Litecoin has more than doubled in the past five days, rising from around $4.30 to just under $9.50 after months of no activity. The reason appears to be segregated witnesses (segwit), a protocol upgrade that facilitates the Lightning Network and, potentially, sidechains.
Segwit is currently going through the activation process, seemingly stalling for two months, but has now surged to just under 60% of the network’s hardware share. That is because Litecoin’s biggest pool – F2Pool, which had previously told CCN they will signal for segwit, actually began doing so on April the 1st.