mimblewimble team mailing list archive

[Philbert Wallace <philbertwallace4@xxxxxxxxx>]

I haven't committed code yet. However, I agree with Andrew's well-phrased
statements about making privacy cheap and accessible. I think that is a
valiant goal and one that many people can rally around. That being said,
and really my only hesitation with going that direction is that it would be
nice if there was a way in which we can actually measure our progress
towards achieving that goal. What defines "cheap"? What defines
"accessible"? and from what/whose perspective?

Given that it might be hard to objectively quantify these things such that
the measurement is equally applicable to all users of the system, one
thought I had instead is: perhaps we should  try to identify a (small) set
of overarching *values/principles* that we stand for and/or a "final ideal
state of the world" that we're trying to achieve (knowing that we are never
going to exactly get there). The features of our network/economy such as
decentralization, cheap and accessible privacy, etc are then (hopefully)
obvious side effects of our values. For example:

"We seek to build a world where:

   - an individual's financial actions are private by default,
   - spending less than one earns is rewarded through increased purchasing
   power,
   - wealth is acquired honorably and transferred voluntarily
   - ... "

As much as we want to, we are are not going to be able to capture all
people's interest/investment/time, at least not initially, as there will
always be some that don't agree with our values. Instead, perhaps we might
want to focus on capturing the steadfast and principled dedication of a
growing core group of good people who will stick with the project for a
decade or more with very few defectors. Yes, that's a long time, but we
can't deny that there is already a fair amount of fragmentation in the
crypto space when it isn't even a decade old yet. One way to deter
short-term players might be to include mechanisms (whether formal or
informal) that very clearly prefer to reward longer-term thinking over
short-term thinking.

Regardless, I think that Igno is smart to be starting this discussion now!
Thank you Igno for your continued contributions and leadership!

Lastly, I do think that there are a lot of bitcoiners that are distinctly
interested in MW/Grin more than they are interested in many/any of the
other coins/networks out there. I'm not sure that snapshotting the bitcoin
ledger and grandfathering them in is the right move though -- for what its
worth, I lean towards the no-ICO, no-premine direction.

On Thu, Sep 7, 2017 at 10:03 AM, Greg Sanders <gsanders87@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:

