What Is MWC?

MWC - Ghost Money

MWC, Mimble Wimble Coin, is a scarce, secure, scalable, private and untraceable digital currency that implements Mimble Wimble via open-source software and freely available to all. The MWC price is volatile.

Mimble Wimble is a superior blockchain technology and provides an excellent framework that has superior scalability, privacy and fungibility.

In contrast, in Section 10 of the Bitcoin whitepaper, Satoshi Nakamoto acknowledged the lack of privacy in Bitcoin and as a remedy suggested a solution "by keeping public keys anonymous.".

It is possible, although extremely unlikely, to implement Mimble Wimble in Bitcoin with a hard fork. To reach its full potential, Mimble Wimble is best deployed in the base layer of a protocol.

Thus, MWC, or Mimble Wimble Coin, applies Mimble Wimble in the base layer and is a scarce, secure, scalable, private, fungible and untraceable digital currency released via open-source software and freely available to all.

What makes good money in the Information Age? The quality of a monetary product is primarily attributable to it being (1) recognizable, (2) scarce, (3) censorship resistant, (4) durable & indestructible, (5) extensible, (6) salable, (7) portable, (8) fungible, (9) private and (10) divisible.

The greatest disruptive innovation in monetary history was published on October 31, 2008 by the pseudonymous Satoshi Nakamoto titled Bitcoin: A Peer-to-Peer Electronic Cash System which outlined a tamper-proof, decentralized peer-to-peer protocol that could track and verify digital transactions, prevent double-spending and generate a transparent record for anyone to inspect in nearly real-time.

As shown with Bitcoin over the past decade the market takes a monetary product as it currently is along with speculation of what it may become instead of what it was.

It took approximately eight years before a similar disruptive monetary innovation was published when the pseudonymous Tom Elvis Jedusor placed the original MimbleWimble white paper on a Bitcoin research channel and then disappeared.

In the 49 page formal math proof published in 2018 titled Aggregate Cash System: A Cryptographic Investigation of Mimblewimble, Fuchsbauer, et. al. concluded, "In this paper, we provide a provable-security analysis for Mimblewimble. We give a precise syntax and formal security definitions for an abstraction of Mimblewimble that we call an aggregate cash system. We then formally prove the security of Mimblewimble in this definitional framework. Our results imply in particular that two natural instantiations (with Pedersen commitments and Schnorr or BLS signatures) are provably secure against inflation and coin theft under standard assumptions."

A Mimblewimble based coin enables greater network scalability, privacy and fungibility than legacy blockchain protocols. All transactions on the base layer use CoinJoin with Confidential Transactions and signature aggregation. Whale alerts are not even possible with extremely scalable ghost money. But as with everything there are trade-offs in fundamental characteristics that each monetary product must make.

In a 2016 podcast Bitcoin core developer Peter Wuille stated,

"Introducing Mimblewimble into Bitcoin in a backwards-compatible way would be a difficult exercise. It may not be impossible, but it would be hard. I think the way if people were experimenting with this, I would expect it to be an experimental separate chain or sidechain. In a sidechain we would not introduce a new cryptocurrency but it would be a separate chain. There are some downsides to Mimblewimble. In particular, it does not have a scripting language...a scripting language is very neat to play with, but it has a privacy downside. Mimblewimble takes this to the other side where you have very good privacy but at the expense of no other features any more."

Fortunately, there has been significant research done since then and with Mimblewimble these types of scripts and applications are possible: Multi-Signature transactions, time locks, atomic swaps, and hashed time-locked contracts which are the building block of payment channels and Lightning Network.

In January 2019 GRIN and BEAM both launched to extreme anticipation as Mimblewimble base layer coins. However, both have extremely low stock to flow ratios and GRIN does not have a supply cap.

On January 18. 2019, before GRIN launched a developer opened an issue on Github about GRIN’s emission rate and supply cap but was summarily dismissed. Because of GRIN’s lack of interest in a supply cap the developer interpreted that as a green light to experiment with a sounder monetary policy.

In February 2019 MWC was announced as a fork of GRIN. The initial stock of both BEAM and GRIN were created by mining which was highly inflationary. For software development funding, GRIN relies on donations and BEAM allocates part of the block reward to a foundation.

In October 2019 a Bitcoin and MWC atomic swap was completed on testnet.

