Litecoin daily trading surges, hitting a new yearly high.

Earlier this month, on November 2nd, the Litecoin network processed a new daily transaction record of 67,142, reaching levels last seen in September 2018 and surpassing all previous annual records, according to data provided by BitInfoCharts. However, not everything is as it seems and the unusual statistics stand out in the context of the ~20,000 standard daily transactions we typically see.

Most of these transactions appear to have originated between blocks **1729590 & (1729630)(https://blockchair.com/litecoin/block/1729630)** And since all these transactions link back to one address, LasGvLmUa527EWT2kq5R5ZohhFBysZQYnv, the culprit appears to be a single actor in the network.

The addresses are divided equally between Ł0.26872732 in amounts of Ł0.00000410 among over 45,000 addresses across 18 transactions. All addresses involved were ltc1, also known as bech32 (default segwit) type addresses. Once split, the coins were transferred to another unique bech32 address in the amount of 0.00000300 pounds, causing an unusual spike with over 45,000 new transactions broadcast to the network.

This activity shares many characteristics with typical dust attacks, but all addresses involved appear to be newly created, so the motivation for this behavior appears to be a private test and not tracked by other network participants. This is supported by the fact that most coins were soon reintegrated.

This move pushed Segwit usage to a new high of 87% before falling back to current levels of around 70%.