Anonymous Angrim Grin: Regaining Zhongben Cong Electronic Cash Dream

Trust is something that Grin and many decentralized cryptocurrency items, including Bitcoin, deliberately avoid.

Anonymous coins and the privacy protection technology behind them have always been "small and beautiful" in the blockchain world. It also left a mysterious reverie when it enhanced the anonymity of digital currency.

Five years after the birth of the first anonymous coin DASH in 2014, before the release of the ancient Grin (Grin) earlier this year, there were only three well-known anonymous coins – Monero, Dash and Big. Zero currency (Zcash). With the launch of Beam and Grin based on the MimbleWimble privacy agreement in January, the anonymous currency has a constant historical upsurge.

Compared to previous anonymous technologies, MimbleWimble is easy to use and efficient, and for the first time achieves the perfect unification of privacy protection and capacity scalability, eliminating the long-standing biggest for the ultimate realization of decentralized e-cash dreams. Two obstacles. Grin core developer and board member Gary YU reviewed Nakamoto's Bitcoin white paper, emphasizing and pointing out that "P2P e-cash" is the original dream that Nakamoto failed to achieve. The vision of the Grin project is aimed at this initial dream. The result is a widely available "e-cash" system.

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Beyond technology, anonymous currency has long been considered linked to darknets and money laundering. In this regard, Gary YU believes that anonymity is the natural characteristic given by the cash exchange for thousands of years, but after the advancement of science and technology has gradually promoted the society to a “cashless” society, the online payment tools that are now widely used have completely deprived people. This right. Privacy cryptocurrency technology will eventually return this right to users. “Technology itself has no distinction between good and evil. Privacy protection technology protects everyone, just as everyone is equal before the law.”

In this issue, let's discuss the hardcore technology and usage scenarios behind anonymous coins with Gary YU. The following is a dialogue, enjoy:

Odaily Planet Daily Q1: Can you tell us about your relationship with Anonymous? Whether you know the anonymity coin and the general history of joining the development, are there any interesting little stories?

Gary: The first time I read the MimbleWimble agreement was February 2018. I accidentally read the name from an article on Medium. It was nearly a year and a half since the agreement was released and Ignotus launched the Grin project.

For me, the charm of the MimbleWimble protocol is not only because of the simple privacy transaction features it provides, but also the chain data verification function provided by it is also the most attractive. It solves the problem that the data of bitcoin and other blockchains only increases. Puzzle. As we can see, it takes about 300G of disk space to run a Bitcoin node at a time. It takes about a day to a week for a synchronization (depending on the network speed). Ordinary computers are a little hard, and this problem will be even more in a few years. protruding. The MimbleWimble agreement is much better.

A short story was that I was reading Nakamoto's earliest bitcoin code at the time, and several bitcoin nodes were running on the computer, including some of the full nodes. One day, unfortunately, my external Thunder RAID hard drive is broken (the corpse is especially there. I used to buy 5,000 pieces and I have not been willing to lose it yet), and the hard disk space of this machine is not enough, I am annoying and tangled. When you want to buy a new hard drive, the beauty of reading the MimbleWimble agreement is really like a spring breeze.

Before joining Grin, I was the first community member to translate Ignotus's introduction document ( intro.md ). After I translated the Chinese version, I later had a fan and translated 10 languages.

The appeal of the Grin project is also its fully open development model, a thoroughly community-based project that shares many similarities with the Bitcoin project in 2008.

Odaily Planet Daily Q2: Can you briefly outline the evolution and important milestones of anonymous coins?

Gary: Usually Bitcoin is considered an anonymous payment network. But in fact, Bitcoin is probably the most transparent payment network in the world, providing unprecedented levels of transparency. All Bitcoin transactions are publicly, traceable, and permanently stored in the Bitcoin network, anyone You can view the balance of any address and all transactions.

Research and discussion on privacy transactions has never stopped since the release of Bitcoin. Monero, Dash and Zcash are important milestones and representative projects in the development of privacy technology. A number of privacy protection technologies, such as covert addresses, ring signatures, ring privacy transactions, hybrids, zk-SNARK, etc., have their own advantages and disadvantages. There is no discussion here. See the following table release time:

The MimbleWimble technology used by Grin is one of the relatively new of all of these privacy protection technologies (released in the August 1, 2016 white paper). Compared with the previous technologies, it has the characteristics of minimalism and high efficiency. It is a new important milestone in privacy protection technology to summarize it with a idiom.

