Welcome to Slate Sundays, CryptoSlate’s new weekly characteristic showcasing in-depth interviews, skilled evaluation, and thought-provoking op-eds that transcend the headlines to discover the concepts and voices shaping the way forward for crypto.
Arms up when you’ve heard of Luckycoin.
If it sounds acquainted, you’re both an business OG for the reason that days of the Silk Street and Satoshi Cube, or a shiny new-wave crypto-curious with a penchant for collectors’ cash.
Why? As a result of Luckycoin dates all the way in which again to 2013, a veritable lifetime within the historical past of crypto, when Bitcoin was enjoyable and the conversations came about on boards moderately than shiny convention halls.
Suppose extra Bitcoin scaling, BTC bubbles, nefarious actors, and software program bugs; much less Bitcoin ETFs, treasuries, presidential pumps, and strategic reserves.
However again to Fortunate.
As a fork of Litecoin, one of many authentic altcoins in Bitcoin’s wake, Luckycoin was the twenty second coin created and listed on CoinMarketCap.
If you happen to have a look at its value historical past in the present day, it resembles a stalagmite. Even when it weren’t for Luckycoin’s nameless creator and random profitable tokenomics, this chart alone tells a narrative, and never the same old one you’ve come to count on.
So, take my hand and let me information you thru the twists and turns of Luckycoin’s journey. It’s a story fraught with epic highs, crushing lows, and a decade-long slumber to rival Sleeping Magnificence’s, and see the Bitcoin lineage memecoin emerge like a “phoenix from the ashes” to assert its rightful place as a revived piece of crypto historical past.
Let’s start.
From nameless beginnings to the Doge-father
Luckycoin was lower from the identical material as Bitcoin, created by an nameless developer often called “LuckyC.” Simply as Satoshi Nakamoto did with Bitcoin, LuckyC embedded the monetary headline of the day in its genesis block.
However Luckycoin was by no means supposed to disrupt the corrosive monetary system; it was an experiment meant to be “enjoyable, quick, and truthful.” Head of partnerships and BD within the Luckycoin group, Dan, explains:
“Quick, due to its fast epochs and velocity, truthful within the sense that no VCs have been backing the coin, just like Bitcoin. It’s fully decentralized, so it gave everybody the chance to purchase at no matter value it was.
The enjoyable side is that each block mined has a chance to earn 2x, 5x, or 58x the conventional block rewards. This provides to the unpredictability related to Fortunate, and that’s the place that meme side is available in.”
Luckycoin launched the idea of LuckyBlocks, with extra random rewards at a 5%, 1%, and 0.01% chance, respectively. As a coin that’s now merge-mined together with Litecoin, Dogecoin, and different Scrypt cash, miners can concurrently earn LKY at no further price when mining any of those different cash. Dan enthuses:
“We’re merge-mined as a part of the Binance merge mining pool, which will increase the hash price of the blockchain, which then shores up the blockchain and makes it safer.”
As an OG Proof-of-Work coin, Fortunate’s a direct descendant of Bitcoin and the chain from which Dogecoin was forked. Dan says:
“So it goes Bitcoin, then forked to Litecoin, which then forked to Fortunate. Luckycoin itself was then forked to create Dogecoin, so it’s truly the daddy of Dogecoin.”
Who’s your daddy?
These deep within the weeds of Dogecoin’s story could recall listening to about Billy Markus’ quest to create a joke crypto that will seize the creativeness of its group.
He spent “a few hours” forking Luckycoin, altering its fonts, tokenomics, branding, and turning it into the chain each member of the Division of Authorities Effectivity has come to know and love.
Early variations of the Dogecoin pockets nonetheless contained references to Luckycoin, with a warning left over from the fork in Dogecoin’s shopper that mentioned, “You’ll LOSE ALL OF YOUR LUCKYCOINS!” when you overlook your passphrase.
