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Mimblewimble is about to be published, not in one, but in two separate implementations.
On December 25th and January 15th, respectively, we plan to launch two different networks, called Beam and Grin, each of which offers slightly different custom configurations of the privacy-oriented protocol.
"So far, privacy has always been introduced at the expense of scalability, we are changing it," Grin's pseudonym developer, known as "Ignotus Peverell," told CoinDesk.
First proposed in 2016 by an anonymous cryptographer called "Tom Elvis Jedusor" – freely entitled to the archbishop of the Harry Potter book series, Voldemort – the technology was designed to solve the privacy and scalability on the world's largest blockcoin , the bitcoin.
The first implementation of the technology, Grin, began to be codified at the end of 2016. In March 2018, it was joined by Beam, a startup based in Israel that offers a slightly different interpretation of the technology.
An atmosphere of friendly competition between the two took shape after the announcement of Beam – although occasionally it turned into an absolute resentment on both sides.
While Grin followed a highly citation-based ideology that did not include premin awards or ICOs, in addition to volunteer-based development, Beam sought VC funding and hired a team of developers to work full-time on the software, allowing it to accelerate Grin in its implementation.
Subtle differences in design choices suggest that, while Grin maintains an emphasis on community-led decentralization, Beam stands out for its sharpest sense of business.
However, developers urge both parties because of their differences and the two implementations will continue to coexist and complement each other. And both have expressed the will to overcome the community tribalism that exists in the sector.
Guy Corem, a Beam advisor and former CEO of the Israeli bitcoin mining company Spondoolies-Tech, told CoinDesk:
"We share a common goal that is to implement Mimblewimble as effectively as possible."
Harry Potter technology
What the projects have in common is their basis in the privacy-oriented protocol, Mimblewimble.
Taking a step back, Mimblewimble takes its name from the curse that binds Harry-Potter's tongue because of its ability to merge transactions together to make them indecipherable.
"It's a chain focused on privacy in a new format without any of the luggage hanging down on previous coins," summarized developer Grin Yeastplume.
Yet while they are similar in this respect, there is a great variety of differences between Grin and Beam.
History
Grin, which boasts of its large community, has been actively developing since 2016.
According to the Github open-source code repository, its main main developers are Antioch Peverell, Gary Yu, hashmap, Ignotus Peverell, Quentin Le Sceller and Yeastplume.
It comes from a community that was organically formed around the technology following the announcement of Mimblewimble throughout 2016, and has become closely associated with basic technology.
Beam, on the other hand, came later in the industry, entering the space in March 2018.
Speaking with CoinDesk, CTO Alex Romanov said that while Mimblewimble seemed to be the best choice for a privacy-focused protocol, Grin's development team was moving slowly.
"Grin is structured as a research project, they do not receive external funding except for donations, they do it part-time, they do it very slowly," said Romanov.
When trained, Beam was treated with caution by the Grin community. And this is partly because, in its early days, Beam was not open-source, bringing suspicions to build around the project.
"Nobody knew what we were doing and when there is something that is hidden there is speculation going on," said Romanov.
But today, the Beam code is public and even the two projects feed each other. For example, Beam even partially funded Grin's security audits.
"Our projects take different approaches, but we collaborate and exchange ideas every day. [Mimblewimble] the technology can only become stronger as a result, "Grin developer" Yeastplume " tweeted at the end of October.
Governance
One of the most significant differences between the two cryptocurrencies is the different approach to governance.
For example, Beam takes his example from the privacy-centric zcash cryptocurrency, maintaining a corporate structure and channeling part of the block's prize into a foundation to support blockchain development.
"Beam is a professional effort to create a currency for privacy, there is an alignment of incentives within the block awards so that the project does not die," said Romanov.
In this regard, Grin takes a different approach, based on a model of community funding similar to that used by the monero project.
And while it is a less reliable source of income, Grin sees this as an advantage that ultimately increases the security of the project.
