A way to hide blockchain transaction is termed as mimblewimble privacy protocol. Do you have trouble pronouncing the name Mimblewimble? Worry not. Mimblewimble is pronounced as mim-bul_wim-bul. It is a fictional name from a J.K Rawling sorcery series novel meant to tongue-tie people from revealing sorcery secrets. Additionally, Mimblewimble has been of great influence on the blockchain market. The reason is its scalability, privacy, and anonymity in the cryptocurrency protocols. Therefore, Mimblewmble is a privacy protocol
Mimblewimble privacy protocol is one of the blockchain protocols that help improve fungibility, scalability, and anonymity in blockchain exchanges.
Cryptocurrency protocols enable transactions to be efficient and transparent. Sending and receiving virtue money from different people in different locations results in more traffic in various blockchain exchanges. Therefore, blockchain exchanges are more prone to hackers and fraud. As a result, blockchain investors encourage more risk management technologies to give Bitcoin a taste of privacy and confidentiality.
J.K Rawling in her sorcery novel characterizes Harry Potter’s Lord Voldemort as master of sorcery. Both Lord Voldemort and Harry Potter use Mimblewimble as a voice password to prevent other people from knowing their hides. In other words, mimblewimble is a sacred word that prevents one from accessing or getting to know what is hidden except for the sorcerer and the intended person.
What Is Mimblewimble and Why It Is a Privacy Protocol in Blockchain
Mimblewimble is a sorcery word derived from Harry Potter’s fiction novels that helped magicians and sorcerers hide their intentions and meaning when performing their regime. However, after the development of web 3.0 technology in blockchain, Tom Elvis Jedusor made an entry on Mimblewimble in blockchain protocols to aid privacy and scalability.
Blockchain transactions are recorded in a blockchain ledger that anyone can access and make a follow-up. If you send one Bitcoin or Ethereum to recipient x, addresses to both parties are recorded plus the amount transacted in the blockchain ledger. Anyone with ill intentions can access your transaction addresses and fraud you or hack your account.
Mimblewimble is used in blockchain to help hide transactions due to its privacy and scalability. Therefore, Mimblewimble is a form of transaction hide-out that helps transactions held in blockchain ledger books not be recorded. Every transaction carried out via Mimblewimble is confidential, scalable, and private.
Therefore, Mimblewimble can be termed as a blockchain privacy protocol as it offers secure and confidential transaction. In other words we can refer it as Mimblewimble privacy protocol.
Let’s get deep into understanding Mimblewimble as a privacy protocol by considering its white paper published in July 2016. Any currency (good money) should be scarce, durable, extensible, indestructible, fungible, private, divisible, scalable, portable, and have censorship resistance. However, seven years after Bitcoin geared up digital money, there had been loopholes in privacy, scalability, and fungibility.
Jedusor came up with a theory of introducing Mimblewimble, an ancient sorcery word, to blockchain protocols. As the name suggests, Mimblewimble privacy protocol focuses on providing the most prominent factors in digital currency by implementing all the standards set by Bitcoin as a product of good money. To achieve this goal, Jedusor used blinding factors to improve privacy, and scalability and enhance fungibility when making transactions. Blinding factors enhance sender, receiver addresses, and the amount of money transacted to be hidden.
A Twitter by Treasurehunter states that mimblewimble acts as bulletproof in blockchain protocol. https://x.com/GoldHunter010/status/1004258270180265984?s=20
Therefore, with Mimblewimble privacy protocol confidential transactions are made making it more secure, and reliable in blockchain.
Mimblewimble and Blinding Factor
As explained every transaction carried out in any blockchain protocol is recorded in its public ledger. Therefore, anyone interested checking transactions carried out can easily access them. However, blinding factors in Mimblewimble privacy protocols are like book cover of the transactions carried out, where only the sender and the recipient can have proof of a transaction taken place.
Blinding factors are multi-signature models where multiple signals are conjoined to a single signal without affecting the input and output of certain transactions. The blinding factor greatly relies on the principle of Litecoin which battles the principles of good money. As the name sounds, the blinding factor can only be revealed if one has the private key. This means the transactions are confidential since they can be proven to have taken place.
Note that the blinding factor helps restore scalability and offer privacy in all transactions created in cryptography.
Mimblewimble privacy protocol introduced blinding factors to conceal the sender’s, and recipient’s addresses and the amount of money sent or received in the blockchain ledger. The receiver selects randomly a blinding factor received from the sender to confirm the transaction in blockchain protocol.
Therefore, only blinding factors can help identify a transaction taking place. The reason is that the receipt conceals a transaction address from the sender but is not shown in the blockchain ledger. Perhaps, only both parties, i.e. sender and receiver can prove a transaction was carried out giving Mimblewimble a heart of confidentiality.
