Despite facing criticism from certain groups, the popularity of Ordinals continues to soar, as evidenced by the over 161,000 inscriptions already present, as per analytics data from Dune. This has prompted some enthusiasts to explore the possibility of bringing the project to Litecoin. While there are differences between the two blockchains, they share similarities. For instance, both are proof-of-work blockchains that facilitate quicker transactions. Additionally, Litecoin features SegWit and Taproot technology, which are essential for the successful implementation of Ordinals.

On February 10, a pseudonymous Twitter user, Indigo Nakamoto, challenged the community to port the Ordinals project to Litecoin and promised a reward of 5 LTC, equivalent to $500 at the time, to anyone who successfully does so. In response, software engineer Anthony Guerrera took up the challenge and recently launched the Litecoin Ordinals project on GitHub after forking the Bitcoin Ordinals repository posted by creator Casey Rodarmor last month.

Guerrera, who was motivated by the bounty put out by Indigo and others, revealed that the reward had grown from 5 LTC to 22 LTC, worth around $2100 at the time. However, the porting process was not without its challenges. The developer encountered issues with the rust-bitcoin dependency of Ordinals, which did not support the MimbleWimble upgrade on Litecoin. As a result, Guerrera had to fork rust-bitcoin to make it compatible with Litecoin MWEB.

The MimbleWimble upgrade, which was launched last May, enhances Litecoin’s transaction size and privacy features. Guerrera highlighted that the upgrade offers Litecoin an edge, as users can inscribe more data on a single transaction at a lower cost than Bitcoin. He added that having MWEB built into the chain allows for private fund transfers before inscribing, which is a significant advantage compared to Bitcoin’s fully public ledger.

With the successful porting of Ordinals to Litecoin, the race to inscribe JPEGs and other data formats on the network has begun.