Anonymity coins and the privacy protection technology behind them have always been "small and beautiful" in the blockchain world. When it enhances the anonymity of digital currency, it also leaves people with a mysterious reverie.

It has been five years since the first anonymous coin DASH was born in 2014. Before Grin was released earlier this year, there were only three well-known anonymous coins—Monero, Dash and Dashi. Zerocoin (Zcash). With the launch of Beam and Grin based on the MimbleWimble privacy protocol in January, privacy coins have once again set off a boom.

Compared with the previous anonymous technology, MimbleWimble has the characteristics of simplicity, ease of use and high efficiency, and for the first time realizes the unity of privacy protection and capacity scalability. Two obstacles.” Gary YU, Grin’s core developer and council member, commented.

Outside of technology, privacy coins have long been associated with the dark web and money laundering. In this regard, Gary YU believes that anonymity is a natural characteristic of cash transactions for thousands of years, but with the advent of a "cashless" society, people's usual payment tools have deprived people of this right. The privacy encryption technology will return this right to users. "Technology itself is not good or evil. Privacy protection technology protects everyone, just like everyone is equal before the law."

In this super talk, let us discuss with Gary YU the hard-core technology and usage scenarios behind anonymous coins. The following is the dialogue arrangement, enjoy:

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OdailyQ1: Can you tell us about your relationship with anonymous coins? Do you have any interesting stories about your general journey from getting acquainted with anonymous coins to joining the development?

Gary：The first time I read about the MimbleWimble protocol was in February 2018. I accidentally read the name from an article on Medium. At that time, it had been nearly a year and a half since the protocol was released and Ignotus launched the Grin project.

For me, the charm of the MimbleWimble protocol lies not only in the simple privacy transaction features it provides, but also in the on-chain data write-off function it provides. problem. As we can see, it takes about 300G disk space to run a Bitcoin full node now, and it takes about a day to a week for a synchronization (depending on the network speed). Ordinary computers are already a bit difficult, and this problem will be more severe in a few years. protrude. The MimbleWimble protocol is much, much better in this respect.

A short story is that I was reading Satoshi Nakamoto's earliest Bitcoin code, and several Bitcoin nodes were running on my computer, including some full nodes. One day, unfortunately, my external Thunder RAID hard disk broke (the body is still there, I bought it for 5,000 yuan, and I still haven’t been willing to throw it away), and the local hard disk space is not enough, I am annoyed and entangled When buying a new hard drive, reading the beauty of the MimbleWimble protocol is really refreshing.

Before joining Grin development, I was the first to translate the introduction document of Ignotus (intro.md) community members, after I translated the Chinese version, some fans later translated 10 languages.

The attraction of the Grin project lies in its fully open development model. It is a completely community-based project, which has many similarities with the Bitcoin project in 2008 when it was first started.

OdailyQ2: Can you briefly outline the evolution and important milestones of privacy coins?

Gary：Bitcoin is generally considered an anonymous payment network. But in fact, Bitcoin may be the most transparent payment network in the world, which provides an unprecedented level of transparency, all Bitcoin transactions are public, traceable, and permanently stored in the Bitcoin network, anyone can view the balance and all transactions of any address.

The research and discussion on privacy transactions has never stopped since the release of Bitcoin. Monero, Dash and Zcash are all important milestones and representative projects in the development of privacy technology. A number of privacy protection technologies such as stealth addresses, ring signatures, ring privacy transactions, currency mixing, zk-SNARK, etc. have their own advantages and disadvantages. I will not discuss them one by one here. See the release times in the table below:

The MimbleWimble technology used by Grin is a relatively new one among all these privacy protection technologies (the white paper was released on August 1, 2016). Compared with these previous technologies, it has the remarkable characteristics of simplicity and efficiency. To use an idiom to sum it up, it is "the road is the simplest", and it has become a new important milestone in privacy protection technology.

OdailyQ3: Do you see some friends/groups around you who use anonymous coins? What will they do with privacy coins?

Gary：I feel that this question itself is a misunderstanding of the privacy coin. The common misunderstanding is: "the privacy coin is just a special application scenario". The so-called "special", the first keywords that come to mind may be money laundering, crime, and dark web.

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 Pay and Alipay), also means that the privacy protection of ordinary users in financial and other related aspects is gradually disappearing, which is a passive way of people The sacrifice of privacy, rather than proactive, because there is simply no good alternative.

Bitcoin has ushered in a new era of decentralized electronic cash (that is, cryptocurrency), which should have been a good substitute. However, the transparent transaction characteristics of Bitcoin, an "anonymous payment network", and its several transactions per second The system capacity characteristics of one transaction, etc., are far from people's daily needs for electronic cash. This is also the fundamental reason why Bitcoin evolved from the original ideal of the "electronic cash" system to the now recognized "electronic gold" system.

