Will Grin become "Bitcoin 2.0"? I don't think so

Source: Niu Shi Financial Information

Under the shadow of a long bear market, the cryptocurrency world, which had not seen any good news for a long time, finally became lively at the beginning of 2019, welcoming new projects Beam and Grin that are both topical and innovative. In particular, the up-and-coming Grin has even become the "Bitcoin 2.0" in the eyes of a large number of blockchain developers and miners!

Under the shadow of a long bear market, the cryptocurrency world, which had not seen any good news for a long time, finally became lively at the beginning of 2019, welcoming new projects Beam and Grin that are both topical and innovative. In particular, the up-and-coming Grin has even become the "Bitcoin 2.0" in the eyes of a large number of blockchain developers and miners!

In fact, Grin was born as early as November 2016, earlier than many popular currencies at present. However, due to the anonymity of most core members, no ICO, no marketing, etc., it was not until the recent launch of the main network that it entered the public eye. Compared with Bitcoin, Grin's total issuance has no upper limit and maintains a linear supply, and the mining speed of coins remains unchanged, which means that Grin hopes to create an inflationary economic model. No one expected that this project, which was born at the end of 2016, would explode in the domestic and foreign markets in 2019.

The underlying protocol from Harry Potter

Before talking about the project, we must talk about its underlying protocol: MinmbleWimble.

MinmbleWimble is a spell that comes from "Harry Potter" and means the tongue-tying spell, which can make people's tongue tied. The first appearance of the "Mimblewimble" spell was in the second part of the "Harry Potter" series, "Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets", in the Dueling Club. Gilderoy, the professor of dark magic at Hogwarts, wanted to teach students to prevent the attack of the Basilisk, so he used the tongue-tying spell "Mimblewimble".

On October 20, 2016, a guy named Ignotus Peverell announced that he would set up a new project to implement the MimbleWimble protocol. To this end, he established a project called "Grin" on GitHub.

Ignotus Peverell is also a character in the Harry Potter story. Legend has it that he owns an invisibility cloak that can even give him the ability to escape the pursuit of death.

In March 2017, Ignotus Peverell released "Technical Introduction of Mimblewimble and Grin" on GitHub, and the Grin project took shape.

Grin: Anonymous coin considered as Bitcoin 2.0

In the early morning of January 16, Grin’s mainnet was successfully launched, officially launching an idealistic social experiment focusing on anonymous payments.

Martian said on Weibo: "Grin may be the most hardcore digital currency in recent years, the one closest to Bitcoin fundamentalism; small blocks, pure anonymity, anti-censorship, cypherpunks, and apoliticalism are once again making waves."

At the end of 2016, when the ICO craze was just beginning, the Grin team did not "raise money first and then do things" like other projects. It also did not accept other forms of financing, and the entire project relied on fundraising. Perhaps this is why Grin took its time to officially launch the project two years later. In addition, the project did not have pre-mining and other privileges, and all tokens could only be sold through exchanges.

Grin brings the rules of the game back to the early days of Bitcoin - everyone is on the same starting line, and everyone can get it by mining instead of buying it.

An anonymous partner at an investment firm said: “Grin is the closest thing to Bitcoin. In the minds of many investors, Grin is a bit like ‘Bitcoin 2.0’.”

Like Bitcoin, Grin also uses the POW consensus mechanism. The difference is that in order to avoid the computing power monopoly problem like Bitcoin, the Grin team set the initial mining algorithm to be "anti-ASIC", allowing graphics card miners to become the main mining body.

Grin is the first project to use the MimbleWimble underlying protocol. The MW protocol was originally proposed to improve Bitcoin and was supported by many crypto-punks, crypto-geeks, and developers, but was eventually shelved for various reasons. This gave Grin the opportunity to emerge.

This protocol focuses on the interchangeability and scalability of tokens, and can also ensure the anonymity of addresses and funds under the premise of system security. Grin has now become synonymous with the MW protocol, and it is highly anticipated, and many people in the community hope that it can become the second Bitcoin.

Can we follow this trend?

Take the past year as an example. Although Bitcoin is still the undisputed leader in the blockchain industry, projects such as EOS and TRON have obviously become local lords with huge fans. Most of these emerging projects use the DPOS mechanism or its variants, with dozens of super nodes controlling the accounting rights and survival blocks. At the same time, specific companies actually dominate the development and operation. The centralization is quite serious. Some developers even believe that EOS is not a blockchain project, but a centralized cloud computing organization.

From the perspective of the overall industry environment, ICOs have been prevalent and hyped in the blockchain industry in recent years, resulting in tens of thousands of low-quality air coins. Most blockchain practitioners may have forgotten the true concept of blockchain and regard blockchain as a tool for individuals and teams to make profits, which has greatly deteriorated the ecosystem of the blockchain industry. This deep bear market in the currency market is caused by this.

As most analysts have pointed out, due to Grin's indefinite inflation mechanism, miners will tend to sell the Grin they have mined, and the price of Grin will continue to fall in the long run, so Grin is not suitable for investors to hold. In this case, most investors will lack the willingness to buy Grin, and buying will be the premise for most users to use Grin. In the context of the emergence of competing coins, the time required for Grin's large-scale popularization and circulation may be greatly slowed down, and the idea of ​​it becoming a universal payment currency may be even more distant.

Moreover, Grin’s strong anonymity may also make it difficult for the government to recognize it. In contrast, although Bitcoin also has anonymity, its transaction traceability weakens its anonymity effect to a certain extent. It is for this reason that Bitcoin is recognized as a currency or included in the scope of regulation by some countries. This will be an important disadvantage for Grin’s further development in the future.

In response to the numerous discussions, Grin’s core developers said in an interview that they hope Grin will be used as a “currency” rather than a store of value like Bitcoin. Regarding the price, he said: If the price of Grin is unlikely to change in the future, people will be more willing to use it rather than hoard it speculatively.

Although it is unavoidable to be "speculated" at the moment, we still hope that it can stick to its hardcore characteristics, protect the increasingly weak fairness and privacy rights in the real world, and successfully complete this high-risk social experiment.