LitecoinZ (LTZ)

LitecoinZ (LTZ) is a proof-of-work cryptocurrency launched in January 2018 as a community-driven fork of Zcash. Unlike many forks that preserve the parent project’s defaults, LitecoinZ was built with its own genesis block, distinct network ports, and a supply schedule modeled after Litecoin: a maximum of 84 million LTZ with a block reward of 50 LTZ that halves every 840,000 blocks, roughly every four years. The project is maintained by an open-source team under the litecoinz-core GitHub organization.

In October 2020, the project underwent a major codebase rewrite, replacing its Zcash-derived base with Bitcoin 0.19 as the new foundation while retaining Zcash’s shielded transaction support. The proof-of-work algorithm was changed from Equihash 200/9 to Equihash n=144, k=5 to preserve ASIC resistance after the earlier variant was targeted by ASIC miners. The network has since passed three soft forks: CSV at block 585,000, SegWit at block 590,000, and a switch from the Digishield to the LWMA difficulty adjustment algorithm at block 600,000, which also moved the target block time to 600 seconds.

Approximately 38.3 million LTZ are currently in circulation out of the 84 million maximum supply. LitecoinZ is active with a live website and block explorer, though trading volume and market capitalization remain very small. One notable difference from Zcash forks is the removal of transaction expiration by height, meaning exchanges and mining pools can run LitecoinZ nodes without being forced to upgrade solely to avoid expiry, reducing operational overhead for infrastructure operators.