TheCryptoToday

Emmanuel Sindani

What is FunFair? A Beginner’s Guide to a Blockchain Solution for Gaming

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FunFair’s launch was aimed at disrupting the traditional casino gaming market via the implementation of blockchain technology. Even though blockchain solutions for casino gaming were in the past kind of slow and expensive, the Funfair project has beaten these odds and is at the moment pivoted on becoming the quickest, fairest, most secure, most user-friendly, as well as the most enjoyable gaming platform in the casino gaming niche.

The organization is accomplishing the latter by providing its users with a decentralized gaming experience that implements Ethereum smart contracts. Be that as it may, the question is, does FunFair have what it takes to stand out from the rest of the numerous blockchain-based gaming platforms?

Well, in this post we will try to answer this question. We will delve a little bit deeper into the technology behind the project, distinct use cases, the team behind the project, as well as the FUN token prospects.

Why was FunFair Created?

Established in Singapore in 2017, FunFair has since evolved and so far, has offices in not only London, UK, but Guernsey, Gibraltar and Malta as well. The organization is at the moment fixated on coming up with a B2B blockchain-based platform for the casino gaming industry. Significantly, the platform looks forward to bringing about access to new marketplaces, efficiency, and of course, absolute transparency.

FunFair’s creation was aimed at providing casino operators and game developers with the ability to come up with an entirely customizable gaming experience on the blockchain for such games as, among others, baccarat, blackjack, roulette, and slots, just to mention but a few.

FunFair Use Cases

  • Turnkey Solution:

Funfair enables you to create your casino within seconds and start accepting players as well as process payments instantaneously.

  • Secure:

FunFair’s serverless decentralized platform is protected from not only hacking but player or operator interference as well.

  • Fair and Transparent:

The FunFair software utilizes blockchain and Ethereum smart contracts to provide its users with unrivalled transparency.

  • Fast:

Funfair lets you enjoy gaming on demand void of delays, thanks to the revolutionary Fate Channels technology.

  • Efficient:

Games on the FunFair platform require 10 percent of the network processing costs of other blockchain-based casinos.

  • Token Powered:

The FUN token enables seamless payments and rewards for all platform participants.

Operators who obtain a FunFair license find setting up a white label casino a fast, simple, and cheap affair. By using the FunFair license and blockchain solution, operators are in a position to economize on hardware costs that come with servers, costs entailing bandwidth, chargebacks, and even on salary expenses.

FunFair’s founder and Chief Executive Officer, Jez San, says he is of the belief that the human race will in the near future live in a world where every individual will leverage blockchain technology. Basically, what this implies is that payments will in the near future be processed over the blockchain. As such, it further implies that transactions involving the use of credit cards will as well move to the blockchain.

The implication of this is that it won’t be needful for gamers to have to decide whether or not to play a blockchain based game since nearly everything digital will be blockchain-based.

What Makes FunFair Stand Out?

The key challenge for casino operators, and to be more particular, online casino operators, regards providing trustworthiness in their offerings. Casino gamers oftentimes feel apprehensive about the true odds of the games they are playing, regardless of whether the odds are vividly made available.

The latter owes to the fact that the present gaming infrastructure, given that they are server-based, are as yet prone to interference and fraud. As such, gamers have absolutely no way to gratify that everything in the games they play is fair and transparent.

In light of the fact that the FunFair platform is blockchain-based and runs off Ethereum’s smart contracts, it provides its users with a transparent, just, as well as a gaming experience that is publicly auditable. The implication of this is that gamers can rest assured the odds of the games they play are not only true and transparent, but fair as well.

Here is what Jez San, FunFair’s CEO, said in an interview with Becky Liggero:

“So, we think we can help that perception by building technology that cannot cheat anyone, because the blockchain provides our game servers. We don’t have game servers. There’s no infrastructure. There’s no thousands of servers on an island somewhere. The cost of deployment of the games is almost zero.”

The Technology Behind FunFair and its Features

The FunFair technology offers the platform quite a significant number of exceptional features that have made it stand out from the rest of the online gaming solutions insofar as innovation, fair and transparent gaming, and usability are concerned. With that in mind, let’s dig a little deeper into what particular features make FunFair stand out from the rest.