The MimbleWimble protocol happens to be an excellent solution to the above two problems. Grin is the first project to implement the MimbleWimble protocol. It has both transaction anonymity and the scalability of transaction capacity on the chain. It is hoped that this "electronic cash" ideal and goal will be launched again.

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

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

OdailyQ4: What do you think is the easiest-to-use or easy-to-use anonymous coin? Why?

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

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 transaction method is quite "unfriendly" in many application scenarios, especially in the receiving scenario for ordinary users; the performance of Grin nodes also has a lot of room for improvement and optimization.

Developers, including myself, will continue to improve and optimize, so that Grin can meet the easy-to-use and easy-to-use standards of ordinary users. As mentioned earlier, 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 and other aspects. I hope everyone will be patient and give the necessary support. After all, a community open source project "team" is not as easy to hire a large number of full-time developers as those teams with large project funds. The current funds and resources of the Grin project are still quite limited.

OdailyQ5: Different anonymous coins use different anonymous technologies. Which one do you think is the most amazing anonymous technology? Why?

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

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

The MimbleWimble protocol is simple and easy to use without trust, but it requires dual signatures and 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 takes into account both privacy protection and capacity scalability, and is also considered to be the most economical and practical one. I personally prefer MimbleWimble.

OdailyQ6: Will anonymous coins be more easily used for money laundering? I heard that Dash has the highest usage rate in the dark web.

Gary：Regarding special application scenarios such as "money laundering", it has been partially stated in Question 3 above that Grin is not designed for these special application scenarios. Grin is aimed at the "electronic cash" transaction system for a wide range of ordinary users.

In fact, according to statistics, the largest transaction volume on the darknet in 2018 was Bitcoin rather than any kind of anonymous currency.

In addition to Bitcoin, the largest darknet transaction volume in 2018 was Monero but "accounted for only 5% or less of darknet transactions."

If Grin becomes the largest currency in the darknet transaction volume at some point in the future, it only means that Grin is easier to use than other currencies, and it does not mean that Grin is more suitable for the darknet. Just like the fact that Bitcoin has the largest trading volume on the dark web in 18 years, it does not mean that Bitcoin is "easier" to be used for money laundering.

OdailyQ7: If the anonymous currency protects the freedom of criminals, does it count as harming the legal freedom of others? How do you feel about the ethics of anonymity?

Gary：Regarding the issue of whether to protect criminals, I am obviously not an expert in the judicial field. I may not have much say on this issue, but I will just share my personal views as an ordinary person.

When there are court cases in movies and TV dramas, there is often a term called "presumption of innocence". I believe everyone has heard of this term. Simply put: a person is innocent until proven guilty. It is clearly a civilized progress in modern society that everyone needs to be equally protected before being found guilty by a court of law. If you still don’t understand, you can understand why bad people have lawyers to defend them in court, because the law not only protects good people, but also protects bad people. The law allows everyone to enjoy equal protection of their legal rights.

Therefore, technology protects everyone, and privacy protection applies to everyone, regardless of Chinese or foreign, black or white.

In addition, compared to real criminals who have black money to pay high high-tech fees for their privacy protection, it is unfair if ordinary people do not have low-cost and high-quality privacy protection technology.

This is why everyone is optimistic about a general-purpose privacy payment system like Grin, which protects everyone's transaction privacy most fairly and is available to everyone. The goal of Grin or Grin's peers is to become such a widely-used "electronic cash" system, regardless of nationality, color, race, or high or low.

OdailyQ8: 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 coins, but all cryptocurrencies, including the most transparent bitcoin in the world, have been "declared" or rumored to be illegal by some authorities in some countries from time to time here and there.

I think this is an inevitable phenomenon in the development of new things, just like the resistance encountered when mobile Internet messaging software replaces mobile network SMS, of course the resistance is much greater and the impact is much more far-reaching.

Compared with the time when Bruno preached Copernicus' heliocentric theory and was burned by the church hundreds of years ago, modern society has made much progress, and we don't need to worry too much about regulatory exclusion. Whether it is anonymous coins or cryptocurrencies, if there is regulatory rejection, there will inevitably be places where they are actively embraced, and the times will eventually prove which side is correct.

Finally, as to whether it will affect the market expansion and usage rate of anonymous coins, on the contrary, I predict that the more cryptocurrencies are excluded, the more popular anonymous coins may be. Of course, that was not our intention.

OdailyQ9: Now there is a censorable anonymous currency, such as ABE, what do you think of it? Do you think it will be an important trend for privacy coins?

Gary：I personally welcome all research and attempts in the field of cryptocurrency, including ABE. Either attempt might be right, who knows?

As for "censorability", any cryptocurrency is inseparable from the user itself, and there is always a way to censor, because the censorship can be the person himself.