"The project is firmly committed to not engaging in any ICOs, pre-mines, founder awards or similar activities," wrote Yeastplume in a statement, adding:
"We are not guided by interests or corporate interests, we are open-source and driven by the design community."
Public
Beam has a strong emphasis on usability, having built a simple wallet interface that is considered central to the overall added value of the project.
"Having a GUI portfolio and a mobile wallet will increase adoption, increase the number of transactions and use, and increase the anonymity set," Corem told CoinDesk.
In addition to being designed from a user-friendly perspective, the portfolio boasts implementations in various operating systems, including MacOS, Windows and Linux. Beam will also release a lightweight client next to its mainnet version, Coreum said.
Grin, however, currently offers only a command line wallet and is less accessible for non-technical users.
"We will have a fairly well-tested MimbleWimble chain and a relatively stable and tested command line wallet, with all sorts of functionalities in different development states to assist the community in creating unique transaction exchange solutions and other crucial infrastructures" Yeastplume he told CoinDesk:
"It is still very targeted to an audience of technicians, and will be very" used at your own risk ", especially in the early days".
Design
Furthermore, Beam is coded in C ++, while Grin relies on a more contemporary coding language called Rust.
And while there are slight architectural differences, perhaps the most noticeable difference between the two cryptocurrencies is their economic models. In particular, Beam is considered a "value reserve" currency that has a fixed issuance program similar to bitcoin.
"We wanted to create a private deposit of valuable coins, the issue to be restricted," Romanov told CoinDesk.
On the contrary, Grin's monetary policy has not been resolved. Currently, a new token is released every second, although this will decrease periodically every ten years. This is due to the project's belief that a sustained issue will stabilize the value of the currency.
"We want Grin to be a currency, not a store of value" (whatever it actually means in the ridiculously volatile cryptic space), "Yeastplume said. "We want to encourage use and we do not want to unjustly reward early adopters with an arbitrary deflation halving program."
Extraction
Projects also have slightly different attitudes to mining, or the process by which new transactions are added to the blockchain.
Each project implements a slightly modified version of Equihash and both are committed to change to handle highly optimized application specific integrated chips or ASICs.
Within the next two years, Grin intends to make regular changes to the software to block the use of ASICs. After this, it will move to a more ASIC-friendly job testing algorithm, with the belief that after two years ASIC hardware will become more accessible.
Beam announced a similar strategy. However, it only intends to hold the ASICs at bay for a period of 12 months, giving the miners of the GPU an "advantage", Corem said.
Going forward
For both cryptocurrencies, the launch of their mainnets is only the first step.
"The long-term vision is to be the best digital money there is, and with a little more work I know we can get there," Ignotus Peverell told CoinDesk.
Both cryptocurrency projects are planning to implement new and experimental features. For example, Beam cited its plans for integration with BOLT, the privacy-focused lightning implementation, as well as adding atomic swaps and other features.
Yeastplume echoed this, telling CoinDesk:
"The launch is just another milestone in Grin's life cycle, and relatively early in that."
Yeastplume cited "plans for improvements", while Peverell said "we have a lot of improvements in terms of usability, scalability and privacy".
For example, it is feared that both implementations may be potentially vulnerable to machine learning analysis – because of the impossibility of drawing to hide input and output – they are also being discussed.
While both teams currently implement a privacy feature called Dandelion to better hide these potential losses, there may be other experimental attempts that can be concluded in the future.
To support these changes, both cryptocurrencies will be subject to regular system-level software updates, or hard forks, in their early days.
Peverell said he hopes to see Mimblewimble implemented as a sidechain without trust, focusing on privacy for other cryptocurrencies, adding:
"Mimblewimble is putting pressure on other cryptocurrencies to adapt and find the right compromises, creating a positive ecosystem network."
The title of this article has been updated for clarity.
Two candles in black image through Shutterstock
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