In other words, Mimblewimble uses blinding factors and Litecoin to improve its privacy and confidentiality in the blockchain. Note that using Mimblewimble it is difficult to make a follow-up of a transaction by only relying on blockchain ledger unless with concerns of the sender recipient.
How is Mimblewimble Privacy Protocol Applied in Blockchain?
To understand how Mimblewimble privacy protocol is applied in blockchain, one needs to understand blockchain and how transactions are stored in a database or crypto public ledger. Bitcoin is the first financial system to state transactions that are stored in public databases called blockchain. All transactions stored in a database can be accessed or viewed by anyone.
Every transaction carried in the blockchain is recorded in Etherscan or blockchain ledger. The reason behind recording every transaction is to create a safer way to keep the records as it’s not well known when one output will be spent. However, Dr Yuan Horas came up with a solution of making transactions freely mergeable to form a one-way aggregate signature (OWAS) in every output.
The picture above shows a sample of Etherscan of Ethereum transactions. All the addresses of people who participated in the exercise are recorded plus the amount transacted.
Any auditor could validate the database if only the output data is at the end of the previous output. This means blockchain must be validated to confirm the final state of transactions. Furthermore, all of these transactions are cryptographically atomic meaning anyone can follow your transaction resulting in no privacy. In addition, anyone following your transactions can easily know the amount of money you have in the blockchain.
Privacy is paramount to any transactions as it gives confidentiality of ownership. Mimblewimble privacy protocol gives a solution to blockchain transactions by giving a taste of privacy. To achieve this solution, Mimblewimble greatly relies on elliptic curve cryptography (ECC).
Elliptic curve cryptography (ECC) helps reach out to asymmetric cryptography that is based on the algebraic structure of elliptic curves over infinite curves. ECC helps the smaller keys to provide equal security to non-EC cryptography. By basing ECC on Mimblewimble privacy protocol transactions it greatly secures transactions in blockchain by keeping the data output in crypto compressed.
In other words, Mimblewimble privacy protocol combines transactions in blocks where the data created in output can also be destroyed. When the output data is created and destroyed, it results to confidential transactions. Users need only to be aware when the data or transactions were put into a sidechain and final unspent outputs.
The Sender’s address, receiver’s address, or amount of transaction made are not recorded but put into a crypto mixer which is hard to trace. Therefore, Mimblewimble privacy protocol blurs the crypto transactions graph and that of One-way Aggregate Signatures (OWAS) lowering the space that could be used in keeping the records in blockchain. They appear in the blockchain public ledger as a blinding factor. One cannot trace which is the sender or receiver address.
How Mimblewimble Privacy Protocol Relates with Other Blockchain.
Mimblewimble is a blockchain coin like Bitcoin or Ethereum that is linked with other coins that rely on its protocol. For instance, Beam, Grin, and Litecoin all have applied mimblewimble technology. The reason behind the application of mimblewimble to other blockchain assets is its rate of privacy, fungibility, blockchain size, implementation, and scalability.
Privacy
As explained earlier, where currency transactions are involved privacy is a key element. Other blockchain such as Bitcoin, or Ethereum transactions are transparent and offer a pseudonymity level where transactions can be viewed by anybody with an access to blockchain ledger. However, due to mimblewimble privacy protocol use of coinjoin and other privacy elements, transactions are only entitled to the receiver and sender only.
Scalability
Mimblewimble’s privacy protocol ability to compress various addresses in a transaction to give one signal that is used to prove a transaction took place makes it more scalable. This aspect is not found in other blockchain. The reason being uncontrollable measures of transitions that must be published in the public ledger.
Blockchain Size
Mimblewimble privacy protocol gives an ideal space by storing small data of every exchange. This is achieved by its ability not to record every address set and received in every transaction. It is more reliable as sizable content is recorded as a proof identity of a transaction taking place. This means that a small size of data is kept in mimblewimble protocols which is exceptional to other blockchains.
Other blockchain such as Etherium, Cardano or Bitcoin have their ledger book growing in size as every transaction is recorded daily.
Implementation
Due to the unique nature of keeping transactions private, it has influenced other blockchains to implement and adopt its approach. As you all know most companies, individuals, and businesses would love to keep their transactions private. Therefore, other blockchain such as Bim and Grin have adopted the approach.
Blockchain that Have Implemented Mimblewimble Privacy Protocol
Mimblewimble vs Grin
Grin is an open-source software that values privacy, scalability, and fungibility in their transactions. Achieve confidential transactions could only be of relevance if mimblewimble privacy protocols are in the topic. As stated earlier, mimblewimble enhances confidential transactions by concealing both sender and receiver addresses plus the amount of money transacted in a certain exchange without affecting the input and output transactions. Therefore, it is of relevance for any exchange to consider mimblewimble as it enables scalability, privacy, and fungibility.