  1. Serverless Ethereum Smart Contracts

Given that FunFair runs on a server-less platform, the overhead expenses incurred by operators on the platform are tremendously reduced. The latter, in addition, guarantees FunFair users security beyond measure. The implementation of Ethereum smart contracts not only keeps the system completely decentralized, but gives room for secure and significantly affordable transactions, as well as ease of maintenance for the platform.

  1. Smart Low-Cost Gaming Experience

Having incorporated a bankless model, FunFair has to a great extent cut down on its fees and costs of transactions. It as well alleviates the necessity for a centralized administration owing to the fact that transactions in their entirety are carried out and stored on the blockchain. What’s more, the implementation of smart contracts and Fate Channels provides FunFair users with a level of efficiency, flexibility, and transparency that is, for the lack of better words, beyond measure.

  1. Lightning Speed of Play

Speed of play has for a long time now been an element that has deterred blockchain technology from being effective in casino play. Nonetheless, FunFair puzzled out the speed code for online casino gaming on a decentralized, blockchain-based platform. The platform’s design guarantees its users immediate responses, and by utilizing HTML5 for the display of its games’ Graphical User Interface, FunFair users are as such provided with top-notch graphical quality.

  1. Fate Channels are Fair

To provide its users with fair and transparent play, FunFair came up with the Fate Channel. Most significantly, the Fate Channel mitigates against the predicaments that traditional generators of random numbers have when implemented in online casino gaming.

The use of smart contract Fate Channels has done away with susceptibilities brought about by casino random number generators, at the same keeping costs at a minimum and transactions terrifically fast.

  1. FUN Token Bets

All transactions carried out on the FunFair platform are done using FUN tokens. The implication of this is that wagers, bets, and winnings in their entirety are carried out using FUN tokens. Gamers are as such in a position to cash out their FUN tokens or use them for gaming on the platform as well as for purchasing game-in credits. This usage as well stretches to game makers and affiliates, all of who are recompensed using the tokens.

  1. Innovative 3 Dimension (3D) Games

With a consolidated forty years of game design experience and collaborations with key game makers, FunFair is better placed to develop and consequently deliver among the most innovative 3 Dimension games on a decentralized platform.

Gamers will as such be in a position to access a variety of online games including poker, blackjack, roulette, and slots, just to mention but a few, all without the need of downloading anything.

The FUN Token

FUN tokens were developed following an Initial Coin Offering in June 2017. The ICO cultivated $26 M in just about 4 hours. What’s more, the token secured a listing on Bitfinex just 2 days after its development. The token’s initial ICO price was valued at 0.007 dollars for each token and up till Sep 2017 when the price more than doubled its initial price with a $0.01744 price tag. Most noteworthy, the all-time high for the FUN token was $0.1857 on the 7th of January, 2018. The token’s total supply is 10,999,873,621 FUN and its circulating supply is 6,024,937,089 FUN.

FUN tokens are ERC-20 utility tokens, purposed to specifically power the FunFair ecosystem. The tokens are futile and as such valueless outside the FunFair ecosystem. In light of the fact that all these tokens have thus far been conceived, they are deflationary in nature. What’s more, there are privacy proponents, for instance, the fact that the ownership of the FUN tokens is utterly anonymous.

All undertakings from placing bets to paying the organization’s game developers are carried out using the FUN tokens. Whatever users decide to do with the FUN tokens upon receiving is entirely up to them.

Purchasing and Storing FUN Tokens

You can buy FUN tokens at a number of cryptocurrency exchanges using USDT, ETH, BTC, or even US dollars. The biggest exchange volume of FUN tokens is at Binance. Nonetheless, in the event you are inclined to purchasing the FUN tokens using USD, you will be required to head over to Ethfinex. Other more established exchanges from where you can purchase these tokens are LATOKEN and ABCC.

Since FUN is an ERC-20 token, it can be hoarded in any ERC-20 compatible wallet, for instance, Coinomi, MetaMask, and MyEtherWallet. Be that as it may, for optimum security, it is recommended that you should not store your funds on the exchange platform or the above mentioned online-based wallets as with these platforms your funds are susceptible to fraud or theft. Instead, it is recommended that you store your FUN coins on such hardware wallets as Trezor or Ledger Nano S as they support cold storage of crypto coins.

