Three years ago, a mysterious txt file signed by a pseudonymous Tom Elvis Jedusor was dropped in the Bitcoin-Wizards IRC channel outlining a proposal called Mimblewimble. It proposed a novel way of combining many ideas from Bitcoin research in order to create a new blockchain protocol that will be highly scalable and increase privacy, while still using the same cryptographic assumptions as Bitcoin. A few months later this project was picked up by another pseudonymous individual who started working on an implementation he called Grin. Grin slowly began to draw attention from the Bitcoin community and got a lot of traction. We join Michael Cordner (Yeastplume) and Daniel Lehnberg, two of the core developers of the Grin blockchain. In this episode we discuss some topics around Grin’s cypherpunk origins, privacy and scalability features, no-premine fair start, and interesting monetary policy. Topics covered in this episode: Origins of the Mimblewimble proposal and the prior work it draws upon Andrew Poelstra’s contributions to improving and fixing the original proposal Scalability and fast sync times achieved through mimblewimble’s UTXO set compression How UTXO compression when combined with the Dandellion p2p protocol can increase privacy Changes in user experience from Bitcoin to Mimblewimble Beginning of the Grin project as an implementation of the Mimblewimble protocol Comparision to BEAM, a competing Mimblewimble implementation Innovating on fair Proof of Work through dual Cuckoo Cycle Grin’s Monetary Policy and the Mining Fair Start Episode links: MimbleWimble Origin Andrew Poelstra's Improved Paper Introduction to Grin Grin for Bitcoiners Grin Newsletter Michael Cordner on Twitter Daniel Lehnberg on Twitter Thank you to our sponsors for their support: Deploy enterprise-ready consortium blockchain networks that scale in just a few clicks. More at aka.ms/epicenter. This episode is hosted by Friederike Ernst and Sunny Aggarwal. Show notes and listening options: epicenter.tv/278

Amaury Séchet is the lead developer of Bitcoin ABC, the largest client for the Bitcoin Cash blockchain. Amaury first got started with Bitcoin in 2010 and closely followed the Bitcoin block size debate as it progressed through the early years of Bitcoin. Predicting the eventual failure of SegWit2x, Amaury was part of the original team that helped coordinate the Bitcoin Cash hard fork, timing it with the activation of SegWit on the main Bitcoin blockchain. We discuss with Amaury the roadmap for Bitcoin Cash, especially with regards to their approach to scalability. We cover many of the novel features the Bitcoin Cash development teams are innovating on such as Canonical Transaction Ordering and Avalanche Pre-Consensus, as well as cover some of the more juicy drama that plagued the Bitcoin Cash community in late 2018, leading to split off of Bitcoin SV. Topics covered in this episode: Block Size Debates in Bitcoin Origins of Bitcoin Cash and the Fork Year 1 Technical Development of Bitcoin Cash Bitcoin ABC vs Bitcoin SV Future Roadmap Episode links: Bitcoin Cash Roadmap Graphene Whitepaper Avalanche Post-Consensus The Case for Canonical Transaction Ordering Bitcoin ABC vs Bitcoin SV Hashwar Bitcoin NG Episode EthCC Meetup Thank you to our sponsors for their support: Deploy enterprise-ready consortium blockchain networks that scale in just a few clicks. More at aka.ms/epicenter. This episode is hosted by Brian Fabian Crain and Sunny Aggarwal. Show notes and listening options: epicenter.tv/276