What is Mimblewimble?
Mimblewimble is a privacy-focused decentralized protocol that uses a new method to structure and store transactions on the blockchain. It was developed and presented by an anonymous developer named Tom Elvis Jedusor, who was the French counterpart to Voldemort in mid-2016.
How does Mimblewimble work?
The Mimblewimble Protocol, whose name derives from a famous spell in the Harry Potter series that binds the victim’s language and prevents him from revealing specific information, works like a spell. It provides a framework for the blockchain that offers new possibilities in terms of scalability, switchability, privacy, and anonymity for cryptocurrency, as the protocol allows information related to cryptocurrency to remain completely anonymous.
Mimblewimble’s complete anonymity contrasts with the alias of Bitcoin (BTC) and other cryptocurrencies, where three secrets are usually revealed: the sender’s address, the amount of cryptocurrency sent, and the recipient’s address. Mimblewimble does not reveal any of the three secrets or information.
Mimblewimble encryption policy
Mimblewimble’s coding approach is called Elliptic Curve Cryptography (ECC). ECC Mimblewimble enables to meet two basic requirements to validate the validity of the transaction amount and the parties involved without disclosing any information.
ECC relies on discrete algorithms, which makes compiling blockchain equations more difficult. Basically, logarithms are the opposite of multiplication, which is much easier to do than factors. The term discrete refers to a branch of mathematics that describes a set of discrete mathematical values and covers topics such as probability and set theory. Thus, ECC Mimblewimble app improves security.
In addition, Mimblewimble combines cryptographic protocols such as Confidential Transactions (CT), CoinJoin, Dandelion, and Cut-Through to achieve higher levels of security and anonymity. Usually, these protocols help to hide information about the transaction.
Thus, the secret transaction protocol, which is also used in other privacy coins such as Monero, masks the transaction value on Mimblewimble. The CoinJoin protocol makes it almost impossible to track transactions. This allows general transaction addresses to be masked by combining payments from different senders into a single transaction.
By implementing the Dandelion protocol, the identity of the sender and receiver can be hidden and confidentiality maintained. Cut-Through creates small blocks of transactions by merging multiple transactions into a single block for scalability. Thanks to Cut-Through, information can be removed from the blockchain easily without any security risks.
What are the main features of Mimblewimble?
When talking about the Mimblewimble protocol, it is always said that it includes three different features that make it unique compared to other blockchains.
First, it is anonymous. Unlike most other blockchain systems, which are mostly pseudonyms because they have public traceable addresses that identify the sender and receiver of a particular transaction, Mimblewimble transaction history cannot be traced. Due to the structure of the protocol, it becomes very difficult to circumvent user anonymity.
The second advantage is interchangeability. The difficulty of tracking Mimblewimble assets makes it more exchangeable compared to other blockchains, where users can exchange any cryptocurrency on the platform without the risk of losing or “contaminating” the cryptocurrency as a result of illegal activities of lower value.
The third advantage is scalability. According to blockchain fundamentals, each node adds transaction information to the ledger to increase the size of the block. Large block sizes cause scalability issues that stem from the limited ability of the blockchain network to process large amounts of transaction data in a short period of time. By implementing CoinJoin and Cut-Through to remove unnecessary transaction information and reduce block sizes, Mimblewimble provides superior scalability through its small blockchain size.
Who uses Mimblewimble?
There are many crypto projects that have decided to distribute Mimblewimble due to its strong security, privacy and scalability.
This is why the original cryptocurrency Mimblewimble, MimbleWimble Coin (MWC), or “technically superior phantom money” as described by the developers of Mimblewimble uses this protocol.
The first to theorize the use of Mimblewimble in 2016 was the team that created a privacy-preserving digital currency called Grin (GRIN).
