On behalf of the whole Grin team, it’s my pleasure to announce the release of
our testnet2. This represents a major milestone in the development and
maturation of Grin as an implementation of a full MimbleWimble-type chain.
While there are too many changes and improvements to list here (over a hundred
just in the last month), the most visible new features are:
- Adoption of Schnorr-style signatures (sometimes called aggregate signatures,
aggsigs or MuSigs), paving the way to “scriptless scripts” and smart contracts.
- MimbleWimble-style fast chain sync and pruning, allowing for a much more
smaller chain state that’s quick to download and takes little space.
- Improved transaction anonymity using the Dandelion protocol.
- Compact range proofs with bulletproofs, which are about 8 times smaller than
previously.
- An efficient multi-device GPU miner for our Cuckoo Cycle proof of work.
- Compact blocks to reduce the size of block propagating over the network.
As you can see, we’re still progressing mostly at the network and protocol
levels but we expect that to change in the next few months as we will start to
prepare for mainnet. In the meantime, we’re focusing on providing as strong of
a basis as possible for the years to come.
There are many people to thank for this release, both in the Grin team and
outside. I’m grateful for this team and for the people who have contributed
amazing work to further our space.
If you’re technical enough to compile some Rust code [1], please give testnet2
a try, we need testing and feedback. Otherwise, stay tuned, everyone is welcome
to our small community. Just find a way to participate, we’ll do our best to be
helpful. And Grin will become more and more user-friendly as it matures.
Godspeed, Grin.
- Igno
[1] https://github.com/mimblewimble/grin/blob/master/doc/build.md
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