In November 2019 MWC mainnet launched as an experimental separate chain and has functioned flawlessly according to the consensus rules ever since. The consensus rules provide for a total of 20,000,000 MWC. 10,000,000 will be proof of work mined and the initial stock of 10,000,000 were created in the genesis block.

The MWC initial stock was distributed differently than either GRIN or BEAM by using these three ways: (1) 2,000,000 to the developers for software development work immediately after the genesis block was mined; (2) 6,000,000 about a month after mainnet launched via an airdrop program that has primarily gone to the most grizzled and sophisticated veterans in the crypto-industry: Bitcoin holders who registered with more than 148,000 BTC at the bottom of the bear market between April and July 2019. Some were unclaimed and will either be burned, airdropped or added to the HODL program; and (3) 2,000,000 will be distributed over the infancy years of the project via a HODL program to those who continue to hold MWC. Registration is functional and over 6.7m of 8m MWC are registered. Registered MWC are still fully liquid and can be moved at the user’s discretion.

The MWC developers have stated in the Roadmap, “There are many potential places development resources can be allocated and they will be chosen based on market needs with highest priority given to requests that will primarily benefit and come from the buyers and hodlers of last resort.”

Just because a new monetary product is created does not mean that the market ascribes it any value. Such was the case from January 3, 2009 to January 2011 where Bitcoin traded at less than $0.25.

And such was the case on December 2, 2019 when the MWC airdrop began to be distributed. On December 3rd MWC hit an all-time low of about $0.25 or a market cap of less than $2m.

Bitcoin has clawed its market cap from nothing. Likewise, MWC was nearly worthless, nevertheless, a heartbeat was detected and the speculation network effect started. Some people have started to acquire and hold MWC just in case it might catch on. It seems that fundamentally good products always do eventually.

The MWC difficulty algorithm is based on pure proof of work. Inherited from GRIN was the use of C29 and C31 and, in the future, C32 and C33. Under the consensus rules C29 is scheduled to phase out around November 2019 at a rate of 1% per week. Pure proof of work, which the MWC team considers a superior form of security compared to alternatives like proof of stake, requires a tradeoff between emission rate and security.

As MWC’s price began firming the decision was made unanimously by all interested stakeholders to hard fork MWC, remove the C32 and C33 parts of the consensus code and rapidly harden the MWC emission rate. This would leave MWC the sole coin on the C31 algorithm.

An algorithm for which there is an ASIC designed but not put into production. On January 17, 2020 Innosilicon announced,

“We are sorry to inform you that our Grin product G32 GPU ASIC fabrication has not been supported well by the foundry… so we have to put this production on hold till future clearance. Innosilicon invested huge amount of R&D dollars to complete the innovative CC31/CC32 Grin GPU ASIC design to our satisfaction because we believe in Grin and its core team.”

On March 31, 2019 the MWC hard fork went flawlessly and on April 7, 2019 the emission rate decreased by approximately 75%. The stock-to-flow changed from 6.4 to 25.7. By February 2021 the MWC stock-to-flow will be over 62.

Although still in its infancy, MWC has been consistently trading above a $100m market cap with a monthly mining emission around $500,000. By market capitalization, this makes MWC the top-3 privacy coin behind Monero and Zcash and in the top-15 proof of work coins around Ravencoin and Decred. But in nominal numbers MWC is miniscule compared to Bitcoin’s $90m of weekly emissions.

MWC is designed to be extremely complimentary to Bitcoin and atomic swaps will only strengthen that relationship. Bitcoin can function as an extremely effective monetary VPN.

There seems to be significant information asymmetry regarding Mimblewimble and even the existence of MWC. As a result, it will be very interesting to see how the market responds to this six month old monetary product. When performing economic calculation the profits will go to those who calculate correctly and the losses to those who calculate incorrectly. The order book will be the arbiter of opinions.

After all, in an era of pandemic lockdowns, infinite bailouts, rising inflation, draconian wealth taxes and other financial, political and geo-political turmoil it just might be that the market is interested in a monetary product that delivers on being extremely scarce scalable ghost money.

How To Get Started Using MWC

It is very easy to start using MWC.

MWC Creation

MWC was created in February 2019 - and its MainNet launched in November 2019, as a fork of Grin to make a scarce MimbleWimble based coin by adding a 20 million coin supply cap.

Distribution

Our initial goal is the successful airdrop of Mimblewimble Coin to Bitcoin holders. Only 20 million MWC will ever exist -including 10 million that will take roughly 100 years to be POW mined. Of the remaining 10 million, 6 million will be distributed via the airdrop; 2 million will be held in an escrow wallet to pay out “MWC HODL” dividends; and 2 million will be dedicated to the development of the coin.

