The Idealistic Developer's Dilemma: Who Will Help Grin?
Editor's Note: This article is from:Orange Book (ID: chengpishu)Editor's Note: This article is from:https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/the-what-bitcoin-did-podcast/id1317356120?mt=2&i=1000425104276 Orange Book (ID: chengpishu)
, Compilation: Wang Xiangxiang, original interview:
Reprinted by Odaily with authorization.
Grin is a very popular project in the crypto VC circle in the United States recently. In the past few months, I have heard more than once that many investors are eager to mine Grin, and are ready to invest a lot of money in Grin GPU mining, and even Research and develop ASIC mining machines.
However, one of Grin's core developers, Michael Cordner "Yeastplume", mentioned in a recent interview that Grin development is facing a shortage of funds. While many investors were eager to cash in on a new coin, this principled development team couldn't even get enough money to complete a security audit to keep the coin's network safe.
Here I have selected a part of the interview. I hope that while learning more about the Grin project itself, you can also notice the dilemma faced by this open source project. If you are an investor considering Grin mining, you might also consider supporting the development of the project itself.
00.03.40 Why is Grin embraced by some Bitcoin proponents?
Q: I noticed that in the Bitcoin world, there are fundamentalist bitcoin maximalists, and there are bitcoin maximalists who think that Monero is not bad, and now we have some bitcoin maximalists who think "Monero is not bad, and Grin looks interesting." Why do you think these people are interested in grin?
M: I think Grin has some features that are not commonly seen in other projects. The biggest point may be the spirit of this project - the developers and communities who are committed to implementing grin are all volunteers, hoping to really develop the technology, instead of issuing an ico or mining for profit by themselves, it is a completely decentralized customized projects. The MimibleWimble technology itself is an interesting technology that also has the potential to bring some value to the industry.
00.06.15: The mysterious origin of Mimblewimble
00.09.38: Key technical features of Mimblewimble
Q: From what I understand, Mimblewimble mainly tries to solve two problems related to Bitcoin, one is the scalability of blocks, and the other is privacy. Can you introduce it?
M: I wouldn't say it solves scalability or privacy issues, of course, it tries to make some improvements towards those goals. Simply put, in Bitcoin, in order to verify a transaction you need to go back to the front of the chain - Grin tries to improve this by only verifying that all inputs and outputs add up to zero, thus avoiding verifying all transactions of a chain history.
(Leaving out some details about exactly how this is achieved...)
Q: As a person who needs to use digital currency transactions in his daily work, one thing about Grin is very interesting to me-there is no need for addresses in Grin transactions. Can you explain how transactions are possible without addresses?
M: Yes, there is no address in grin, so everything happens on the wallet side. In a Mimblewimble blockchain, because there is no concept of addresses, all our transactions will only generate a series of UTXOs, that is, a series of outputs. In completing a transaction, you don't need to enter the address to transfer money, but you are actually "communicating" with another wallet-so in fact, the two wallets cooperate to use their private keys to realize the transaction, and after the transaction is completed, it is accepted recorded on the chain.
Q: From a user's point of view, if I have a Grin wallet, if I want to transfer some grin to you, what is the interaction process like?
M: There are literally infinite ways to do this. We currently implement some very basic methods, such as ACTP communication and file communication (file transfer). For example, in the file transfer method, I can initiate a transaction, store it in a file, and send the file to you. You can "upload" the file to your wallet and send the file back to me. Finally, the transaction is recorded in the chain superior.
Since such transactions require interaction between wallets, there are many user interactions and technical challenges. So in Grin, we don't limit the implementation to a specific one. Instead, a toolkit and the base layer that implements this transport is provided for community use. Developers interested in Grin transactions can develop their own interactive solutions. Some people may be particularly concerned about privacy and want to set up transactions in their own communication network; others may feel that it is good to use some intermediary services.
Q: Does this mean that there will be a lot of flexibility in Grin's transactions? For example, transactions can be realized through emails and group chats?
M: Yes. Some of our members are developing transfers based on keybase (note: Keybase is an open public key library and has created a set of general encryption security tool applications, covering chat, file storage, etc.).
Q: Compared with Bitcoin, Grin seems to hope to achieve more efficient blocks. Will Grin still have a block size limit?
M: Yes, Grin will have a block size limit. In the MimbleWimble blockchain, transaction outputs are burnable - reducing the size of the chain.
Q: Then Grin will also face the same problem as Bitcoin. You need to force a block size first, and you will eventually face layer 2 expansion similar to Bitcoin.
