mimblewimble team mailing list archive

[Alexander Leishman <leishman3@xxxxxxxxx>]

Well said Jackson. I'm looking forward to a fresh start and pleasant alternative to the ICO, get rich, hedge fund mania that's happening. 

I hope we can focus on building a beautiful, open source project that helps solve a problem in the world. 

I also agree with the idea of outlining principles for the future of the technology. Hopefully we can learn from Bitcoin and solidify these principles early on to lower the chance of political fractures in the future. 


-Alex


> On Sep 7, 2017, at 12:40, Jackson Palmer <hello@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
> 
> Hey Rhett, 
> 
> I have to strongly disagree with the "Bitcoin 2.0" approach - it seems like that approach is in fashion right now and the politics involved are just a distraction I don't think a fledgling project like Grin needs. 
> 
> Additionally, I'd argue that the current Bitcoin token distribution is not something anyone would want to "snapshot" or "copy" for their new chain. You have the large number of frozen Satoshi coins, multitudes of hacked/stolen coins that may still be in the hands of bad actors, and a large centralization of coins amongst big miners. Snapshotting the existing chain only acts to "self-serve" the existing Bitcoiner space and I don't see how that's going to improve accessibility or adoption of the Grin network in any positive way (most Bitcoiners would probably dump it for a profit as they already have Bitcoin Cash)
> 
> To stick to the values that Andrew and others have outlined, I think it's best for Grin to remain its own network/chain and strive to provide a scalable technology stack that avoids some of the pitfalls other currencies such as Bitcoins have faced by building on top of those learnings. 
> 
> Lastly (and maybe this is the socialist in me talking), I prefer not to think of involvement in Grin as "investment" for personal gain... I really think this whole industry needs to focus more on building solid open-source technology as the starting point, if it ever wants to actually revolutionize the digital currency space. I really hope through smart messaging/community building that Grin can be positioned as something more than just a Bitcoin 2.0 get rich quick scheme. 
> 
> Cheers,
> Jackson.
> 
> 
>> On Thu, Sep 7, 2017, at 09:57 AM, Rhett Creighton 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:
>> 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.
>> Our implementation. I'm not unhappy with grin but I'm not opposed to renaming if too many folks are strongly against it.
>> 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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