If you know a little something about cryptocurrency, then you probably know of the privacy issues involved in the network. An anonymous Bitcoin developer conjured up a new protocol that ensured scalability and the mentioned privacy. I say conjured up because the name MimbleWimble (MW) is a fictitious spell from the Harry Potter narrative for tongue-tying victims. So, what is this magical tool?

Check out the comparison chart of all the MW coins :

What is Mimblewimble?

The Mimblewimble protocol is organized in a way that enhances privacy features, as well as the speed of transactions. The protocol employs several new ideas in cryptography, such as CoinJoin and confidential transaction, to develop a technology that minimizes the amount of data involved in executing transactions

How Mimblewimble Works

Mimblewimble changes the traditional model of blockchain transactions. It allows for a blockchain to have a more compact history, which is easier and faster to download, synchronize, and verify.

In a MW blockchain, there are no identifiable or reusable addresses, meaning that all transactions look like random data to an outsider. The transaction data is only visible to their respective participants.

So, a Mimblewimble block looks like one large transaction rather than a combination of many. This means that blocks can be verified and confirmed, but they give no details about each transaction. There is no way to link individual inputs with their respective outputs.

Consider the following example. Alice receives 5 MW coins from her mom and 5 from her dad. Then, she sends those 10 coins to Bob. The transactions are verified, but their details aren’t public. The only thing Bob knows is that Alice sent him 10 coins, but he can’t tell who previously sent those to Alice.

To move the coins on a Mimblewimble blockchain, the sender and receiver must exchange verifying information. So we still need Alice and Bob to communicate, but they aren’t required to be online at the same time for the transaction to happen.

Also, Mimblewimble employs a feature called cut-through, which reduces the block data by removing redundant transaction information. So instead of recording each input and output (from Alice’s parents to her, and from Alice to Bob), the block would only record one input-output pair (from Alice’s parents to Bob).

Technically, the Mimblewimble design supports and extends the concept of Confidential Transactions (CT), proposed by Adam Back in 2013 and implemented by Greg Maxwell and Pieter Wuille. Simply put, CT is a privacy tool that hides the amounts of blockchain transfers.

Source: Binance Academy

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