M: Yes. But unlike Bitcoin... (leaving out some technical details about layer 2, multisig, Dandelion)
00.23.30: Mining of Grin
Q: Let's talk about the POW algorithm used by Grin - Cuckoo Cycle - this is to make Grin resistant to ASIC, right?
M: That's not quite right. Cuckoo Cycle is actually a kind of memory-hard POW. At the beginning, it was to increase the difficulty of ASIC development. However, after communicating and thinking with many ASIC developers, our current purpose is to support the development of two directions at the same time.
On the one hand, we believe that ASICization is inevitable, so instead of treating ASICs as an enemy, we hope to modify this memory-hard POW to make the development of ASICs easier-eventually, different suppliers provide more ASICs choose. ASICs aren't inherently bad, it's just that they often lead to centralization pressures - usually produced by only a very few suppliers.
On the other hand, in order to ensure that Grin is released as fair as possible, we hope to use the anti-ASIC performance of Cuckoo Cycle itself in the early days of Grin to enable the GPU community to join the mining competition in the first few years of Grin's development. So in the early days, 90% of the blocks will be generated by the anti-ASIC algorithm, and it will slowly drop to 0-this gives the manufacturer two years to complete the development and production of the ASIC mining machine. In the end, 100% of the blocks will be generated by ASIC algorithm generation - from the initial 90% GPU, 10% ASIC to 100% ASIC.
Q: What should you do if you want to start mining from the Grin mainnet launch (around January 15, 2019)? Will it be very complicated? Or can it be downloaded directly from the grin website?
M: We will try to simplify this process as much as possible. We made a project called grin miner to provide you with some basic tools. The block generation time of Grin is one minute, 60 Grin are generated every minute, and one Grin is generated every second.
00.31.24: Grin's monetary policy
Q: Let’s talk about Grin’s monetary policy? As far as I understand, there is no upper limit to the currency supply of Grin, 60 Grin will be generated every minute and it will not stop, is that so?
M: Yes, but at the same time, it should be noted that the speed of currency issuance will not change, that is to say, the inflation rate will gradually approach zero—that is, after a large number of Grin has been issued, the generation of new Grin will cause The inflation impact will be much smaller than earlier.
Q: What is the principle of this design?
M: There are several reasons. First, if the monetary policy is deflationary, early miners will inevitably benefit more than later miners - this is not what we want to see. Second, we think this will make it easier for Grin to become a currency rather than a store of value like Bitcoin. If the value of Grin is less likely to change, people will be more willing to use it than hoard it speculatively.
Q: So you hope that Grin is more likely to become money
M: Yes, at least that's our goal now.
Q: So you can close BCH haha
M: Well, we're not trying to compete with anyone, we just want to achieve our own design.
Q: Have you considered exchanges at present?
M: Technically, yes. We need to solve some MimbleWimble wallet technical challenges to make it usable by exchanges. But at the same time, the Grin project does not have a group of investors who want to profit from it, so there is no pressure from investors to do these "value-added" activities. We believe that Grin is attractive enough, if you are interested in trading, please come and communicate with us.
Q: I believe that Grin holders still want an exchange, because the exchange provides the opportunity to price and trade Grin—if you want to use Grin as money, you must at least know the value of one Grin.
M: Yes, but the Grin core team will not actively carry out any exchange-related activities. Of course, we hope that Grin can be accepted by the market as soon as possible.
Q: If a user wishes to trade Grin anonymously, is atomic swap a solution?
M: Yes. The community member I mentioned earlier has implemented atomic swaps with the Ethereum test chain and the Bitcoin test chain. We expect to see more trading pairs implemented after the official release.
00.35.50: Governance structure
Q: What is the governance structure of Grin?
M: Grin was not produced using a strict top-down management structure, but basically evolved organically and spontaneously. Currently we have a core committee consisting of some developers and long-term community members who make some decisions about the development of Grin. But this is still evolving, just a staged state of Grin's past development, not necessarily the final form. We need to strike a balance between governance structure and development, with the ultimate goal of making Grin's development as transparent and decentralized as possible.
Q: Is "Tom Elvis Jedusor" still involved in the development of Grin? (Note: On July 19, 2016, "Tom Elvis Jedusor" released the MimbleWimble white paper and disappeared. Later, "Ignotus Peverell" started a Github project called Grin, and started the real implementation of Mimblewimble)
M: No, not since he/she released the white paper.
00.39.42: Funding for Grin
Q: Is "Ignotus Peverell" still involved in the development of Grin?
M: Yes, he is still leading the development of the project. He still chooses to remain completely anonymous for now, and is also very good at hiding his identity.
