Bitcoin's expansion is progressing slowly, is Mimblewimble planning to go it alone?

A group of anonymous developers inspired by Harry Potter recently announced the development progress of the cryptocurrency anonymity project Mimblewimble.

The Mimblewimble project, named after a silencing spell from the famous Harry Potter books, is now accelerating development and seeking other blockchain networks to adopt the technology, as bitcoin has been slow to adopt the technology.

Although the technology was originally conceived as an improvement to Bitcoin, recent developments, including the launch of an experimental Mimblewimble-based blockchain called Grin, suggest that a standalone cryptocurrency may be the best way for the project to become a reality.

The magical history of Mimblewimble

The Mimblewimble project first appeared in mid-2016, when a developer anonymously named Tom Elvis Jedusor (the name of Voldemort in the French version of the Harry Potter series) published the Mimblewimble white paper (download the Chinese version of the white paper). The white paper is a thought-provoking technical paper while ensuring readability: Bitcoin scripts should be abandoned and a new way to record transactions should be used.

This shift would effectively enable the additional privacy of one-way aggregate signatures and a new application of bitcoin developer Gregory Maxwell’s confidential transactions across multiple blocks.

But just like Harry Potter disappeared when Voldemort attacked the baby, the developer who went by the name Voldemort also disappeared for a long time after publishing the white paper.

A new team of developers subsequently took over the project and continued work on it, including some well-known figures in the Bitcoin space, such as Blockstream’s Andrew Poelstra.

That's where this new line of development comes from - brought to you by another developer who goes by the name of Ignotus Peverell, the character from the Harry Potter books.

Interactive but not integrated

However, given the emphasis on a new scripting language, it’s perhaps not surprising that the project has been moving the bitcoin network in an independent direction, with the involvement of some of the biggest thinkers.

Any innovations from the project are more likely to be launched as a standalone project before being adopted into the bitcoin database, as Ignotus Peverell explained in an email interview with Coindesk.

Peverell said:

“Mimblewimble is not a blockchain format and it would be extremely difficult to integrate it into Bitcoin. Conceptually, it could be added as part of a proposal for extended blocks, but even then it would not be easy to gain all the benefits of Mimblewimble.”

The idea of ​​extending blocks was originally proposed as a third option in the bitcoin scaling debate. Because the protocols differ so much, Mimblewimble is considering launching on an alternative blockchain first.

However, Peverell said that the current direction of the proposal, particularly the plan to use Blockstream’s Confidential Assets (CA) system, offers hope that bitcoin and Mimblewimble-based blockchains will be able to interact smoothly.

He explained:

“The Mimblewimble whitepaper opens the door to hosting Bitcoin as a native asset on the Grin blockchain. This involves a peg between the two chains, similar to a sidechain. Users can transact Bitcoin directly on the Grin blockchain, which I think is a very cool idea.”

At the same time, if the Grin blockchain, which is already theoretically faster and more efficient than bitcoin, can successfully implement plans to add lightning network functionality, Grin may win more fans.

Although there are no concrete steps towards integrating the Lightning Network yet, Mimblewimble developers believe that such an implementation is feasible.

In these early stages, Peverell expressed interest in exploring and testing as many options as possible, thereby avoiding more complex changes in the future.

“Because it’s very difficult to change a blockchain after it’s launched, we need to think about these things in advance.”

The anonymous developer continued:

“From a technical perspective, this is a very good sign of what Mimblewimble can achieve. No one is complaining about having too many ways to scale.”