Odaily Planet Daily Q3: Do you see some friends/groups that use anonymous coins around you? What do they do with anonymous coins?

Gary: The problem itself is a misunderstanding of anonymous currency. The common misconception is: "Anonymous currency is just a special application scenario." The so-called "special", the first keyword that may be thought of may be money laundering, crime, and dark net.

But in fact, anonymity and privacy protection are one of the most important characteristics of cash. The gradual disappearance of cash in modern social life (especially in China, given the high penetration rate of WeChat payment and Alipay), it also means that the privacy protection of ordinary users in all aspects of finance and other aspects is gradually disappearing. This is a kind of passive The privacy of the sacrifice is not the initiative, because there is no easy alternative.

Bitcoin has created a new era of decentralized electronic cash (ie cryptocurrency), which should have been a good alternative. However, the transparent trading characteristics of Bitcoin, an "anonymous payment network", and its The system capacity characteristics of pen transactions are far from the demand for electronic cash in people's daily lives. This is also the root cause of Bitcoin's evolution from the original ideal of the "e-cash" system to the now-recognized "electronic gold" system.

The MimbleWimble protocol happens to be a great solution to both of these issues. Grin is the first implementation of the MimbleWimble protocol project, which combines the anonymity of transactions with the scalability of the transaction capacity on the chain, and hopes to re-inject the "e-cash" ideals and goals.

Considering that Grin is still a new cryptocurrency that has been released for less than half a year, it is still in its infancy, and its development for ordinary users, user education popularization, ecosystem construction, etc. have just begun. So I haven't seen many friends and organizations around me using Grin. This actually includes all cryptocurrencies. At present, most of the applications of cryptocurrency are still in the use of so-called "coin circle" in mining, investment, decentralized applications, etc., and the use scenarios and large-scale use cases outside the "coin circle" are far from enough. . This also shows that the cryptocurrency industry as a whole is still in the early stages of development. Just like the Internet in the early 1990s, the growth potential is still huge.

I believe that in another 10 years, the MimbleWimble system and Grin will be in the forefront of the entire cryptocurrency industry. At that time, if there is a highly popular "electronic cash" system that friends are using, I believe that if it is not Grin, it must be an evolution system of MimbleWimble or Grin.

Odaily Planet Daily Q4: What do you think is an easy to use or easy to use anonymous currency? why?

Gary: My answer to this question may not be fair. After all, I am the developer of Grin.

However, although my answer is Grin, it does not mean that I am satisfied with the current ease of use of Grin. On the contrary, Grin's interactive trading method is quite "unfriendly" in many application scenarios, especially for the receiving scene of ordinary users; the performance of the Grin node also has a lot of improvement and optimization space.

Developers, including myself, will continue to improve and optimize, making Grin an easy-to-use and easy-to-use standard for the average user. As mentioned before, Grin is still in the early stages of release, and there is still a lot of work to be done in terms of ease of use. I hope that everyone will have some patience and give necessary support. After all, a community open source project “team” can easily hire a large number of full-time developers like the ones with large project funds. The current funding and resources of the Grin project are still quite limited.

Odaily Planet Daily Q5: Different anonymous coins use different anonymous technologies. Which one do you think is the most amazing anonymous technology? why?

Gary: Every privacy protection technology has its advantages and corresponding disadvantages.

For example, zk-SNARK, the best privacy, but the amount of calculation is relatively large, and need to trust; the currency technology, easy to use and easy to develop, but also need to trust, Mixer must also be online.

The MimbleWimble protocol is simple and easy to use without trust, but requires dual signatures that require interactive transactions. The current implementation is inconvenient for users in specific application scenarios and needs to be improved.

However, the MimbleWimble protocol is the first and only protocol that combines privacy protection and capacity scalability, and is considered to be the most economical and practical. I personally prefer MimbleWimble.

Odaily Planet Daily Q6: Will anonymous coins be more easily used for money laundering? I heard that Dash has the highest usage rate in the dark network.

Gary: Regarding special application scenarios such as “money laundering”, it has been stated in question 3 above that Grin is not designed for these special application scenarios. Grin is aimed at a wide range of “e-cash” trading systems for ordinary users.

In fact, according to statistics, in 2018, the largest amount of transactions in the dark network is bitcoin instead of any kind of anonymous currency.

