Litecoin launched in 2011 as one of the first Bitcoin forks, built around a faster four-times block target and the Scrypt mining algorithm to keep the network accessible to consumer-grade hardware. For years it sat in Bitcoin’s shadow as a quiet payment-focused alternative, until the MimbleWimble Extension Block (MWEB) activation in 2022 added a confidential transaction layer that let users move LTC into a private side block before pegging back to the main chain. That privacy layer made Litecoin one of the few major proof-of-work networks offering optional confidentiality without forking the entire chain. The story took a sharp turn in April 2026, when a coordinated attack exploited a consensus vulnerability in MWEB combined with a denial-of-service hit on patched mining pools. The result was a 13-block reorganization that wiped roughly three hours of invalid transactions and forced the network to roll back to a clean state. The Litecoin Foundation initially called it a zero-day. The public commit log on the litecoin-project GitHub repository told a different story, showing the consensus fix had been privately patched four weeks earlier. The incident reopened a debate the network has been quietly having for years: how to coordinate critical security upgrades across independent mining pools without leaving a window between patch and deployment. LTC traded near $56 through the event, down about 1% on the day.
The official line is a single zero-day that hit on April 25. The git log on the litecoin-project repo says the consensus vulnerability was privately patched four weeks earlier. Two different stories, one chain reorg in the middle.
Saturday's 13-block reorg looked like a 51% attack. The Litecoin team says it was a zero-day in MWEB. Either way, three hours of chain history just got rewritten.
