Monero, the privacy based Cryptocurrency is often looked at as an experimental Testnet like Litecoin. Digital Asset Research concludes the other way around that Monero is a stronger testing ground for the experimental Bitcoin network than Litecoin.

Why do they conclude that? One Word: Bulletproof

The Monero Network went through a scheduled hard fork recently on October 18th to activate Bulletproofs.

What is Bulletproof?

Monero employs three major technologies to achieve Privacy: Ring Signatures, Confidential transactions, and Stealth Addresses. The Bulletproof upgrade is intended to address a major drawback of RingCT(a term used to represent Ring Signatures and Confidential Transactions) which is the size of the range proofs.

BulletProof was first proposed in a white paper authored by Standford University, University of London and Blockstream in 2017. With the implementation of BulletProofs the size of the Range proofs over 13kb to as less as 2.5kb which will help massively in scaling the network.

The technology can be compared to that of Zero-Knowledge Proofs in Zcash with a few tradeoffs. But ultimately the upgrade will improve privacy and potentially will help massively in scalability.

Monero Better Testnet than Litecoin?

Where it gets interesting is that in the BulletProof Whitepaper, they mention that if NIZKP’s (Non-Interactive Zero-Knowledge Proofs – the technology used in BulletProof to aggregate range proofs of a confidential transaction) is implemented on the Bitcoin Blockchain then “total size of Bitcoin’s UTXO set would be only 17 GB (compared to 160 GB) if Confidential Transactions were to be implemented.”

In a report, Digital Asset Research concludes:

Monero at this time is serving as a stronger testing ground for experimental Bitcoin technologies than Litecoin, which is widely regarded as a “financially incentivized testnet” for Bitcoin.

BulletProofs along with other technologies like Schnorr Signatures, Mimble Wimble, etc are being explored on the Bitcoin Roadmap.

Litecoin has been a Testnet for Bitcoin for experimenting with technologies like Segwit and Lightning network on the Litecoin Blockchain first before implementing it on the Bitcoin Blockchain.

But Monero can be a bigger deal for Bitcoin as it will serve as a testing ground for privacy-focused technologies like Bullet Proof which is far more different that Litecoin which shares most of the properties with Bitcoin with a few changes.

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