The FunFair Team

Jez San is the founder of FunFair and he remains at the helm of the project as its Chief Executive Officer. He came to the project with a vast background in gaming and online casinos that traces back to 1982. He as well has a more modern appreciation and flair in digital currency circles. He founded Argonaut Games in the 80s, an organization that developed video games for the then revolutionary Amiga and Commodore 64 systems. He later founded PKR.com which is an online poker room that implemented real-money and 3 Dimension avatars.

Jeremy Longley, who alongside Jez San co-founded PKR.com, is the organization’s Chief Technology Officer. He is vastly experienced in both 2 Dimension and 3 Dimension game development. He has in the past spearheaded a team in the development of HTML5 and Android products, third party system integrations, accounting management features, as well as cashier systems.

The rest of the team is growing expeditiously and there are quite a number of vacancies for new developers, designers, and QA testers.

FunFair Partners

FunFair has been vigilant in creating industry collaborations and has quite a number of ongoing strategic partnerships that have played a great part in helping it garner more recognition in the casino industry. Below are some of FunFair’s partners:

  • Spike Games:

Spike Games is a renowned developer of slot games, and FunFair has been working in collaboration with them as from April 2018. They are helping in the development of new blockchain models of existent sought-after slot games.

  • Big Wave Gaming:

Big Wave Gaming is a Sidney-based slot game development organization with an eye on the Asian markets. Their collaboration with FunFair was created to offer FunFair better access to the Asian markets.

  • RakeTheRake:

RakeTheRake is a dominant rakeback affiliate. It is FunFair’s very first live operator. The low entry cost provided by the FunFair platform has enabled the affiliate to enter into casino operations by itself, taking advantage of its brand to build a customer base.

Other than its affiliations, FunFair has as well been very proactive in so far as both Ethereum and Casino expositions around the globe are concerned.

FunFair Roadmap

Since its establishment, FunFair has unceasingly hit its milestones with a lot of reliability, a factor that is auspicious for a blockchain-based project.

The most recent milestones include the instigation of its main net beta, which in the recent past successfully concluded its first phase as well as the June 2018 instigation of its very first own casino on the platform. Since then they have given notice of introducing 2 additional casinos staged to go live on their platform.

These initial establishments will offer valuable data as well as intuition into both the operator and consumer utilization of the platform. You can get a glimpse of their live roadmap here, which amply shows the organization’s past accomplishments, yet quite thin insofar as future expectations go. 2018’s 4th quarter milestones were inclusive of going live with the very first third part developed game content, as well as building the FunFair brand.

Other than the latter, the organization is at the moment underway with the process of applying for gambling licenses in Malta and Gibraltar.

Conclusion

Despite the fact that FunFair has lost quite a bit of its lustre, it may nonetheless be a gem worthy of indulgence. The ecosystem has puzzled out quite a considerable number of the longer term predicaments discommoding the online casino gaming niche, and has an operational main net product. In addition, worth noting is the fact that the organization’s management team boasts decades of experience in so far as online gaming and casinos go.

By engaging each player in the ecosystem, from its users to affiliates and game developers, it’s most likely that there will be a smart long-term move for the adoption of the platform as well as the FUN token. Furthermore, as the adoption increases, the platform and the technology behind it stand a much better chance of attracting the attention of key players in the casino industry. As much as these players are reasonably skeptic regarding its adoption and as such kind of hesitant to change, the cutting-edge innovation surrounding the project ought to in the end win them over.

As an innovative 3D online gaming platform implementing both blockchain technology as well as Ethereum smart contracts, the project is likely to fulfill its promise of becoming the future of online gaming. With a verifiably fair system, significantly reduced costs, higher speeds, reliability, and a whole lot of fun, FunFair might just be the venture to be a part of prior to blockchain really exploding into mainstream adoption.

What is Storj? A Beginner’s Guide to the Decentralized File Storage Platform

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Storj basically refers to an open-source, blockchain-based, or more specifically, decentralized file storage solution. The platform implements encryption, file sharding, and a blockchain-based hash table for the storage of files on a p2p network. The objective in this case is to make storage of files on the cloud private, faster, and cheaper.

Conventional cloud storage solutions, for instance Google Drive and Dropbox, have without doubt exceeded our expectations insofar as cloud storage is concerned. Nonetheless, they come bundled with a number of limitations. As much as with the aforementioned solutions there is redundant backup of files on the cloud, there is the possibility of restricted access to a user’s files due to bandwidth from a data center, given that the storage is centralized, or unanticipated outages. In addition, there arises the issue of privacy. These organizations have absolute control over your files, not to mention your ability to access them.

