Bitcoin vs Litecoin block explorers

TLDR

Bitcoin and Litecoin are both UTXO chains sharing a common codebase ancestry. Addresses look superficially similar but use different version bytes and prefixes. tx.taxi routes Bitcoin lookups to mempool.space and Litecoin lookups to Litecoin Space (with Blockchair as a secondary configured explorer).

Address & transaction format

Bitcoin addresses come in several formats. Legacy (P2PKH) addresses start with 1 and use base58check. P2SH addresses start with 3. Bech32 (SegWit v0) addresses start with bc1q. Bech32m (Taproot) addresses start with bc1p. The leading characters identify which encoding is in use.

Litecoin addresses follow the same encoding families with different version bytes and a different bech32 prefix. Legacy Litecoin addresses typically start with L (the version byte differs from Bitcoin's 1-prefixed addresses). P2SH Litecoin addresses historically used 3, but Litecoin migrated its P2SH prefix to M to avoid collision with Bitcoin P2SH addresses. Bech32 Litecoin addresses use the ltc1 prefix instead of Bitcoin's bc1.

Transaction IDs on both chains are SHA-256(SHA-256(tx)) of the serialized transaction, displayed as 64-character lowercase hex strings with no prefix. Block hashes follow the same format. Block heights are integers.

The encoding inheritance is deliberate. Litecoin forked from a Bitcoin-derived codebase, so the transaction structure, signing, and overall UTXO mechanics are the same. The differences are in chain parameters (block time, total supply, hash function for proof-of-work) and in the version-byte changes that make addresses distinguishable.

Block explorers tx.taxi uses

For Bitcoin, tx.taxi's primary configured explorer is mempool.space. mempool.space is a long-running, widely-used Bitcoin explorer with a focus on mempool state, fee estimation, and block inspection.

For Litecoin, tx.taxi's primary configured explorer is Litecoin Space, a Litecoin-focused explorer modeled on the mempool.space UI family. tx.taxi also has Blockchair Litecoin configured as a secondary option, which is a multichain explorer with Litecoin support among its chains.

Both explorers cover the standard objects (addresses, transactions, blocks, mempool). The familiar mempool.space-style UI on Litecoin Space makes cross-referencing between the two chains easier.

When to use which

If your value starts with ltc1, L, or M, it is Litecoin-shaped; use the Litecoin chain page which routes to Litecoin Space. If it starts with bc1, 1, or is otherwise Bitcoin-prefixed, use the Bitcoin chain page which routes to mempool.space.

A bare 64-character hex string with no prefix could be a transaction ID on either chain. In that case, context matters: if you got the hash from a Litecoin wallet or a Litecoin block, it is a Litecoin hash. tx.taxi defaults to Bitcoin for ambiguous bare hashes, but you can disambiguate by loading the chain page directly and pasting the value there.

See UTXO vs account model for a primer on how UTXO chains work and what is a block explorer for the general background.

Common confusions

The first confusion is that shared codebase does not mean shared chain. Litecoin and Bitcoin look similar because they descend from a similar code lineage, but they are entirely separate networks. There is no shared state, no shared address space in terms of balances, and no way for a Bitcoin transaction to settle a Litecoin debt. The version-byte changes in Litecoin's address prefixes exist precisely to make this clear.

The second confusion is the historical P2SH prefix overlap. For a period, Litecoin P2SH addresses started with 3, the same prefix as Bitcoin P2SH addresses. Litecoin later migrated to the M prefix to remove this ambiguity, but old documentation, old wallet exports, and old paper backups may still show 3-prefixed Litecoin P2SH addresses. If you encounter one, you need wallet context to know which chain it belongs to.

The third confusion is block time and confirmations. Litecoin targets roughly 2.5-minute blocks, four times faster than Bitcoin's 10-minute target. Six Litecoin confirmations is about fifteen minutes; six Bitcoin confirmations is about an hour. The number of confirmations is not directly comparable across chains for the same level of probabilistic finality. Both explorers display confirmation counts, but reading them requires knowing which chain you are on.

A fourth point worth flagging is proof-of-work algorithm. Bitcoin uses SHA-256d for proof-of-work; Litecoin uses Scrypt. This is invisible at the explorer level (both chains still produce blocks, with hashes, with transactions) but it matters for context: mining hardware is not interchangeable, mining pools are different, and the security models scale independently. The data shown on mempool.space and Litecoin Space is just blocks and transactions, regardless of how the proof-of-work was computed. tx.taxi routes you to the correct explorer in one step so the rest is just reading.