Grin developer: Litecoin closer to gaining privacy features with MimbleWimble 🚨 This article is 5 years old...
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Grin developer: Litecoin closer to gaining privacy features with MimbleWimble
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Updated: Apr. 9, 2020 at 6:42 pm UTC
Cover art/illustration via CryptoSlate. Image includes combined content which may include AI-generated content.
The Grin developer tasked with implementing privacy features in Litecoin, David Burkett, has created a thread for monthly updates on the LTC MimbleWimble integration and has announced progress on the plan to bring confidentiality features to the sixth-largest cryptocurrency by market capitalization.
Burkett posted via Twitter:
“I’ll be posting monthly status updates detailing progress on the LTC MW EB (YAY acronyms). This is geared toward those interested in LTC development, but will also talk a lot about Grin++ changes, so it may be interesting to Grinners as well.”
In late October, Burkett was awarded funding from the Litecoin Foundation to implement opt-in extension blocks, a feature that would allow users to send confidential LTC transactions using the privacy-centric MimbleWimble protocol (Mimblewimble’s native privacy model masks sender and recipient addresses as well as the number of tokens involved in transactions).
Boosting the fungibility of Litecoin
Burkett, Litecoin creator Charlie Lee, and major Litecoin contributor Andrew Yang co-authored two proposals earlier this year, LIP-0002 and LIP-0003, that argued the Litecoin protocol’s current level of transparency decreases the fungibility of LTC — coins could potentially be blacklisted in a “government-regulated merchant world” if they were deemed to be involved in suspicious transactions,” they said.
MimbleWimble, best known as the protocol powering open-source privacy coin Grin, was lauded by the three developers as being the “ideal protocol” to bring optional privacy to Litecoin and protect fungibility — the fact that MimbleWimble leaves no record of transactions in the ledger, they said, purportedly makes it less resource-intensive and offers a higher level of confidentiality than other privacy protocols.
According to the new “MimbleWimble Progress Update Thread,” Litecoin users will eventually be able to send private LTC transactions using a modified version of Grin++, a Grin wallet and node client developed by Burkett.
Litecoin proponents have generally praised the plan to add privacy features, and yet the implementation may interfere with LTC’s existential mission to become a “better payment option” for “everyday purchases.” Privacy coins — even optionally private coins including Zcash — have been de-listed from a number of top exchanges in recent months following increased pressure from regulators.
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Litecoin is a peer-to-peer Internet currency that enables instant, near-zero cost payments to anyone in the world.
Grin
$0.03033
Grin empowers anyone to transact or save modern money without the fear of external control or oppression.
Zcash
$54.1910
Zcash is a decentralized and open-source cryptocurrency that offers privacy and selective transparency of transactions using advanced cryptography.
Litecoin Foundation
The Litecoin Foundation is a community-led organization promoting the accessibility, adoption and development of Litecoin (LTC).
Charlie Lee stands prominently in the cryptocurrency community as the founder of Litecoin and currently holds the position of Managing Director at the Litecoin Foundation.