Thanks to the Storj project, the above mentioned flaws can be mitigated against. Storj implements blockchain and p2p networks to solve these issues. The platform distributes the files in such a way that redundancy is well established. It as well guarantees no one but the user has access to their files.

Before we proceed, it’s fundamental that we point a key disparity between the open-source Storj and Storj Labs, the for-profit organization. Whilst anyone can create their own instance of the open-source software that runs Storj, Storj Labs automatically does this for its users, and it’s worth mentioning that their network already comprises thousands of users. Also, most noteworthy, Storj Labs charges users for using the network.

This post dives deeper into the manner in which the Storj project operates and the success it has so far seen. In the end, having read this post, it will be upon you to establish whether or not the Storj project warrants the acclamation it has so far garnered. Maybe, just maybe, you may decide to start using it for storing your files.

Torrents. Remember Them?

A basic understanding of how torrents work will possibly make it a lot easier for you to start understanding how the Storj project is structured to work. In the early 2000s, torrents became a universal buzzword. It came to the rescue of those who wanted to download TV shows, music, and movies – though illegally, for free.

Torrents work on a p2p network and below is a brief outline of how they work:

  1. Several users retain copies of a particular file.
  2. In the event anyone needs a copy of the file, they send a request to the p2p network.
  3. Users who are in possession of the file, normally referred to as seeds, send fragments of the file to the user who requested it.
  4. The requester as a result receives several fragments from a variety of seeds, and the torrent software recompiles these fragments of the file to come up with the original file.

The advantage that comes with using torrents regards the fact that a user can download a file’s fragments from multiple sources in parallel. This basically implies that the transfer of the file could be passably quicker as compared to downloading the entire package all at once from a particular source.

What’s more, so far as pirated content goes, the torrents run in a decentralized network. No particular organization has control over the content of the torrent. As such, it is almost impossible to shut down a torrent, on the grounds that you would have to shut down each individual seed.

Storj operates in a typical manner, except it’s not only limited to pirated digital content. Here’s how.

File Sharding

File Sharding is one of the characteristics typical to both torrents and the Storj project. This basically implies that to store a file on the Storj platform, one has to first of all subdivide it into several tinier fragments.

File sharding has a two-fold benefit. First, it enables a user to send and recall shards of the file in parallel. As such, the file transfer process is further quickened. The other advantage is with regard to the fact that no particular entity holds your file’s entirety. As a user, you are the only one with the knowledge of where all the shards of your file are located.

Shard location is a key distinction between torrents and Storj. Torrents are known to publish shard locations publicly. The objective in this case is to make it as simple as possible for anyone to download the files. Storj, as a provider of cloud storage services, obviously gives more priority to the privacy of its users. The person who uploads a file should as such be the only one who knows where all the shards of their file went to or are allocated.

It is at this point that the ideas surrounding cryptography and blockchain come into play. Storj implements what is referred to as a distributed hash table. As such, users are in a position to locate all the shards that form their original file. This distributed hash table necessitates users to possess a private key to realize the shards. It would be almost beyond the bounds of possibility to aptly guess a sharded file’s location without this private key.

Storj utilizes a distributed hash table commonly known as Kademlia. Kademlia is one among many of the fundamental pieces of Storj’s architecture.

Parity Shards and Erasure Coding

The individual file shards are transferred to ordinary computers throughout Storj’s decentralized network. Be that as it may, let’s consider a case where one among the connected computers gets shut down or ceases to run Storj. The question you may most probably ask yourself is whether the shards stored on that particular computer will as such get lost. Well, thanks to the robust technology behind Storj, this question is satisfactorily answerable.

Storj has implemented some sort of redundancy into their system. Most significantly, they do so with parity shards. When a user uploads a file, they are at a position to select the redundancy level they require for their file. Though, Storj will as well help them set this up themselves. With sufficient parity shards, a user can immensely narrow down the possibilities of losing a shard of data from their file.

Having pointed that out, over an elongated period of time, the possibility of losing a shard of data maximizes. Consequently, Storj carries out consistent audits as well as other validation processes to make certain the latter does not go unmitigated. All the same, a best practice would entail users recalling and rebuilding their files periodically prior to reuploading them to Storj.

