The release of Mimblewimble-based cryptocurrency Grin has the crypto world buzzing, and its network is already packing a significant amount of hashrate. Let’s take a quick look at the new coin and why so many people are so enthusiastic about its potential.

MimbleWimble

Origin of the name

MimbleWimble is the name of a tongue-tying spell in the Harry Potter series of books, a fitting name for the protocol considering its focus on privacy. Several MimbleWimble developers use pseudonyms from the Harry Potter universe such as Ignotus Peverell and Luna Lovegood.

The MimbleWimble blockchain protocol was originally proposed in 2016 by a user under the “Tom Elvis Jedusor” pseudonym. This original whitepaper was later edited by Andrew Poelstra, a mathematician working at Bitcoin development firm Blockstream. His version of the MimbleWimble whitepaper is accessible here.

In the MimbleWimble protocol, no useful information about any given transaction is accessible to anyone who didn’t participate in a transaction. Despite this, the MimbleWimble protocol verifies with each transaction that no new coins are being created and that the transacting parties proved ownership of their private keys.

In essence, the goal of MimbleWimble is to provide a private-by-default blockchain with strong scalability.

Dogecoin creator and blockchain educator Jackson Palmer provides a very helpful outline of MimbleWimble in the following YouTube video:

Grin

Grin is a cryptocurrency based on MimbleWimble that went live on mainnet on January 15. It was launched without a pre-mine, ICO or any kind of founder’s reward mechanism – the project is fully funded through user donations. Grin has no cap on supply, and is designed to issue 1 coin per second.

Grin mining is already well underway, as the coin hasn’t excited only everyday cryptocurrency enthusiasts but venture capital firms as well. In his Proof of Work newsletter, Primitive Ventures founder Eric Meltzer provides a conservative estimate that there’s “100 million dollars of mostly VC money invested into special-purpose investment vehicles to mine Grin”. The Block estimates that an equivalent of 88,200 GTX 1070 Ti 8GB graphics cards were mining Grin one day after its launch.