The airdrop registration process concluded in July, with an incredible 148,474 BTC registered; i.e., roughly 1% of the entire Bitcoin float. The airdrop claim process commenced December 2nd, and will end January 2nd. Currently, MWC trades on the HotBit crypto exchange.

Additionally, the "HODL Program" was created to reward holders who don't move their coins for specified periods with payout of additional coins, and the development team is working on incorporating the latest features into the wallet, including multisig and atomic swaps.

Innovation

Mimblewimble Coin's dev team seeks to innovate Mimblewimble protocol to bring out all its benefits, with the support and backing of the Bitcoin community. The team has already submitted an accepted BIP and developed a method for offline secure storage of MimbleWimble based coins. Other initial projects on our roadmap include a Mimblewimble wallet, support for multi-sig transactions, and atomic swaps.

How Secure Is MWC?

Given the nature of MWC, given it's limited supply, it will be important to be able to properly secure coins. Currently in grin, there is no way that we are aware of to send funds from an offline wallet. We are not aware of a way to do this in Beam either.

MWC has implemented new function in the MWC wallet called "submit". It submits a transaction to the network that has been finalized on an offline node.

This will enable both sending and receiving funds with an offline airgapped MWC wallet. We felt this was a necessity for users to be able to securely store their funds in MWC.

Using the power of a distributed peer-to-peer consensus network every transaction is cryptographically secured. Individual accounts have a 24 word mnemonic seed displayed when created, and can be written down to backup the account. Account files are encrypted with a passphrase to ensure they are useless if stolen.

How Private Is MWC?

MWC implements Coin Join and cut-throughs in all of the blocks so there is much less information publicly available in the blockchain like addresses and amounts.

Other Privacy Options

While several digital forms of currency have been propelled and many have endeavored to give clients more noteworthy protection, they have seen fluctuating levels of achievement.

Bitcoin, the principal cryptographic money to scale, was initially touted as giving clients obscurity. The digital currency's convention endeavored to offer an abnormal state of protection by protecting client characters behind pseudonymous locations, haphazardly created series of numbers and letters. Nonetheless, this approach demonstrated insufficient.

Bitcoin locations and exchanges are both recorded on the blockchain, making them freely accessible. Despite the fact that an individual bitcoin address is pseudonymous, it can join to numerous exchanges after some time, making it simpler for companions, family and even government offices to show signs of improvement feeling of the address proprietor's obtaining patterns.

While some believed that Bitcoin kept their exchange history totally private there have been some companies and legal requirements that have utilized blockchain examination to track Bitcoin transactions, exchanges and other behavior.

In the years after Bitcoin was discharged, certain digital forms of money were produced particularly to furnish clients with a more noteworthy shot of staying mysterious. Dash, for instance, bridles a component in light of CoinJoin, which joins reserves from a few clients to diminish the odds that any one client's character will be distinguished.

Zcash, another security situated cryptographic money, use zero-learning evidence developments called zk-SNARKs to enable clients to trade data without uncovering their characters. This could lead to problems with the scarcity of the coin. Also, the money's blockchain does not reveal the estimation of any exchanges.

This present digital currency's dispatch created critical buildup, however its security highlight is discretionary, and numerous clients have avoided utilizing it. At the season of report, 28% of exchanges were protected.

Monero, by differentiate, is private of course, and it has accomplished the far reaching appropriation of those inspired by utilizing digital currencies to stay unknown. However, Monero suffers from scalability issues.

what is monero

Monero is an open-source, security situated digital currency that was propelled in April 2014. The designers included presented this inventive cryptographic coin without putting aside any for themselves, and the group has depended on gifts and the more extensive group to facilitate advancement.

Monero use ring signatures and stealth addresses to cloud the personality of senders and recipients. Ring signatures join or 'mix' a client's record keys with open keys got from monero's blockchain to make a 'ring' of conceivable underwriters, which means outside onlookers can't interface a mark to a particular client.

The idea of a ring signatures was first depicted by scholastics from MIT and The Weizmann Institute in a 2001 paper, and utilizing the innovation has given authenticity to monero when a significant part of the cryptography utilized as a part of blockchains is new and has not withstood the trial of time.