Nevertheless, the main reason Grin implements the Mimblewimble privacy protocol in their transactions is its ability to integrate elliptic curve cryptography (ECC). Elliptic Curve Cryptography helps hide addresses of transactions carried out in an exchange by compressing various signals to one signal that the only key is given to the receiver by the sender, ECC makes it hard for anyone without the private key to make a follow-up of transactions carried out. Therefore, the transaction with Mimblewimble becomes confidential, reliable, and fungible.
Mimblewimble vs Beam
Beam is a blockchain asset that applies the same principle as Grin when implementing Mimblewimble privacy protocols. Beam characterizes privacy and scalability and thus implements Mimblewimble privacy protocols to ascertain such concerns in their transactions.
A Twitter by Stef shows how Grin and Beam rely on mimblewimble principles. Consider checking it out with this link https://x.com/Acura6666/status/1090011196588285952?s=20
Mimblewimble vs Litecoin
Litecoin is one of the blockchain assets that ascertain Mimblewimble privacy protocol standards to restore confidential transactions. Litecoin is one of the major coins like Bitcoin that have embraced the protocol of Mimblewimble. January 2022 after Litecoin introduced Mimblewimble privacy keys the price surged up.
A Twitter by Dailycoin News explains how mimblewimble was of great effect to Litecoin. Consider checking with this link; https://x.com/ReadDailyCoin/status/1528718648516517888?s=20
Litecoin developers believe that if mimblewimble privacy protocols are enabled in their transactions there will be robustic privacy and fungibility in their daily exchanges. Also, it will help recoup security and evade track of transactions that might result in crime investigations of innocent recipients.
It is good to note that most online transactions, more so cryptocurrency, had traces of crime transactions such as drugs, firearms exchanges, and many more. Some of the exchanges in blockchain are being investigated to date and one might receive an address of money that is being investigated whereas they have nothing to do with such crimes. Therefore, filecoin in greater effect embraces mimblewimble privacy protocols as it secures its customers and maintains confidential transactions.
Advantages of Mimblewimble
Mimblewimble greatly enhances scalability and transaction privacy due to its originality in blockchain protocol. Mimblewimble originality from Harry Potter spells words that were meant to hide some information from being revealed to people, so it is used in blockchain. Any transactions operated with Mimblewimble are not recorded. Therefore it is impossible to follow up transactions transacted via Mimblewimble.
Mimblewimble operation is very different from other blockchains such as Ethereum due to its anonymity. Other blockchain protocols reveal transaction history such as the sender’s, and receiver’s address and the amount of money transacted. Nevertheless, mimblewimble does not reveal the transaction’s history due to its great use of Elliptic Curve Cryptography. ECC helps converge various signals to form one signal which makes it hard to make a follow-up relying on public ledger records.
Security is most valued in any transaction especially when large amounts are involved. Mimblewimble guarantees robust security to various crypto projects due to its scalability features and privacy. If any company needs to hide their daily transactions or their worth, mimblewimble is their option as it keeps in touch with their taste. For instance, crypto assets such as Beam and Grin have greatly kept in place the structure of mimblewimble privacy protocols. Similarly, Litecoin has greatly integrated the protocol of mimblewimble to enhance fungibility and privacy in their block.
Mimblewimble is easy to embrace and transact on due to its simplicity. One does not need to have a record of who sent the money, and to whom it was sent because these transaction cords are recorded. Thus it makes it simple for one to embrace mimblewimble because they only need to confirm a transaction took place.
Mimblewimble offers confidential transactions. Due to its robust security, anonymity, and fungibility, it offers confidential transactions since every transaction can be thrilled. Its unique nature of implying blinding factors (ECC) when recording transactions gives a taste of confidence when carrying out a transaction since one is sure one will receive or send their assets to the right person without being published.
Mimblewimble privacy protocol is best to use in any transaction as it helps avoid fraud or receiving illegal money. Since every transaction made in the blockchain is recorded in the public ledger, it is easy for one to track your address and receive illegal money that later can land you in trouble.
Disadvantages of Mimblewimble
Mimblewimble has followed the protocols of good money. nevertheless, it is disadvantageous to people who like to brag about the amount of money they have and the transactions they operate in a day as it’s not published in a public blockchain ledger.
In case of fraud or illegal money, it’s quite difficult to make a follow-up of where the transaction came from and to whom it was sent due to its fungibility and privacy.
Conclusion
Mimblewimble privacy protocol is one of the best blockchain protocols to embrace in this developing Web 3.0 technology. Most of the transactions are kept private and it helps avoid fraud or receiving illegal money. Mimblewimble offers confidential transactions due to its scalability and use of elliptic curve cryptography. It offers legitimacy and track of money privately.
Using the blinding factor, the ECC conjoin structure makes Mimblewimble privacy protocol more eligible, scalable, and fungible to be even embraced by other crypto assets such Beam, Grin, and M. All of these assets make Mimblewimble more popular and easy to transact on.