Q: Ignotus mentioned "Grin will remain light and keep protecting your freedom" at Grincon - there is a technical meaning here, but does it also have a social meaning?
M: Yes, it actually comes from the structure of this project. We do not have a group of investors with profit expectations, so we can face our community more honestly in terms of technology, and everyone has the same opportunity to participate in the Grin community.
Q: But I believe that someone must have tried it, such as some venture capitalists?
M; Yes, I'm sure there will be a lot of VCs willing to throw a bunch of money at us if we can tell investors how to generate returns on their investments. But importantly, we can't. All of our funding comes from community funds. If an investor contributes money, the only thing he will get is our heartfelt thanks and their logo on our "friends of grin" page.
Q: What is the funding situation of Grin? This is also an opportunity for you to tell everyone how you can help Grin grow.
M: Our community fund model does face some challenges, but it's the only one we think is fair to everyone. Often we identify a need that needs funding to address. For example, I launched my own funding campaign. In order to allow myself to work for Grin full-time, I really need some allowances that can support me in the next few months.
We have been running this model for a year. The first campaign was completed in two days when the market was hot last year. The second round of campaign was in March, and it took a little longer. The third round took a bit longer. We are currently raising funds for security audits, and most of them have been raised, but under the current market conditions, it is estimated that it will take some time to complete the fundraising.
(Note: According to Grin’s official website page, Grin Security Audit needs to raise 16 BTC, 9.1 BTC has been raised so far, and the fundraising is still open; interviewee Michael Cordner’s personal developer fund raising target is 45,000 pounds, and 48,300 pounds have been raised, and the fundraising is over )
At the same time, we know that some people have invested or plan to invest millions of dollars in Grin mining facilities. We want to tell these people that by donating to Grin's community fund to support the stable operation of Grin, you are actually protecting your investment - so that we can continue to develop Grin. This is the message we want to convey to anyone considering investing in Grin - I hope you will consider donating to Grin's community fund and becoming a part of the Grin community.
Q: Aside from Security Audit, are you currently raising money for anything specific?
M: There is no other demand at present. I may launch another round of my own funding campaign after the mainnet launch - that's the only thing I know of.
Q: Do you convert to legal currency immediately after fundraising? Or do you need to continue raising funds if the price drops?
M: As far as I am concerned, I converted to legal currency immediately after the fundraising, because this is not a gambling fund. And we are currently trying to shorten the time spent on each round of fundraising to minimize the risk of price fluctuations.
Q: What are the main criticisms you have received about Grin?
M: Mainly about our inflationary monetary policy.
Q: One criticism I see about MimbleWimble is that both parties need to be online at the same time. But that's not true, is it?
M: Yes, that's not the case. When we say that MimbleWimble requires interaction, it actually refers to cryptographic interaction - the input of both parties is required to complete the transaction - but this does not mean that you need to be online at the same time, you can both print a piece of paper, or exchange USB drives Seal the deal.
Q: Can MimbleWimble be implemented on Bitcoin?
M: It is possible, but at this stage the hope is rather slim. Not only is it difficult to make any changes to Bitcoin because of the technical difficulties that need to be solved-Bitcoin is the most popular digital currency, but it is also the most conservative in terms of changes.
00.47.42: How to support Grin?
Q: How can everyone support Grin? Do you need any support other than funding?
M: There is indeed a need for funding, but Grin is also a very open community. If anyone wants to participate in technology and design, whether it is writing documents, mathematicians, or cryptographers, we are very welcome. All you need to do is chat with us on Grin's Gitter.
Q: Where can you follow the latest developments in Grin?
Connect with Michael：On Twitter @yeastplume
M: The fastest place to get in touch with us is the Gitter channel - we have a developer channel, a designer channel, we also have a Grin Forum, etc.
Original interview link: https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/the-what-bitcoin-did-podcast/id1317356120?mt=2&i=1000425104276
Follow Grin: Official website: https://grin-tech.org
Github: https://github.com/mimblewimble/siteGitter: https:gitter.im_grin_community_LobbyGrin Forum: https://www.grin-forum.org
Resources: MimbleWimble white paper by Tom Elvis Jedusor https://download.wpsoftware.net/bitcoin/wizardry/mimblewimble.txtMimbleWimble followup papar by Andrew Poelstra https://download.wpsoftware.net/bitcoin/wizardry/mimblewimble.pdfGrin developer meeting Source: GrinCon0Grin VS Beam | MimbleWimble Comparison of Two Major ProjectsGrin Chinese information:
Grin VS Beam | MimbleWimble Comparison of Two Major Projects