It is important that while blending administrations are accessible for some digital forms of money, clients for the most part just blended coins when they were hoping to shroud something. Monero, in any case, blends all coins utilized as a part of exchanges, which wipes out the doubt that coins are being blended to cover data the senders and beneficiaries don't need outsiders to see.

While monero clients can keep their exchange history private, they can likewise share this data specifically. Each monero account has a view key, which licenses anybody holding it to take a gander at the record's exchanges.

Initially, ring signatures clouded the senders and beneficiaries engaged with monero exchange without concealing the sum exchanged. In any case, a refresh called RingCT actualized another ring mark that covered both the estimation of individual exchanges and the character of senders and beneficiaries.

Notwithstanding utilizing ring signatures, monero additionally upgrades protection through stealth addresses, which are haphazardly produced, one-time addresses made for every exchange for the benefit of the beneficiary.

what is monero

With this component, beneficiaries distribute a solitary address and exchanges they get go to independent, one of a kind locations. Subsequently, monero exchanges can't be connected to the distributed address of the sender or beneficiary.

Fungibility and Reception

By giving an abnormal state of security, Monero offers fungibility, implying that every individual unit of a money can be substituted for another. Another method for putting this is each coin has rise to esteem.

Since the exchange history of individual bitcoins is recorded on the blockchain, coins that have been related with specific occasions, similar to burglary, could be avoided by dealers and trades.

Because of monero's untraceable nature, no two coins are discernable from each other, and they are both equivalent according to vendors. Without this level of fungibility, a seller that acknowledges digital currency may decline a unit of one of these benefits as a result of its past exchange history.

Along these lines, monero (XMR) has delighted in an enduring increment in appropriation since its discharge. Dim web commercial centers including AlphaBay and Oasis have grasped the digital currency, apparently because of prevalent request.

"Following the request from the group, and considering the security highlights of monero, we chose to add it to our commercial center," the official statement expressed.

Desert garden received the money soon thereafter, and the supports of these two dull web markets incited huge media scope.

Monero's Market

Monero's market works like that of numerous different digital forms of money. Those keen on putting resources into the cryptographic money can buy it altogether through trades including Poloniex, Bitfinex and Kraken.

Poloniex was the first of these trades to offer the cash, posting eight separate money matches in July 2014. Bitfinex, the biggest bitcoin trade by BTC/USD, stuck to this same pattern in November 2016, posting XMR/USD and XMR/BTC exchanging sets and permitting stores and withdrawals of monero.

what is monero

Kraken offered Monero exchanging beginning in January 2017, posting money sets XMR/USD, XMR/EUR and XMR/XBT. Kraken applauded monero at the time, composing on its blog that the money "exchanges with high volume and liquidity".

In the same way as other different digital forms of money, monero offers invested individuals the chance to mine pieces. While people can join mining pools, they can likewise mine monero without anyone else's input.

Anybody with a PC can partake in this movement, as it doesn't require a particular equipment, for example, the application-particular incorporated circuits (ASICs) required nowadays to mine bitcoin.

Monero utilizes a proof-of-work (PoW) calculation that was intended to be available to an extensive variety of processors, a particular that was incorporated to guarantee that mining was interested in a wide range of gatherings rather than simply vast mining pools.

At the season of revealing, the square reward was around 7.46 XMR, implying that the monero organize was creating roughly 224 XMR every hour and 5,376 XMR a day. The system hash rate was 81.84 million hashes for every second.

Value Instability

The cost of Monero's XMR token has encountered critical instability now and again, climbing almost 70% in the most recent month and over 1,300% since it started exchanging on CoinMarketCap. Since commencement, the digital currency has vacillated between generally $0.25 (in January 2015) and near $60 (in May 2017).

While some market eyewitnesses may decipher this unpredictability as making monero less dependable, sharp value vacillations give chances to merchants. Merchants can purchase monero utilizing both fiat monetary standards and digital forms of money, which may inspire them to purchase and pitch it trying to make a benefit.

They may likewise utilize the money as a fence for different digital forms of money.

Since monero has gotten the acknowledgment of numerous dim web commercial centers and has created critical perceivability for its capacity to furnish clients with a high level of protection, it is less theoretical than contenders like Zcash.

Going ahead, Monero's cost will be a component of free market activity. The previous is regularly expanding, and the last is obscure. Strikingly enough, this vulnerability may demonstrate convincing to financial specialists, giving them a chance to estimate on the cryptographic money's future incentive trying to produce solid returns.