Needless to say, the reverse is as well an issue as a lot of redundancy impedes the network. Storj has set up erasure coding rules which are responsible for reducing the redundancy of shards that have been duplicated too often. These erasure coding rules as well help Storj point out unique data that requires increased redundancy.

End-to-End Encryption

It is at this point that data privacy goes a notch higher. Thus far, sharding adds one layer of user privacy. The latter owes to the fact that no one host of data (also referred to as farmers) can read the file in its entirety. Nonetheless, even being able to read a shard of a file poses a problem, especially in cases where the file contains information deemed sensitive.

In a bid to mitigate against the latter, Storj helps users who upload information to the platform, also referred to as tenants, have their files compressed and encrypted prior to sharding. Each encrypted file comes with only a single key, and the uploader of the file, or rather the tenant, keeps the key locally on their PC or on the Bridge as we will in a short while discuss.

As the encryption key’s owner, the tenant is the only one with the ability to read the file they have uploaded. By the time a farmer receives a shard, it has thus far been encrypted as a fragment of a larger file. The data hosted by a farmer is futile without the encryption key and all the other shards.

Hacking the Storj platform and thusly gaining access to a file would require one to have the locations of every individual shard that makes up a file. The latter is just about implausible without the private key to the Kademlia hash table. You would then have to persuade the farmers hosting the shards to send you the shards of the file without the appropriate signature. In the end, you would have to form an opinion of the encryption key (which is nearly impossible), or steal the encryption key from the uploader of the file (or tenant).

Fingers crossed, you now realize that file storage on a decentralized platform comes with a lot more security as compared to doing so on conventional centralized platforms such as Google Drive or Dropbox.

Verification of Files

The one question that still lingers is, how does a user know that their files are really existent on the network? In addition, let us as well consider a case where a farmer simply deletes their own shards or turns their computer off. What happens then?

To respond to the above mentioned concern, Storj carries out and completes a file validation audit every single hour. So as to get recompensed, farmers are necessitated to show beyond reasonable doubt that they have the shards sent to them. Storj sends a request to the farmers, and in case they have changed or deleted the encrypted shard, they will not be at a position to answer the request.

In the event the farmer holds the file at that particular moment, they can then appropriately answer the request sent by Storj. Significantly, the farmer is recompensed a micropayment for the storage and maintenance of the file. On this account, Storj incentivizes farmers to store the files as well as retain activity on the Storj network.

Insofar as future releases go, Storj is considering the implementation of a reputation system for farmer nodes. This will as a result help give priority to nodes whose operations are on the level and have higher bandwidths.

Bridge

Storj’s most recent initiative regards the Bridge server. Before the establishment of the Bridge server, tenants would store their private encryption keys on their local PCs. This was fine particularly in cases where users would want to access their files from the same PC. Nonetheless, an inconvenience arises at the point where the tenant has to switch devices.

Bridge is a server that caches users’ encryption keys without centralizing their access. The server securely stores the keys in such a manner that their bearers can easily access their files from multiple gadgets.

Token

STORJ, the Storj token (coin), serves as a payment means on the platform. Fees paid by tenants go to the farmers/miners who contribute space for storage as well as bandwidth to the network.

Whilst Storj Labs’ implementation of the Storj particularly uses the STORJ token, open-source Storj’s payment system is agnostic. Other than STORJ, such crypto coins as BTC or ETH can as well be implemented.

  • Token supply: 500 million
  • Distributed in ICO: Up to 25% (June 2017)
  • Emission rate: No new coins created.
  • Blockchain: Ethereum
  • Consensus: Proof of Work

The Team

The team at Storj comprises of established startup executives. The official team comprises of roughly forty employees, with a broader community in support of the open-source initiatives.

Conclusion

Decentralized cloud storage is an entrancing use-case for both p2p networks and blockchain technology. Other than Storj, Filecoin, Sia, and Maidsafe are among the other platforms that offer these services. For Storj enthusiasts, the good news is that the platform is seemingly near the front of the pack insofar as usability, adoption, and the underlying technology go.

Here is what Vitalik Buterin, Ethereum’s Chief Executive Officer, had to say about decentralized file storage systems:

“Decentralized file storage systems like Storj have the potential to eliminate high markup costs and market inefficiencies and provide a much higher level of privacy, reliability, and quality of service than we see today.”

