Litecoin is very similar to bitcoin, but there are some distinct differences. Litecoin was designed with a blockchain protocol called Scrypt rather than SHA 256, which powers bitcoin. In Scrypt, blocks have solved an average of every 2.5 minutes rather than the 10 minutes that bitcoin requires. Let’s face it -- 10 minutes is a really long time in the digital world, and litecoin was created in an effort to get things moving a little faster. This means that each confirmation takes less work and energy for the network to confirm, which should translate into lower transaction costs.
Charlie Lee, litecoin’s founder, has always maintained that litecoin was never intended to replace bitcoin, but was meant to be the silver to bitcoin’s gold. As of the time of this writing, litecoin had the 5th highest market cap of any cryptocurrency, behind bitcoin, bitcoin cash, dash, and ethereum. Litecoin was the first cryptocurrency to be transacted over Lightning Network, a matter of days after they were the first major cryptocurrency to implement Segregated Witness, which has been difficult for the large bitcoin community to reach any sort of consensus on.
Many believe that changing protocols to Segregated Witness (Segwit) and enabling Lightning Network transactions is the way of the future for the cryptocurrency, but rest assured that the future will have plenty of room for several different kinds of currencies with their own strengths.