Is Mimblewimble The Most Secure Blockchain Ever?

Have you heard of Mimblewimble yet? If not, then you might want to pay attention because this is a seriously cool invention, one that could have a huge impact on the future of cryptocurrency. There is always new products being launched via the blockchain, though it is rare that such new products are met with such a wave of excitement. Established by ‘Grin’ Mimblewimble is a ‘sidechain’ that co-exists with the Bitcoin blockchain and provides a protocol that is truly private. Unlike Bitcoin, Monero, Dash and other platforms that claim to be private and anonymous, Mimblewimble uses a system that means it can facilitate fully private transactions. It’s exciting, it’s fresh and it has huge implications for the future of blockchain technology.

For the Harry Potter fans that have accidentally clicked this, you’ll know that Mimblewimble actually refers to a spell used within the franchise, it’s a spell that allegedly puts a tongue-tying curse on the victim, silencing them. This is a testament to the silent nature of Mimblewimble in reference to it’s total privacy.

How did all of this come about?

Mimblewimble has been in the works for a number of years now, though the main launch of the protocol has only taken place over the past few weeks. It is alleged that in a Bitcoin dev forum in 2016, an anonymous developer uploaded the Mimblewimble whitepaper. The whitepaper was then viewed and adapted by a number of developers which in turn led to the full development and deployment of the Mimblewimble protocol. Now, the anonymous collective behind the project are known as ‘Grin’.

What is Grin?

According to the Grin website:

“Grin empowers anyone to transact or save modern money without the fear of external control or oppression. Grin is designed for the decades to come, not just tomorrow. Grin wants to be usable by everyone, regardless of borders, culture, skills or access. Grin has no amounts and no addresses. Transactions can be trivially aggregated. To hide where a newly created transaction comes from, it gets relayed privately among peers before it is publicly announced.”

Moreover:

“MimbleWimble leverages cryptography to allow most of the past transaction data to be removed. This guarantees Grin won't collapse under its own weight in the long term. Grin is developed openly, by developers distributed all over the world. It's not controlled by any company, foundation or individual.”

How does it work?

Any sidechain project is difficult to fully describe because the technical jargon is rich. In short, this is a very complicated bit of technology, however we need to understand it on a base level in order to assess the implications this has for the future of cryptocurrency. Mimblewimble works alongside the Bitcoin network, it is a sidechain that can be deployed to facilitate transactions. Where the Bitcoin network makes these transactions visible (via the block explorer) Mimblewimble masks the transactions by using more complex calculations to verify these transactions. According to Cryptoglobe:

“Mimblewimble - unlike Bitcoin - does not broadcast amounts and public addresses to a completely public network. Both of those publicly broadcasted pieces of information make Bitcoin not actually very private at all. Instead, on a Mimblewimble chain, transactions are accomplished by directly initiating a secure peer-to-peer transaction between two parties. The two parties do some math using three pieces of information: Each of their private keys, and the amount being sent/received. The figure derived from that math acts as a hash of the transaction.”

The hash that is created from this is then used against the hashes of other transactions within Mimblewimble which in turn results in the creation of a new hash. This hash is then used to store the details of all transactions, meaning one hash can contain the transaction data of numerous transactions, meaning there's always a lot of free space across numerous empty blocks on the Mimblewimble network.

Furthermore:

“Mimblewimble is a big deal. It completes Bitcoin-style functions (i.e., money) without any addresses, without any publicly expressed quantities, using far less space, and with extremely robust anonymity and privacy that is not only on by default, but cannot be turned off.”

Can you see why we are excited about this now?

As Mimblewimble grows, we expect this to become a very mainstream project that could have huge implications for Bitcoin. Perhaps it could become part of a future Bitcoin fork, or maybe it will move away from it’s Bitcoin association and begin to develop technologies elsewhere? Who knows, this is a truly private and truly decentralised project, therefore anything could happen. Watch this space!

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