Litecoin has a fixed maximum number, just like Bitcoin. Thus, there would bever be 84 million Litecoin in its circulation. The reason is because, every 2.5 minutes Litecoin generates a new block ledger entry. This is from the most recent global Litecoin transactions. Mining software verifies the block and makes Litecoin visible to miners or system participants willing to see it. When the miner can verify, the next block gets into the chain. It becomes a record for every Litecoin transaction. The first miner can get incentives for mining Litecoin. They will get 12.5 ledger Litecoins as a reward. This kind of reward could decrease by the time, it is the same with Bitcoin.
In 2019 for instance, the total was halved, then it continued to regular intervals till it reached 84.000.000 mined Litecoin. However, the foundation of Litecoin believes that it will reach around 2142 after 84 million reached Litecoins. In order to secure the network, other cryptocurrencies including Bitcoin and Litecoin use the proof of work (PoW) algorithm. In this scenario PoW needs one party to prove the rest of participating parties. It is different from Bitcoin in that it requires using the SHA-256 algorithm. Litecoin on the other hand has less resource-intensive features such as the Scrypt PoW algorithm.
Scrypt as in Bitcoin is a derived key function using password. Tarchship said that the scrypt is a key derivation function for Tarsnap online backup system. The design is to secure against attacks like hardware brute-force more. Alternative functions like PBKFS or bcrypt might not be in the design. In 2010 for instance, the operations for mining developed specialized hardware. The epitome is the application-specific circuit or ASIC.
