Why the Name?
Mimblewimble (MW) is a blockchain protocol, designed in a White Paper that was published in 2016. Believe it or not, the quirky name is derived from one of the spellings in the Harry Potter story. Interestingly, the designer of this MW system used the pseudonym of Tom Elvis Judisor, which is closely embodied by the villain of the story, Lord Voldemort’s name, Tom Riddle.
In late 2016, a Github project was launched for the development of the MW system through Grin. Grin is a software platform that utilizes the MW system and meets the requirements needed for blockchain and cryptocurrency implementation. The project’s creators also use a nickname related to Harry Potter, the original owner of the Invisible Robe, Ignotus Peverell.
What Makes it Different?
To further understand the advantage and uniqueness of MW, the example of basic Bitcoin transactions will be used.
Alice Sends 1 BTC to Bob
The nature of cryptocurrencies like BTC is to monitor and track every transaction no matter how small the amount is. Therefore, before Alice sends 1 BTC to Bob, the network will first identify where Alice previously received the BTC to ensure the validity of the amount.
Notably, Alice’s BTC transactions can be viewed and tracked by anyone through an existing deal explorer. This indicates that there is no user privacy involving transactions of cryptocurrencies. This is where the MW protocol comes into the picture and solves the feature that is deemed as a weakness in the network.
Hence, the MW protocol improves the transactions by using Confidential Transaction and Cut Through.
Confidential Transaction
The function of Confidential Transaction in the MW protocol is to protect users’ privacy in every transaction. If in the previous example, the source of BTC owned by Alice was publicly visible and tracked, this function would protect and hide that information.
Cut Through
The Cut Through function compresses each transaction’s data for verification purposes. Also, this advantage makes the size of the data for each transaction lower than the standard BTC protocol. This functionality will make blockchain sizes smaller and lighter.
GRIN
Grin has been around since late 2016 and launched their mainnet in early 2019. Developed and funded by the Grin community itself, the usage is more appropriate for more technical users. The language of the program code used for Grin is Rust. The idea of the platform is to encourage their cryptocurrency to be used. For miners, Grin used the Equihash algorithm aimed at blocking the use of application-specific integrated circuit (ASIC) or long-term specific devices.
BEAM
Unlike GRIN, BEAM is a corporate entity with mutual funds. However, BEAM will turn to non-profit organizations and plan to develop software that will help other businesses. BEAM is designed to be more user-friendly. C ++ is the code language used to design the platform. BEAM’s main purpose is to offer hidden value storage. In terms of mining, BEAM is also planning to become an ASIC device resistant by giving GPU miners the advantage of 12 months of mining.
Conclusion
The WM protocol has the advantage over the Bitcoin blockchain and demonstrates the ability of blockchain technology to thrive. The key question for this protocol is its ability to be used in the real world. However, only time will tell how far the protocol will go
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