Grin (mimblewimble) is also written in Rust https://github.com/mimblewimble/grin
In Facebook picked Rust to implement Libramimblewimble
grin
Rust2017–2019
mimblewimble / grin
grin
Minimal implementation of the Mimblewimble protocol.
16Distinct people
19Mentions
0Explicit recommenders
5.1KGitHub stars
What to know before exploring
What it is
Minimal implementation of the Mimblewimble protocol.
GitHub
Where it is used
No documented product use was verified in the last source check.
What people are saying
No recommendation phrase was found in the indexed comments.
No classified warning is attached to this page. Read the discussions before treating silence as approval.
Also in these discussions
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This week on Hacker News
Nov 7–Nov 14 UTC · Direct repository links and separately labeled related project stories. Indexed through 11/14/2026, 1:49:46 PM UTC.
No direct repository links were found in the indexed HN discussions over the past seven days. Older discussions are available below.
Mentions over time
HN mentions by month19 dated mentions
Observed mentions: 2017-11-20 01:33:26 UTC to 2019-06-19 18:59:30 UTC.
Counts come from the repository’s dated source evidence. Index cutoff: 2026-11-02 08:16:59 UTC.
View mention counts and date ranges
| Period | Start (UTC) | End (exclusive, UTC) | Mentions | Submissions | Comments |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Nov 2017 | 2017-11-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2017-12-01 00:00:00 UTC | 1 | 0 | 1 |
| Dec 2017 | 2017-12-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2018-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 1 | 0 | 1 |
| Jan 2018 | 2018-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2018-02-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2 | 0 | 2 |
| Feb 2018 | 2018-02-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2018-03-01 00:00:00 UTC | 1 | 1 | 0 |
| Mar 2018 | 2018-03-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2018-04-01 00:00:00 UTC | 1 | 0 | 1 |
| Apr 2018 | 2018-04-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2018-05-01 00:00:00 UTC | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| May 2018 | 2018-05-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2018-06-01 00:00:00 UTC | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| Jun 2018 | 2018-06-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2018-07-01 00:00:00 UTC | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| Jul 2018 | 2018-07-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2018-08-01 00:00:00 UTC | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| Aug 2018 | 2018-08-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2018-09-01 00:00:00 UTC | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| Sep 2018 | 2018-09-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2018-10-01 00:00:00 UTC | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| Oct 2018 | 2018-10-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2018-11-01 00:00:00 UTC | 1 | 0 | 1 |
| Nov 2018 | 2018-11-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2018-12-01 00:00:00 UTC | 1 | 0 | 1 |
| Dec 2018 | 2018-12-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2019-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 1 | 0 | 1 |
| Jan 2019 | 2019-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2019-02-01 00:00:00 UTC | 9 | 2 | 7 |
| Feb 2019 | 2019-02-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2019-03-01 00:00:00 UTC | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| Mar 2019 | 2019-03-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2019-04-01 00:00:00 UTC | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| Apr 2019 | 2019-04-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2019-05-01 00:00:00 UTC | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| May 2019 | 2019-05-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2019-06-01 00:00:00 UTC | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| Jun 2019 | 2019-06-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2019-07-01 00:00:00 UTC | 1 | 0 | 1 |
From the project README
An excerpt from the repository, fetched Nov 13, 2026.
Read the project’s introduction
Grin
Grin is an in-progress implementation of the Mimblewimble protocol. Many characteristics are still undefined but the following constitutes a first set of choices:
Clean and minimal implementation, and aiming to stay as such.
Follows the Mimblewimble protocol, which provides hidden amounts and scaling advantages.
Cuckoo Cycle proof of work in two variants named Cuckaroo (ASIC-resistant) and Cuckatoo (ASIC-targeted).
Relatively fast block time: one minute.
Fixed block reward over time with a decreasing dilution.
Transaction fees are based on the number of Outputs created/destroyed and total transaction size.
Smooth curve for difficulty adjustments.
To learn more, read our introduction to Mimblewimble and Grin.
Status
Grin is live with mainnet. Still, much is left to be done and contributions are welcome (see below). Check our mailing list archives for the latest status.
Contributing
To get involved, read our contributing docs.
Find us:
Telegram: Grin Development
Chat: Keybase, more instructions on how to join here.
Getting Started
To learn more about the technology, read our introduction.
To build and try out Grin, see the build docs.
Philosophy
Grin likes itself small and easy on the eyes. It wants to be inclusive and welcoming for all walks of life, without judgement. Grin is terribly ambitious, but not at the detriment of others, rather to further us all. It may have strong opinions to stay in line with its objectives, which doesn't mean disrespect of others' ideas.
We believe in pull requests, data and scientific research. We do not believe in unfounded beliefs.
Credits
Tom Elvis Jedusor for the first formulation of Mimblewimble.
Andrew Poelstra for his related work and improvements.
John Tromp for the Cuckoo Cycle proof of work.
License
Apache License v2.0.
Read the full README on GitHubWhat Hacker News says
19 sourcesOnly storing the merkle tree is useful for SPV nodes. The actual full nodes need to store the full chain to verify blocks (or else you could double spend). In mimblewibmle, the full nodes has visibility over interactive transactions only while joined of the network. The final artifact is a combined tx that spans the whole block -- ie: you throw away lots of tx detail and use the kernel for validation.
The grin wiki explains the basis of MW protocol: https://github.com/mimblewimble/grin/blob/master/doc/intro.m...
