceeding the number of Bitcoin network transactions, which was around 411,321 on the same date.
Current Status of LTC Price
While there is a significant increase in Litecoin’s network activity, the network’s native asset, LTC’s price, is gathering strength along with the general uptrend in the cryptocurrency market. According to CoinMarketCap’s data, the altcoin’s price joined the rally party of BTC and other altcoins over the weekend, reaching $77 on December 10th. Despite a 7% drop on the first day of the week to $72.45, the price is showing signs of recovery.
The recent surge to $77 in LTC’s price was the first significant increase since the third block reward halving in the Litecoin network that took place at the beginning of August. This block reward halving, which occurs every four years, reduces the block reward amount in LTC that miners receive per block by half. With the third halving, this reward amount dropped from 12.5 LTC to 6.25 LTC.