What is Grin Coin? A Guide to the MimbleWimble-based Privacy Coin

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Grin is an upcoming digital currency pivoted on scalability, fungibility, and privacy. Its development implements a MimbleWimble blockchain with a variety of optimizations. MimbleWimble, an enchanting stripped down blockchain protocol advocated by Tom Elvis Jedusor in July 2016, has gained popularity among a noteworthy number of Bitcoin and privacy proponents.

The Grin token is an open-source project offering a refreshing list of items it intends not to implement, most of which are discordant to the ongoing advancements in the digital currency market. To comprehend how the coin works, it is fundamental to, first of all, have a basic grasp of the MimbleWimble blockchain as well as its benefits.

What is MimbleWimble?

MimbleWimble refers to a blockchain protocol initially proposed by Tom E. Jedusor and thereupon revised by Adam Poelstra. The protocol incorporates a significant number of innovative technologies to entirely transform the manner in which transactions are constructed in Bitcoin and reduce the blockchain’s size. MimbleWimble fundamentally sheds light on two key areas namely:

  • Scalability
  • Privacy

By virtue of its inherent privacy, the MimbleWimble blockchain protocol has solid fungibility.

Privacy

Transactions carried out on the MimbleWimble network are opaque but can still be authenticated satisfactorily regardless of there being no addresses. What’s more, the amounts that have been transacted are utterly hidden. MimbleWimble places reliance upon the features of ECC (Elliptic Curve Cryptography) to structure transactions hinged on the validation of zero sums and private keys possession.

Validating transactions utilizing MimbleWimble necessitates that the amount of transaction outputs minus the sum of inputs is always equal to 0. The latter is attained using Confidential Transactions that prove a double-spend or creation of new funds did not go through whilst contemporaneously obfuscating the precise transaction amounts. The organization derives its concept with regard to the latter from Greg Maxwell’s Confidential Transactions (CTs).

Proof of ownership in the MimbleWimble network is contingent upon blinding facets which are elementally the users’ private keys and surplus values that are part of the transaction kernel. This blinding factor can be leveraged to give proof of ownership of a transaction’s value without disclosing its values.

The notion of verifying transactions void of knowing any transacted values embodies zero-knowledge proofs and RingCTs utilized in Monero and ZCash, respectively.

MimbleWimble does not have addresses, nonetheless. Rather, 2 wallets establish a connection with one another to exchange data in which case the recipient registers and sends an address to the sender. Significantly, the participants alone are in a position to get a view of this data and the information cannot be reused by third parties. Interestingly, the partakers are not even required to be online concurrently.

In addition, the block in the blockchain does not enlist discrete transactions regardless of whether they are obfuscated. Instead, they are summed up into a single transaction with assorted inputs and outputs. A block’s view does not provide cognizance into a particular transaction. Transactions undertaken over the MimbleWimble are effectually a non-interactive variant of CoinJoin that are inseparable from one another.

Simply put, nodes are able to validate the veracity of transactions without disclosing the transfer values. Most noteworthy, the platform does not provide its users with addresses and information regarding a transaction is not identifiable.

Scalability

MimbleWimble’s approach towards attaining scalability is a lot more straightforward as compared to more complex layer 2 solutions in increasing on-chain throughput capacity. Rather, the organization places reliance on doing away with old and superfluous transactions on the blockchain. This, as a result, improves efficiency.

Elementally, the protocol particularly gets rid of spent inputs on the blockchain over time. The protocol achieves this by aggregating intermediary transactions thus drastically reducing the blockchain’s size. The blockchain protocol utilizes an approach referred to as cut-through. Listed below are components that collectively make up a MimbleWimble transaction:

  • A set of inputs that give reference to and spend a set of previous outputs.
  • Pedersen Commitments – a set of new outputs
  • A Transaction kernel that comprises of a kernel surplus and the signature of the transaction.

Cut-through transactions in a MimbleWimble transaction are solely represented by the organization’s transaction kernel. What’s more, all outputs are identical given that they are merely large figures that are undifferentiable. As per the MimbleWimble intro on Grin’s GitHub page:

“Similarly to a transaction, all that needs to be checked in a block is that ownership has been proven (which comes from transaction kernels) and that the whole block did not add any money supply (other than what’s allowed by the Coinbase). Therefore, matching inputs and outputs can be eliminated, as their contribution to the overall sum cancels out…..Note that all transaction structure has been eliminated and the order of inputs and outputs does not matter anymore. However, the sum of all outputs in this block, minus the inputs, is still guaranteed to be zero.”