Sadly, like many ungrateful offspring earlier than it, Dogecoin’s success got here to the detriment of Luckycoin. The Shiba Inu-themed memecoin went viral in 2014, changing into probably the most traded cryptos round and leaving Luckycoin within the mud.
All traces of LuckyC vanished, and there have been no new updates onchain. Curiosity dwindled, and builders, miners, and Fortunate fans dropped off a cliff, sending the chain right into a 10-year dormancy.
The final block mined within the authentic run was block #81,743 on November 25, 2013. Luckycoin turned a mere footnote in crypto historical past.
Luckycoin: gone however not forgotten
Between 2014 and 2024, no new blocks have been mined. Luckycoin remained in a comatose state, its destiny seemingly sealed among the many echelons of failed cryptos, recognized solely to a couple because the forebear of Elon’s pet chain.
But, similar to the ring of energy, Luckycoin’s code base lay patiently in wait to be discovered years later by a brand new proprietor.
In August 2024, on the peak of the meme coin craze, a gaggle of unsuspecting builders got here throughout an previous backup of the Luckycoin blockchain from 2013. Future was able to be rewritten.
Luckycoin was revived by a group takeover workforce (CTO). As a substitute of making a brand new coin from scratch, the workforce elected to proceed on the unique chain, selecting up the place LuckyC left off and producing block #81,744 on August 25, 2024, to protect the unique genesis block and all historic transactions.
One of many first restorative tweaks the CTO workforce made was to regulate the Luckycoin code to run on fashionable methods by including Auxiliary Proof-of-Work (AuxPoW) help. This enabled merge mining together with Dogecoin, Litecoin, and different Scrypt cash. Dan says:
“With merge mining, so long as Litecoin and Dogecoin are going to be round, then we’ll be round as a result of I don’t see both of these two going out of enterprise any time quickly.”
Scarcer than a snowball within the Sahara
One of the interesting facets of Luckycoin is the shortage of its provide: of the 20 million or so cash that may ever be mined, at the very least 15% have been misplaced eternally, with an additional 11% completely out of circulation. Dan explains:
“It is without doubt one of the most scarce cash on the market. Roughly 20 million fortunate cash will probably be created. We are saying roughly due to that unpredictability with the LKY mining, the 2x, 5x, and 58x I discussed, so you’ll be able to’t ever get 20 million cash created. You in all probability get 20,000,100.”
Of the capped provide, greater than 3.1 million LKY lie in dormant wallets, seemingly misplaced, and over 2.2 million are blacklisted and unable for use. Dan clarifies:
“There’s an entire bunch of enormous coin holders that may by no means entry them as a result of they have been sitting on exchanges that went out of enterprise and went bust. Again within the day, you couldn’t retailer your cash on a Ledger or a Trezor, they usually have been just about sitting on exchanges that went down the drain. We’ve the listing of the dormant chilly wallets which were untouched, and we’re monitoring them. None of them has truly popped up.”
LKY to the moon… and again
By late 2024, main mining swimming pools like Binance and ViaBTC have been merge-mining LKY, boosting the community’s safety and energy, and sending the hash price from ~5 TH/s to over 50 TH/s inside every week of the revival. The brand new workforce additionally carried out a sooner halving schedule (each 100k blocks) to speed up the distribution of the remaining provide.
With the wind at its again, the sky was the restrict for the plucky little chain that might. Fortunate blocks, a scarce provide, and merge-mined together with one of many business’s hottest memecoins, a frenzy for LKY ensued.
It wasn’t solely nostalgic miners and builders who returned. Luckycoin appealed to the following technology of crypto adopters who purchased into its wild value motion and historic lore. Luckycoin was a uncommon gem in a sea of pump.enjoyable shills.
Drunk on its fascinating story, LKY supporters continued to emerge and listings on exchanges like MEXC and Gate adopted. Crypto influencers and KOLs like TheCryptoDog and Miles Deutscher started leaping on the bandwagon as effectively, dedicating a YouTube video to his Luckycoin thesis, wide-eyed, with the opening phrases:
“Oh boy, I feel I’ve simply discovered one thing completely large.”