> > Then as far as branding and messaging goes, we could take a page out of
> Bitcoin Cash's book.  Honestly, I wouldn't mind calling this chain
> Bitcoin2.0 or something like that.
>
> I find this to be verging on fraud(worse than Bcash). Tricking people into
> buying something by "borrowing" branding is deceptive and will lead to
> people making decisions they don't understand the implications to.
>
> If people want to buy into a MW coin, that's great and their choice, but
> their eyes need to be open to the fact that it's an entirely new economy
> and network, with even more primitive ecosystem than Bitcoin.
>
> On Thu, Sep 7, 2017 at 9:57 AM, Rhett Creighton <rhett@xxxxxxxxxxxx>
> wrote:
>
>> Hi MimbleWimblers,
>>
>> I'd like to suggest a different approach.  Rather than launch with zero
>> supply, MimbleWimble should start as a chain split of Bitcoin.  I
>> understand that the address scheme is different, but there are several ways
>> to solve this.  One way is to store all Bitcoin addresses with a non-zero
>> balance in a genesis block and treat these addresses similar to the way
>> other currencies have used "pre-sale" wallets.
>>
>> Optionally, if we didn't want to worry about maintaining this prewallet
>> state over a long time, there could be a short time window where people
>> must sign a message to claim their MimbleWimble coins.  After bootstrapping
>> the initial supply, the blockchain could start running as a pure
>> MimbleWimble implementation and nodes could even choose to prune the
>> initial bitcoin bootstrapping blocks.
>>
>> Then as far as branding and messaging goes, we could take a page out of
>> Bitcoin Cash's book.  Honestly, I wouldn't mind calling this chain
>> Bitcoin2.0 or something like that.
>>
>> People of course would still be free to use legacy Bitcoin.  Bitcoin2.0
>> might only start with 10% of the market cap of Bitcoin Legacy.
>>
>> I can understand the urge to create a "pure" chain implementation, but I
>> think that we have moved past the days where that's necessary for a project
>> like this, and honestly, it could set back the potential of MimbleWimble by
>> several years.
>>
>> As an investor, I am very excited about the technology in MimbleWimble.
>> However, if it starts with zero supply then I'm in a really tough spot of
>> trying to figure out where to buy in.  After 6 months, the coin still has a
>> 200% yearly inflation rate.  After 1 year, it's at 100% yearly inflation.
>> Will demand outpace that?  Maybe, but it's a much tougher spot to be in
>> than if supply was bootstrapped off of the Bitcoin blockchain.
>>
>> Additionally, I don't think it's a stretch to think of MimbleWimble as
>> Bitcoin 2.0 technology.  It has many of the same goals as the original
>> Bitcoin with advancements that weren't available at the time and a much
>> nicer codebase.
>>
>> -Rhett
>>
>> On Wed, Sep 6, 2017 at 12:22 AM, Ignotus Peverell <
>> igno.peverell@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
>>
>>> Hi all,
>>>
>>> We're getting closer and closer to a testnet [1] and it may be a good
>>> idea to start thinking of outward communication. We want to have enough
>>> time to prepare so when the time comes, we don't get confused with the
>>> thousands of other projects in this noisy space, and have a chance to voice
>>> our strengths and differences. Messaging can also take time to refine. Now,
>>> as I know words like "narratives" (yeastplume used it first, not me :P) can
>>> make some developers' eyes glaze over, I'll start with something more fun
>>> and friendly: naming [2].
>>>
>>> We need names for a few things:
>>>
>>>    1. Our blockchain type. I'm happy to keep using MimbleWimble here. I
>>>    know that technically, the Grin blockchain will have quite a bit more than
>>>    just what's in the Jedusor white paper, but I think at a high level it's a
>>>    good approximation. Some people are also already familiar with it and heard
>>>    the name.
>>>    2. Our implementation. I'm not unhappy with grin but I'm not opposed
>>>    to renaming if too many folks are strongly against it.
>>>    3. Our coin. We have nothing so far here so we need to find a name.
>>>    My first inclination would be to accept propositions for names as replies
>>>    to this email, and then run a poll online. Sounds good as a process? We
>>>    likely need another name for smallest denominations too.
>>>
>>> To draw a parallel, in the Ethereum world 1) is Ethereum, 2) is Parity
>>> or geth, 3) is Ether/Wei.
>>>
>>>
>>> Now for the messaging and narratives. In my experience (which is a lot
>>> more shallow in that domain), we want to outline our strengths and
>>> differences to formulate a value proposition. From there we can distill
>>> messages of various lengths, adapted to different support (one-liner title,
>>> one paragraph article intro, full website, etc). And ideally, we'd have
>>> opportunities to try these messages in various environments to see how they
>>> work and incrementally improve them.
>>>
>>> So I'll start with a mixed bag of strengths and differences in no
>>> particular order and maybe we can figure out a way to go from there. If
>>> some people have more experience in how to go about this and a good process
>>> to get there, by all means please chime in.
>>>
>>>    - Strong anonymity provided by obfuscating amounts, sources and
>>>    destinations and removing data over time.
>>>    - Great scalability as most blockchain data gets removed, without
>>>    compromising security (the magic part).
>>>    - A diverse community of developers and cryptographers (no control
>>>    from a single entity).
>>>    - A brand new, clean (relatively) and modern blockchain
>>>    implementation with few fundamental primitives.
>>>    - A Harry Potter theme that, while quirky, has personality
>>>    (obviously, I may be biased).
>>>    - No ICO, pre-mine or funny business. We may still need to find a
>>>    way to get funding but hopefully it'll be reasonable and in line with other
>>>    funded open source projects/foundations.
>>>    - The person who started the project has a cool name and uses
>>>    parentheses a little too much (it's a side effect of the cloak).
>>>
>>> For others involved in this project, I'd love to hear what it means to
>>> you as well.
>>>
>>> - Igno
>>>
>>> [1] I know it's taking some time but I decided to include the UTXO sum
>>> tree in that milestone, which created a bit more work than I expected.
>>> [2] Throwing a Wikipedia article your way:
>>> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/True_name#In_cryptography
>>>
>>> --
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>>>
>>
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>
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