What Grin and Mimblewimble Mean for the Future of Bitcoin Privacy 1 min

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In a little over a month, one of the most eagerly
anticipated cryptocurrency projects in recent times will
launch. There will be no ICO or premine, and, like the
transactions themselves, the project team are highly
private. Grin, the first network to utilize Mimblewimble
cryptography, has wide-ranging implications for privacy
that could ultimately shape the future of the Bitcoin
network.

Grin and Beam Will Give Privacy Purveyors a Lot to Smile About

Grin and Beam are two projects that will make use of
Mimblewimble, a form of cryptography whose
applications include facilitating private transactions. Of
the pair, Grin has garnered the most attention from
bitcoiners. One reason for this is that the success of new
privacy protocols could pave the way for Bitcoin Core or
Bitcoin Cash to adopt similar tech. That possibility
remains some way off, but in the meantime, there are
other reasons why Grin has intrigued the Bitcoin
community.

Observers have noted the similarities between the launch
of Grin with that of Bitcoin and Monero. Grin has a largely
anonymous team, no founders’ rewards, and a
community spirit that harks back to the early days of
Bitcoin, when proponents were more interested in
creating something useful than posturing and profiting.
While Grin will certainly attract its share of speculators,
its technology is its primary talking point. “Grin has no
amounts and no addresses,” explains its website.
“Transactions can be trivially aggregated … It’s not
controlled by any company, foundation or individual. The
coin distribution is designed to be as fair (but not gratis)
as is known to be possible.”

The Magic and Mystery of Mimblewimble

At the heart of Grin, as well as Beam , the latter described
as a “Scalable confidential cryptocurrency,” is
Mimblewimble. Named after a Harry Potter spell also
known as the Tongue-Tying Curse that prevents an
opponent from casting theirs, Mimblewimble enables the
bulk of a blockchain’s past transaction data to be
removed. It first surfaced on the #bitcoin-wizards IRC
channel back in 2016, proposed, fittingly, by a
pseudonymous developer known as Tom Elvis Jedusor,
named after Voldemort’s real name in the French edition
of Harry Potter.
Intriguing as Mimblewimble’s origins are, it’s what the
so-called Tongue-Tying Curse can do in the here and
now that’s had tongues wagging. “Mimblewimble
collapses all transactions within a block into a single
block-wide transaction,” explains Jordan Clifford in
“Behind Mimblewimble”. He continues: “It uses a
modified version of Confidential Transactions so that the
balances are stored as cryptographic commitments rather
than publicly visible amounts.”

Because Mimblewimble does away with conventional
addresses, sender and receiver essentially have to agree
to transact before broadcasting their actions to the
network. With the amount that has been sent masked, it
is extremely difficult for third parties to eavesdrop. This is
in stark contrast to networks such as Bitcoin, where
“blockchain voyeurism” is a very real thing.

What Mimblewimble Means for Bitcoin

Like many cryptographic technologies to have emerged
over the last decade, Mimblewimble’s origins can be
traced back to Bitcoin. For one thing, it uses Dandelion, a
technology that was originally designed for Bitcoin, as a
means to obfuscate transactions by routing them through
a series of network hops. Due to the decentralized design
of Bitcoin, network upgrades are few and far between.
“Move slow and break nothing,” is basically the mantra.
Bitcoin is still a long way from introducing privacy-
enhancing technology, and there are many who believe
that, due to pressure from institutional investors and
regulators, it may never be possible to broadcast fully
anonymous transactions directly on the BTC blockchain.
Schnorr signatures, a scaling technology which can help
to combat spam attacks, have a greater chance of being
introduced first. This could provide a stepping stone,
however, for the addition of Coinjoin or alternative
privacy tech based on Mimblewimble.

Given the potential applications for a Bitcoin network
with optional private transactions, it’s no wonder that
Grin and Beam are attracting so much interest. The Beam
mainnet launch is due this month, while Grin’s is set for
Jan 15, 2019. Both networks will provide a fascinating
insight into the capabilities of Mimblewimble, two and a
half years after it was conceived.

Source : https://news.bitcoin.com