Three years ago, a mysterious txt file signed by a pseudonymous Tom Elvis Jedusor was dropped in the Bitcoin-Wizards IRC channel outlining a proposal called Mimblewimble. It proposed a novel way of combining many ideas from Bitcoin research in order to create a new blockchain protocol that will be highly scalable and increase privacy, while still using the same cryptographic assumptions as Bitcoin. A few months later this project was picked up by another pseudonymous individual who started working on an implementation he called Grin. Grin slowly began to draw attention from the Bitcoin community and got a lot of traction.
We join Michael Cordner (Yeastplume) and Daniel Lehnberg, two of the core developers of the Grin blockchain. In this episode we discuss some topics around Grin’s cypherpunk origins, privacy and scalability features, no-premine fair start, and interesting monetary policy.
Topics covered in this episode:

Origins of the Mimblewimble proposal and the prior work it draws upon
Andrew Poelstra’s contributions to improving and fixing the original proposal
Scalability and fast sync times achieved through mimblewimble’s UTXO set compression
How UTXO compression when combined with the Dandellion p2p protocol can increase privacy
Changes in user experience from Bitcoin to Mimblewimble
Beginning of the Grin project as an implementation of the Mimblewimble protocol
Comparision to BEAM, a competing Mimblewimble implementation
Innovating on fair Proof of Work through dual Cuckoo Cycle
Grin’s Monetary Policy and the Mining Fair Start

Episode links:

MimbleWimble Origin
Andrew Poelstra's Improved Paper
Introduction to Grin
Grin for Bitcoiners
Grin Newsletter
Michael Cordner on Twitter
Daniel Lehnberg on Twitter

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This episode is hosted by Friederike Ernst and Sunny Aggarwal. Show notes and listening options: epicenter.tv/278