Consequently, it is not possible to point out with which output a particular input is matched while still preserving the ability to authenticate the transactions within a particular block. Nodes can additionally validate blocks by cross-referencing the sum of money accumulated via mining with the total supply.

MimbleWimble’s kind of pruning increases the scalability of the protocol, enabling users to speedily synchronize with their network. Most significantly, the entire chain state can be verified like a full node, even if no users keep hold of the majority of the historical blockchain data.

What is Grin?

Grin is a digital currency contrivance of the MimbleWimble blockchain protocol structured to bring about scalability, fungibility, and most significantly, privacy. Recounting Grin with the formerly mentioned MimbleWimble from a technical point of view kind of brings about significant overlap. As such, it is more befitting for the description to as well put emphasis on other elements for instance consensus and monetary policy.

Grin keeps hold of both the privacy and fungibility facets of the MimbleWimble blockchain protocol in which case there exist no addresses and transaction amounts, and transactions carried out on the platform are mergeable, thus alleviating all third-party information. Additionally, as is the case with MimbleWimble, blocks in the Grin blockchain do not contain transactions and the block can basically be looked at as one huge transaction.

Grin’s spent outputs in their entirety can as well be safely effaced, bringing about an awfully downsized blockchain size. Users are able to download and validate blockchain notably faster as compared to other digital currencies. Correspondingly, Grin has the ability to scale with the no. of users rather than the no. of transactions.

Grin’s Cuckoo Proof-of-Work Consensus

Grin does not implement a flamboyant new consensus mechanism like PoS (Proof of Stake) to accomplish consensus. Rather, it traces back to the basics of Proof of Work (PoW), utilizing the Cuckoo Cycle algorithm.

Cuckoo style Proof of Work was selected to mitigate against the Bitcoin-style “hardware arms-race” by making it ASIC resistant. The Cuckoo Cycle, being a memory-bound algorithm, not only makes it expedient for CPUs but increases its decentralization as well.

The network’s mining difficulty is contingent upon the current hash power. Moreover, it is structured to even out fast block time of just about 60 seconds.

Grin’s Implementation of the Dandelion Protocol

Grin utilizes the Dandelion Protocol in a bid to boost its network layer privacy. This is achieved via its improved transaction message propagation method. This protocol helps in protecting against quite a number of contemporary attack vectors expounded on in academic papers with regard to users’ deanonymization. Significantly, this is accomplished by mapping IP addresses on the basis of the manner in which a transaction message disseminates from its origin.

Grin utilizes a rather refined version of the Dandelion Protocol that fits with MimbleWimble’s transaction merging to come up with an aggregated value of transactions.

Grin’s Monetary Policy

A riveting component of digital currencies that has latterly developed regards monetary policy. Grim endeavors to be more of a currency for transaction undertakings than a store of value, at the moment different from Bitcoin. In so doing, the organization has contrived a monetary policy designed to further stabilize the currency’s value.

Insofar as inflation is concerned, Grin uses a linear supply schedule in which case the total supply is unlimited. The latterly mentioned model, rather than encouraging asset holding, encourages spending. The token’s rate of inflation starts high and by and by falls to less than 10%, and finally to almost 0 percent. The block reward is set over time.

Conclusion

Grin unleashed its Testnet V4 pre-release a few months ago and was launched on 15 January 2019. In comparison to more high-profile crypto projects in the mainstream, in the face of having integrated some of the most groundbreaking technological innovations, Grin has flown under the radar. Off the record, there is substantial anticipation around Grin from privacy proponents as well as other Bitcoin enthusiasts. MimbleWimble is a passably renowned conception insofar as more technical facets of digital currencies go. Furthermore, its utilization of the MimbleWimble blockchain protocol accords it some enthralling potential.

Grin is as well compatible with Schnorr signatures. Significantly, Schnorr signatures have the ability to generate multiple signature outputs. Worth noting is the fact that these signatures are vastly deemed to be the best cryptographic signatures. What’s more, they are scheduled to be integrated with Bitcoin some time this year.

Other than the technical components, Grin’s monetary policy is as well fascinating, taking into consideration the consequences its inherent structure is likely to have on the use of the digital currency as more of a currency than a cache of value.

Grin is open to developers’ contributions and is undoubtedly worth watching as it continually makes headway.