In addition to Bitcoin, the largest amount of dark net trading in 2018 was Monroe but “only 5% or less of the dark net trading”.

If Grin becomes the largest currency in the dark trading volume at some point in the future, it can only show that Grin is easier to use than other currencies, and does not mean that Grin is more suitable for the dark network. Just as Bitcoin has the largest volume of transactions in the dark network in 18 years, it does not mean that bitcoin is "easier" to be used for money laundering.

Odaily Planet Daily Q7: If the anonymity protects the freedom of the criminal, it does not count as a legally free injury to others. Talk about your ethics about anonymity?

Gary: As for whether to protect criminals, I am obviously not an expert in the field of justice. I may not have much say in this issue. I just want to talk about my personal opinion as an ordinary person.

If there is a court hearing in a movie or TV series, there will often be a term called "presumption of innocence". I believe everyone has heard the word. To put it simply: a person is innocent until proven guilty. Before being convicted by the court, everyone needs to be protected equally, which is clearly an advancement in modern social civilization. If you still don't understand, think about why the bad guys can also defend the lawyers in court. Because the law not only protects the good but also protects the bad guys, the law allows everyone's legal rights to enjoy equal protection.

Therefore, the technology protects everyone, and privacy protection is applicable to everyone, no matter whether it is black and white or not.

In addition, compared to the real criminals, black money pays high high-tech fees for their privacy protection. It is unfair for ordinary people to have low-cost and high-quality privacy protection technology.

That's why everyone is optimistic about a universal privacy payment system like Grin, which protects everyone's transaction privacy most equitably. The goal of Grin or Grin's companions is to become such a widely-used "electronic cash" system, regardless of nationality, regardless of the color of the race, and regardless of the level of luxury.

Odaily Planet Daily Q8: Anonymous coins are subject to regulatory exclusion in major countries such as the United States, Japan and South Korea. Do you think this will affect its market expansion and usage?

Gary: In fact, not only anonymous currency, but all cryptocurrencies, including the world's most transparent bitcoin, are “announced” or rumored illegally here or by some of the rights departments of some countries.

I think this is an inevitable phenomenon in the development of a new thing. Just as the mobile Internet messaging software replaces the resistance of mobile network text messages, the resistance is much greater and the impact is far more profound.

Compared with the days when Bruno’s propaganda of Copernicus was said to have been fired by the church, modern society has made much progress, and we don’t have to worry too much about regulatory exclusion. Anonymous currency, cryptocurrency, and regulatory exclusion, there must be a place of positive embrace, and the era will eventually prove which party is correct.

Finally, as to whether it affects the market expansion and usage rate of anonymous coins, on the contrary, the more I anticipate the exclusion of cryptocurrencies, the more likely the most anonymous currency is. Of course, that is not our intention.

Odaily Planet Daily Q9: There is now an anonymous currency that can be reviewed, such as ABE. What do you think of it? Think it will be an important trend in anonymous currency?

Gary: I personally welcome research and experimentation in all areas of cryptocurrency, including ABE. Any kind of attempt may be correct. Who knows?

As for "reviewability", any cryptocurrency is inseparable from the user itself. There is always a way to review it, because the review can be the person itself.

In addition, as explained, Grin, like other previous anonymous coins, provides a read-only wallet feature that opens a View Only Key to a person or organization to see all the activities of a wallet. But unlike ABE, this View Only Key is controlled by the owner of the wallet, and only the owner of the wallet is willing to provide it (or is forced by law or authority); instead of trusting it completely unconditionally Third party review agency.

Trust is something that Grin and many decentralized cryptocurrency items, including Bitcoin, deliberately avoid.

Odaily Planet Daily Q10: Grin is called “Next Generation Bitcoin”. What do you think is the most bitcoin feature? What is the biggest innovation?

Gary: Thank you for your good name, but I need to reiterate here that the core developer of Grin has never claimed the title or nickname "Next Generation / Bitcoin", nor does it want such a nickname. Grin is Grin.

Bitcoin is still the safest cryptocurrency system and the largest network in the world. We respect the Bitcoin and Bitcoin communities, and we have borrowed a lot of bitcoin designs from Grin. Many of us, including myself, are also lovers of Bitcoin.

If you really want to answer this question, then I think that Grin's most bitcoin feature is its vision or ideal. Grin has always firmly targeted the first sentence of Satoshi Satoshi in the Bitcoin White Paper, which is to do "e-cash".