The original whitepaper is : https://github.com/mimblewimble/docs/wiki/MimbleWimble-Origi...
Two implementations of this (slightly different) today are: https://grin-tech.org/ and https://www.beam.mw/
In US academics say their shardy blockchain will be 10X faster than Visa> This means that the Grin blockchain scales with the number of users (unspent outputs), not the number of transactions. At the moment, there is one caveat to that: a small piece of data (called a kernel, about 100 bytes) needs to stay around for each transaction. But we're working on optimizing that as well.
https://github.com/mimblewimble/grin/blob/master/doc/grin4bi...
In Grin – A private and lightweight mimblewimble blockchainMore up-to-date discussion at https://github.com/mimblewimble/grin/issues/2121
In Grin – A private and lightweight mimblewimble blockchainFrom their "Grin for Bitcoiners" article [0]:
There are 3 main properties of Grin transactions that make them private:
- There are no addresses.
- There are no amounts.
- 2 transactions, one spending the other, can be merged in a block to form
only one, removing all intermediary information.
The 2 first properties mean that all transactions are indistinguishable from
one another. Unless you directly participated in the transaction, all inputs
and outputs look like random pieces of data (in lingo, they're all random
curve points).
Moreover, there are no more transactions in a block. A Grin block looks just
like one giant transaction and all original association between inputs and
outputs is lost.
So I think "No more amounts" is simply trying to say that the concept of a
Read the rest
globally-accessible transaction on the blockchain with a verifiable transaction amount is now gone. Now it's just blocks, which can be many transactions coalesced together. From later on that page "It's as if when Alice gives money to Bob, and then Bob gives it all to Carol, Bob was never involved and his transaction is actually never even seen on the blockchain." It is not trying to say that this currency is not countable or something like that (how would that even work?)
[0] https://github.com/mimblewimble/grin/blob/master/doc/grin4bi...
Grin gives strong anonymity guarantees but maintains most of the other public verification properties of a traditional blockchain like Bitcoin. It also includes some cool scalability optimizations to the Bitcoin-style of blockchain.
Anonymity is maintained with a cool trick called a blinding factor, where a secret value is drummed up for each transaction and used to obfuscate the data that is publicly displayed on the blockchain. Combining that with range proofs allows all involved parties to verify that the transaction was completed for the specified amount, and that no money was created out of thin air.
Scalability is boosted with transaction cut-through - a neat trick that lets unnecessary “intermediate” transactions get eliminated when a miner assembles a block. This means that nodes on the network can store the entire chain state rea
Read the rest
lly efficiently because all you need to know are the total coins in circulation, the UTXO set, and the kernels for each transaction.
I can’t do the whole thing justice in this tl;dr, so read the technical explanation here for more info if it piques your interest:
https://github.com/mimblewimble/grin/blob/master/doc/intro.m...
It may scale really, really well
"The state a given node in a MimbleWimble blockchain needs to maintain is very small (on the order of a few gigabytes for a bitcoin-sized blockchain, and potentially optimizable to a few hundreds of megabytes)."
https://github.com/mimblewimble/grin/blob/master/doc/intro.m...
Also, anonymous transactions.
Downside: you cannot "send coins to an address" as in bitcoin, you must have interaction with the other party to create a transaction.
In Grin – A private and lightweight mimblewimble blockchainI read the tech spec and it amazes me that there are people who can come up with this stuff. Completely obvious in hindsight. From the crib notes[1]:
> Grin's emission rate is linear, meaning it never drops.
This sounds more like a real currency, although, without limited supply this thing won't be going to the moon. The deflationary nature of cryptocurrencies thus far has been my main criticism as their viability of currencies (inflation encourages spending, which increases liquidity).
[1]: https://github.com/mimblewimble/grin/blob/master/doc/grin4bi...
In Grin – A private and lightweight mimblewimble blockchainIntroduction to MimbleWimble and Grin
3 points · Open discussion> That’s not stopping projects from working on it.
To support that...
Grin contains a phenomenal amount of cryptography: https://github.com/mimblewimble/grin
Bulletproofs implementation in rust (small proof sizes): https://github.com/dalek-cryptography/bulletproofs
...with tons of really well done cryptography by that group (dalek): https://github.com/dalek-cryptography
Pairing based crypto library used in the second largest distribution of Ethereum (and maybe zcash?): https://github.com/paritytech/bn
These libraries have prompted me to start learning rust (albeit slowly as I'm using Go and C at work).
In Simple Encrypted Arithmetic Library goes open sourceGrin is an implementation of the Mimblewimble protocol. 100% open-source and community-driven. There's no ICO, no pre-mine, and no founder's reward. Repo at https://github.com/mimblewimble/grin and more info available at http://grin-tech.org/
In Mimblewimble/Grin Mainnet is 1/15/19; Grincon U.S. in San Mateo 1/28/19Also of interest are Mountain Merkle Ranges as explained here for instance:
https://github.com/mimblewimble/grin/blob/master/doc/mmr.md
These are append-only trees with height only logarithmic in number of appends.
In Show HN: CryptoProof – post proofs to the Ethereum blockchain for freeI wonder if this performs well enough to port cryptocurrency miner software. I hope to find out with
https://github.com/mimblewimble/grin/issues/806
In HIP – Convert CUDA to Portable C++Mimblewimble, a blockchain protocol with great scaleability, privacy,fungibility
2 points · Open discussionShowing the 15 most recent of 19 sources. Enable JavaScript to search and browse every indexed mention.