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Privacy is a question that is often talked about in the world of cryptography. Most existing platforms use open public records, which offer very little to protect the amounts sent and to whom they are sent. Realizing that some cryptic users need to maintain the privacy of their information (with some investors willing to pay a premium for Bitcoin without prior transaction history), several cryptocurrency projects set off to find a way to meet these needs. One of these cryptocurrencies is called Smile.
Grin is a blockchain / cryptocurrency focused on privacy and scalability that wants to change the way we use digital money. Founded and developed by a community effort, this project is based on the revolutionary MimbleWimble protocol. To understand what exactly this cryptocurrency wants to do, we must first examine the underlying technology.
What is the MimbleWimble protocol?
MimbleWimble was initially mentioned and described by Tom Elvis Jedusor, a user of the Bitcoin search channel, which is the French name of Voldemort, a character in the popular book / movie series Harry Potter. The protocol name is also taken from the same fantasy world and represents a spell that "binds the target's language to prevent it from talking about a specific topic". This explains why this privacy-focused project bears the name "MimbleWimble". To conclude the analogies of Harry Potter / privacy, a called user Ignotus Peverell (the original owner of the invisible object of the mantle in the books) took the original MimbleWimble white paper and started the Smile project on the Github software development platform in 2016.
MimbleWimble is a blockchain protocol that mixes several innovative technologies to radically change the way in which transactions are built in Bitcoin and reduce the size of the blockchain. The project focuses on providing better privacy / scalability compared to Bitcoin by removing the need for addresses and minimizing data storage requirements. With the two features mentioned included in MimbleWimble (and later in Grin), all that is left for this new technological element is decentralization is price stability. The developers of MimbleWimble think they will be able to do it.
The MimbleWimble protocol offers non-transparent private transactions; it is based on Elliptic Curve Cryptography (ECC) to construct opaque transactions that are still verifiable. Combines two cryptographic features designed for Bitcoin:
- Confidential transactions (CT)
Developed by Bitcoin developer, Gregory Maxwell, and also implemented on Blockstream's sidechain Liquid, CT allows users to hide transaction amounts so that only the sender / recipient knows how much was actually sent. This technology allows senders to encrypt the number of Bitcoins they want to send using what we call blinding factors, elements that are created by combining the private and public keys of the parties involved.
🏆This is our comparison between ethereum and bitcoin.
There are no addresses in MimbleWimble. Blind factors are used to connect two members of a transaction. The blinding factor is shared between the two parties who are bargaining and no stranger has access to it. Subsequently, this blinding factor can be exploited to demonstrate ownership of the values sent. Finally, the factor is used to encrypt the transaction inputs / outputs and the managers' public / private keys. Using a technology called Pedersen Commitment (where complete nodes subtract the encrypted amounts on the sending side of transactions from encrypted amounts on the receiving side of transactions), network verifiers can confirm that transactions are real and no cryptocurrency has been created thin air.
Also developed by Maxwell, this technology allows us to combine multiple transactions into one big transaction where all senders send money to all receivers. Thanks to this we can hide which receivers get what coins, in a similar way to what you see with RingCT technology (a feature used in the common Monero and Zcash private coins).
It is clear that with MimbleWimble it is possible to reach a level of privacy never seen before with Bitcoin. Your transaction is sent "in bulk" with other transactions and its value is a mystery to the network or to any external observer; since no addresses are used, no one can link your name to a single address and then track your transaction activity. There is much more to say about the MimbleWimble technology and we could not adapt all the information in a single introductory article; if you want to know more, take a look at the official introduction to the protocol provided by Grin Github.
What is Grin?
Grin is a cryptocurrency that uses MimbleWimble as a protocol behind its blockchain. It is designed to provide privacy, scalability and fungibility to the end user with a system that has no address or transaction amount. For this reason, a Grin block does not contain any transactions; the block itself seems like a big transaction. Furthermore, all the original associations between input and output are lost and mixed with others. Because of all this, currency blockchain is extremely light and does not require much disk space to be archived.
Currency is often touted as the Rust implementation of MimbleWimble. Developed using the aforementioned programming language, the project uses another industry first in the Cuckoo Cycle PoW mining algorithm. This algorithm is apparently Resistant ASIC thanks to the intensity of the memory; as such, it is possible to extract the cryptocurrency using the computer's CPU. This means that mining Grin will be an economic attempt; all this should encourage the decentralization of the mining network. Once Grin is launched, a single new coin will be drawn every second on average and this speed will not change over time.
🏆Read our direct comparison of cryptographic exchanges: Binance vs Kucoin
The project was entirely funded by the community, for an amount of $ 55,000. The currency is also developed by the community, with ad hoc part-time developers taking on most of the responsibilities. There is no one to claim ownership of the project and no pre-mine or ICO will be launched.
As for Grin's monetary policy, it will be intriguing. The currency will use inflation as a percentage of the existing offer; this inflation will soon be high but gradually lowers over time, approaching zero percent but never reaching it. This inflation will be less than 10% during the first 10 years, then less than 5% after 20 years and will continuously decrease over time. This indicates that Grin is not trying to emulate Bitcoin as a limited supply currency. The Grin community believes that the Bitcoin mining networks and similar limited supply currencies could react in unpredictable ways once the last coin of each network has been extracted and therefore believe that inflation is needed to motivate miners to # 39; infinite.
The high early inflation of Grin means that the currency's stock-to-flow ratio is extremely low. This encourages Grin owners not to HODL, but instead to spend their cryptocurrency, building the ecosystem at a critical moment in the currency's existence. The currency will initially look to avoid being a deposit of value and will attempt to become the medium of exchange first.
Points of weakness Grin (and MimbleWimble in general) include the lack of scripts, which means that Grin's blockchain is not programmable. Another important thing is that two portfolios must interact directly to create a transaction (in the sense that they must be online at the same time). It is also possible to create an espionage node that receives and forwards most (if not all) of the individual transactions. This node could potentially record individual transactions and keep track of which inputs are paying which outputs.
MimbleWimble and Grin state that all these problems can be solved. By combining transactions before they hit the verification network, adding dummy outputs containing zero coins and implementing a technology called the Dandelion protocol are all suggested as possible solutions to the problems mentioned. Technologies like Schnorr signatures e Bulletproofs it will also be compatible with Grin.
Conclusion
Grin is currently running v4 of his testnet and should move to the mainnet at the start of 2019. Interesting technology solutions and a rarely seen monetary policy place this concept apart from other products on the market. Anonymous founder, non-leader development group, PoW consensus, no on-chain or pre-mine governance are just some of the features we mentioned above. Many experts agree that Grin and MimbleWimble have the potential to develop privacy solutions that can eventually be used to improve other cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin. We will know more if any of these potentials can be met in 2019.
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The writers and authors of CapitanAltcoin may or may not have a personal interest in any of the projects and activities mentioned. None of the contents on CaptainAltcoin is an investment advice, nor does it replace the advice of a certified financial planner.
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