In addition, let me explain that Grin, like other previous anonymous coins, provides a read-only (View Only) wallet function. Open a View Only Key to a person or organization to see all the activities of a wallet. But different from the ABE approach, this View Only Key is controlled by the owner of the wallet, and can only be obtained if the wallet owner is willing to provide it (or be compelled to provide it by law or authority); instead of completely unconditionally trusting a Third Party Auditors.

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

OdailyQ10: Grin is called "the next generation of Bitcoin". What do you think is the most characteristic of Bitcoin? What is the biggest innovation?

Gary：Thank you for your reputation, but I need to reiterate here that the Grin core developers have never claimed the title or nickname of "Next Generation/Bitcoin", nor do they want such a nickname, Grin is Grin.

Bitcoin is still the most secure cryptocurrency system and the largest network in the world so far. We respect Bitcoin and the Bitcoin community, and we also borrow a lot of Bitcoin design in Grin. Many of us including myself are also Bitcoin enthusiasts.

If you really want to answer this question, then, I think the most Bitcoin characteristic of Grin is its vision or ideal. Grin has always firmly aimed at the first sentence of Satoshi Nakamoto in the Bitcoin white paper, that is, to make "electronic 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 summary section on the front page of the Bitcoin white paper.

Grin's development model is also a complete tribute to Bitcoin and Satoshi Nakamoto. Anonymous founders, completely open development and release, completely community-based projects, no CEO, no investment, etc.

About the greatest innovation. During the nearly three-year development process, Grin has accumulated a lot of innovations, but the biggest and most important innovation is undoubtedly the implementation of MimbleWimble. Grin is the first project implementation of MimbleWimble and also has the largest community of MimbleWimble protocol. In the foreseeable future, more and more important cryptocurrency projects will adopt the MimbleWimble protocol. Grin provides a good MimbleWimble protocol reference implementation and high-quality Rust code for future projects.

OdailyQ11: Grin's first hard fork in mid-July, what are the main updates? What is the roadmap after Grin goes live?

Gary：The hard fork of Grin in July is a long-established rule: that is, within two years of the graphics algorithm (AR) of Grin PoW, a hard fork will be made every six months to modify the parameters of the AR algorithm. The purpose is to prevent someone from designing and implementing ASIC mining machines on the AR algorithm. (i.e. modify the C29 algorithm).

Grin's hard fork will not affect the PoW AT algorithm originally designed for ASICs. (That is, 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 difficult for open source community projects to formulate and release roadmap plans. At present, Grin has not clearly emphasized when and what functions will be launched.

From my personal vision and prediction, there may be FlyClient, Timelocked Transaction, I2P integration, read-only wallet, multi-signature wallet and other functions will be launched in the near future, and several user-friendly mobile wallet software will appear in the Grin community project And desktop wallet software, more large-scale exchanges will join in the Grin community ecology, and a large number of Grin ASIC mining machines will be mass-produced and launched in the second half of this year, and so on.

OdailyQ12: Grin has encountered difficulties in developer sponsorship. Does this have a real impact on the progress of the project? Do you think it is impossible to have both decentralization and efficiency in obtaining funds? Have you considered any solutions?

Gary：In my opinion, there is no real impact. It happened in January. Later, under the appeal of the founder Ignotus, the community actively donated money to solve the difficulties at that time. Thanks to all the donors of the Grin community.

Subsequent donations have also worked well. As recently as May, the Grin developer fundraising account even received an anonymous donation of 50 bitcoins, which is currently worth more than 500,000 US dollars. It is the largest donation received so far. Thanks to this anonymous donor. The donation funds have not yet been used.

On the one hand, Grin’s development model is an inheritance of the Bitcoin model and spirit, and on the other hand, it is also a fresh attempt in the current development environment of currency circle projects. This model is currently working well, and it is hard to say whether it really has an impact on development efficiency. Maybe there will be a little bit. After all, the current full-time development team of Grin is too small, but it is still up to the Grin community to judge and decide whether it needs to be expanded.

At present, the use of Grin's development funds is very transparent, and the cost is not large or even very small. For details, please refer to the quarterly fund use report:https://github.com/mimblewimble/grin-pm/tree/master/financials/reports

A little bit of my personal thoughts on Grin development funding:

I believe that project development efficiency and project health are two aspects that 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 donations come from three sources:

• 1. Rely on the continuous donations from community beneficiary enterprises, mainly including mining machine manufacturers, mining pools, large mines, exchanges, etc.;

• 2. If there is a funding gap, properly rely on community fundraising activities to raise donations from the entire community as a supplementary means;

• 3. Anonymous or real-name personal donations have also proven to be one of the most important contributions in Grin donations.

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

In the future, it is entirely possible for the Grin community to have many development funds that will operate simultaneously and collaborate with each other, as a powerful supplement to the current Grin development fund managed by the Grin core developers and the Grin council.