"A purely peer-to-peer version of electronic cash would allow online payments to be sent directly from one party to another without going through a financial institution." — Satoshi Nakamoto, 2008

The above is the first sentence of the first page of the Bitcoin white paper.

Grin's development model is also fully tribute to Bitcoin and Nakamoto. Anonymous founder, fully open development and release, full community project, no CEO, no investment, and more.

About the biggest innovation. Grin has accumulated a lot of little innovations in the development process of nearly three years, but the biggest and most important innovation is undoubtedly the realization of MimbleWimble, which is the first project implementation of MimbleWimble and the largest community of MimbleWimble. It is foreseeable in the future that there will be more and more important cryptocurrency projects using the MimbleWimble protocol. Grin provides a good MimbleWimble protocol reference implementation for future projects, high quality Rust code.

Odaily Planet Daily Q11: Grin's first hard fork in mid-July, what are the main updates? What is the road map after Grin is online?

Gary: Grin's July hard fork is a long-established rule: in the two years of Grin PoW's graphics card algorithm (AR), a hard fork is done every six months to modify the AR algorithm parameters. The purpose is to avoid someone designing and implementing an ASIC mining machine on the AR algorithm. (ie modify the C29 algorithm).

Grin's hard fork does not affect the PoW AT algorithm that was originally designed for ASICs. (ie algorithms such as C31/C32 remain unchanged). For details, please refer to the forum post: https://www.grin-forum.org/t/grin-first-hard-fork-mid-july/5148

Regarding the roadmap, it is more difficult for open source community projects to develop and publish roadmap plans. Currently, Grin does not explicitly emphasize what features will be introduced.

From my personal perspective and expectations, there may be features such as FlyClient, Timelocked Transaction, I2P integration, read-only wallet, multi-signature wallet, etc., and several user-friendly mobile wallet software will appear in the Grin community project. And desktop wallet software, there will be more large exchanges in the Grin community ecology, and a large number of Grin ASIC machines will be mass-produced and launched in the second half of this year.

Odaily Planet Daily Q12: Grin has encountered difficulties in developer sponsorship. Does this have a real impact on the progress of the project? Do you think that in terms of the dispersal and efficiency of obtaining funds, is it not possible to have both? Have you considered any solutions?

Gary: In my opinion, there is no real impact. It was in January. Later, at the appeal of the founder Ignotus, the community made a donation to solve the difficulties at that time, thanks to all the donors of the Grin community.

Subsequent contributions have also been working well. By the time of May, the Grin Developer Fundraising Account had even received an anonymous donation of 50 bitcoins, currently worth more than $500,000, the largest donation ever received, thanks to the anonymous Donor. This donation fund has not yet been used.

Grin's development model is on the one hand a transmission of bitcoin mode and spirit, on the other hand, it is also a fresh attempt in the current environment of the development of the currency project. This model is currently working well and it is hard to say whether it really has an impact on development efficiency. There may be a little bit of it. After all, the current full-time development team of Grin is too small, but whether it needs to be expanded or not is judged and decided by the Grin community.

At present, Grin's development funds are very transparent, and the usage is small or even small. For details, please refer to the quarterly fund usage report: https://github.com/mimblewimble/grin-pm/tree/master/financials/ Reports

Some thoughts about my personal development of Grin:

I believe that project development efficiency and project health are equally important to Grin. In order to ensure the decentralization of the project, Grin developers will adhere to the community donation model for a long time. The main contributions come from three aspects:

• 1. Relying on the continuous donation of community-benefit enterprises, mainly including mining machine manufacturers, mining pools, large mines, exchanges, etc.;
• 2. If there is a funding gap, then rely on community fundraising activities to raise funds for the entire community as an aid;
• 3. Anonymous or real-name personal donations have also proven to be one of the most important contributions of Grin's contributions.

Community eco-participating companies can also create their own funds, manage themselves, participate in the ecological development of Grin community or core development of Grin, or sponsor others' contributions to the Grin community (including development and promotion, etc.).

The Grin community is likely to have a number of development funds in the future, running simultaneously and collaborating as a powerful complement to the current Grin development fund managed by the Grin core developer and the Grin Council.

Original article, author: Huang Xue Jiao.

Source: Planet Daily; violation of laws and regulations must be investigated.

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