Stephanie Douse 
Litecoin has announced the formation of LTC Labs in collaboration with Antpool, one of the world’s leading digital currency mining platform, to form a digital currency research Laboratory.
The major focus of Litecoin labs will be “research and information of anonymous transactions, decentralized applications, the evolution of digital currency, wallets and other projects focused on growing the Litecoin ecosystem.”
Every month, Antpool will donate half of what they earn from Litecoin pool mining to help fund the project and development projects. The Litecoin team is working on a decentralized autonomous organization (DAO) to help administer this endeavor.
In the last several years, Litecoin has not been particularly innovative. The creation of Litecoin Labs, on the other hand, is likely to shift the narrative because it might be a key contributor to the network’s growth. Clearly, this will offer cutting-edge parts of blockchain technology to Litecoin users, such as decentralized applications, which are now widely used.
The creation of a DAO is also uncharted terrain for the project, putting it in the same league as Dash, MakerDAO, and a slew of other projects that have found success in the fast-changing crypto industry.
Meanwhile, there is evidence that the network is expanding, since the number of users is rapidly increasing, as seen by the volume of transactions. As the network adds more use cases for its native crypto, LTC, the new improvements will almost probably lead to more growth in this area.
Litecoin supporters have long contended that the cryptocurrency is undervalued due to its use case as a payment mechanism. Some indicators, such as the increased transaction volume, support this viewpoint.
Surprisingly, in 2022, the network saw the highest number of LTC whale transactions ever, with over $100,000 (3,458 transactions). This could be a sign of a mid-term price direction shift, according to crypto analytics company Santiment.
“Litecoin may not be on many traders’ radars right now, but it quietly just saw the largest amount of daily LTC whale transactions exceeding $100k+ (3,458 transactions) in 2022. Typically, this is an indicator of mid-term price direction shifts.”
The cryptocurrency is now the 21st largest by market capitalization and has been out of the top ten for some time. If the current developments on the network continue, it should soon restore its former position and even surpass it.