The boatload of momentum surrounding Fortunate despatched its value ripping into the stratosphere, from ~30 cents a coin all the way in which to an eyewatering all-time excessive of $16.83 on November 25, 2024.
It was all yacht events, dancing ladies, and champagne… till Fortunate’s previous got here again to hang-out it, and the value got here crashing down like a piano from a tenth-floor window.
What goes up should come down
Over the 2024 Christmas and New 12 months’s vacation interval, Luckycoin suffered a Replay Assault, and a vulnerability in its code was exploited by an unscrupulous villain, who was in a position to replay previous transactions from the legacy chain and drain dormant wallets.
2,679,390.79 LKY have been moved throughout the assault, involving 1,307 distinct enter addresses (beforehand dormant) and 580 distinct output addresses, not simply taking the wind out of Luckycoin’s sails, however stirring an almighty hurricane blasting all of it the way in which again from whence it got here. LKY misplaced ~95% of its worth inside a few weeks. Dan remarks:
“There was an previous chain that was working concurrently, they usually recalled an entire bunch of LKY to set an entire cascade of promote orders, so there was a flooding of LKY onto the market.”
The addresses within the replay assault have been blacklisted, and the core vulnerability was absolutely patched on the cryptographic stage, making legacy transactions invalid on the brand new chain, with “zero p.c likelihood of it taking place once more.” But, the fallout was extreme: LKY in the present day trades at below 30 cents a coin.
Whereas Fortunate’s second demise was not malevolently executed within the pump-and-dump vogue of your common memecoin rip-off, a cursory look at that value chart does little to instill religion in your common purchaser. Dan laments:
“There was a large value retrace, with folks pondering that it was a rip-off, which it wasn’t as a result of it’s fully decentralized.”
Third time’s a attraction for Luckycoin?
Dan speaks concerning the energy of the group and the way its CTO workforce members (those who didn’t flee) rallied across the OG memecoin and set about making amends.
“We’re a gaggle of members which have come collectively who see the identical imaginative and prescient when it comes to restoring Fortunate to its glory. A number of the previous CTOs stepped down due to reputational harm, and a brand new CTO got here on board.
It occurred organically, and it occurred throughout the mess of the replay assault. Out of that was a phoenix rising, the place all of us got here collectively, with the identical imaginative and prescient and mission.”
Since its painful retracement, the brand new CTO has labored tirelessly to deliver Fortunate again to life for a 3rd time, patching the code, restoring belief, and constructing key partnerships and group.
Luckycoin not too long ago joined forces with one of many longest-standing crypto wallets within the business, Coinomi, enabling LKY holders to retailer their cash safely, non-custodially, and offchain. Dan regails:
“Coinomi was working a contest the place they’d companion with the most important partaking group, in order that simply goes to point out you the group we have now.”
Past its partnerships with MEXC and Gate, an initiative with Scrypt Pockets to bridge LKY to the Solana ecosystem is now in its remaining levels. Dan enthuses:
“A Fortunate to Solana bridge will probably be nice as a result of it opens up LKY to all the Solana folks.”
The workforce can be seeking to implement a tough pockets integration and is within the early levels of partnerships with Trezor, with plans to increase help to Ledger.
They’re additionally busily engaged on a “advertising and marketing push” to lift the LKY value to a greenback and produce sufficient quantity to be listed by a bigger trade, akin to Binance or OKX. Dan shares:
“We have to develop the group first and use the present exchanges that we have now to go to the larger gamers.”
Will the coin’s shortage, Bitcoin lineage, Fortunate Blocks, and nice lore be sufficient to see Luckycoin shine for a 3rd time? Dan definitely thinks so:
“It’s a long-term cycle coin, and it has such a novel place in crypto historical past that we’re attempting to take care of.”
ICYMI: You possibly can catch the AMA recording with Coinomi and the Luckycoin CTO right here, during which they cowl Luckycoin’s previous, current, and future. You could find extra updates on Luckycoin on X.