A team of anonymous Harry Potter-inspired developers has released a new outline for the development of the cryptocurrency anonymity project, MimbleWimble. Named after a silencing spell from the famed Harry Potter book series, the project is now increasing its pace of development and looking to incorporate technology that the larger bitcoin network has been slow to adopt.

And though the project was first defined as an improvement to bitcoin, current developments (including the launch of an experimental MimbleWimbled-based blockchain called Grin) suggest that a standalone cryptocurrency could become the best way for the project to be realized.

Wizarding history For those new to MimbleWimble, the project first came to light with a paper published in mid-2016 under the pseudonym Tom Elvis Jedusor — the alias of Lord Voldemort in the French version of the Harry Potter series. Though relatively short at 2,000 words long, the paper struck a balance between a readable tone and a provocative and well-founded technical thesis: that bitcoin scripts should be abandoned in favor of a new method of recording transactions. The shift would effectively allow for the added privacy of one-way aggregate signatures and a novel application of bitcoin developer Gregory Maxwell’s confidential transactions across multiple blocks. But, much like his namesake after the ill-fated attack on the infant Harry Potter, Jedusor disappeared not long after posting the MimbleWimble paper. Subsequently a new team of developers took up the mantle to continue work on the project, incorporating contributions by notable figures in bitcoin, such as Blockstream’s Andrew Poelstra. And this is where the newest roadmap – given by a developer going by the name of another Harry Potter character, ‘Ignotus Peverell’ – originates.