Litecoin transactions surge, breaking annual high.

Transactions sent on the Litecoin network surged again to 48,582 on September 19, 2019, breaking the previous yearly high of 47,962 on June 22, according to data provided by bitinfocharts.

It’s unclear what the root cause of the anomalous surge is, but other publicly available data suggests it doesn’t appear to be another dust attack. Usage, which at first seemed completely legitimate, increased a few days ago.

Using Blockchair’s filters, there appear to be several suspicious transactions in blocks 1704981, 1704984, 1705040, 1705035, and 1705021. Each block contains transactions involving one input and hundreds of outputs. This is not similar to a typical dust attack transaction because the value of each output is so high. >0.01 LTC and inconsistent. Without additional tools to fully map and associate these addresses, it’s difficult to get a better idea of ​​what’s going on. At some point, it appears to be connected to an exchange/service wallet that was used several times between 2017 and 2019.

There is also a connection to this wallet (M893qmrU3PSwTrDVU7Cn3K4zxUWPKBmZkr). This wallet appears to be constantly spamming the network with hundreds of transactions per day. Since April 2019, this wallet has executed over 167,820 transactions to date. However, this also does not follow normal behavior. This is because the addresses involved appear to be controlled by the same owners, continually segregating and consolidating funds. All you have to do is create a new address and fill it all with coins. This is supported by another spike in correlated ‘From’ addresses on the same day.

However, the daily value transferred has remained consistent at around $350 million per day, suggesting that this recent anomaly is picking up enough speed to suggest that it does not yet signal further growth for the network.