Cryptocurrency Grin Follows Through With Anticipated July 17 Mainnet Hardfork

Published at: July 17, 2019

Privacy-focused cryptocurrency Grin has completed the first hardfork so far on its mainnet. The fork occurred at block height 262,080 on July 17, as shown on the Grin block explorer Blockscan.  

According to an official announcement from Grin core dev Quentin Le Sceller, the latest blockchain hardfork is designed to discourage Grin mining through dedicated application specific integrated circuits (ASICs) and also includes a new iteration of its bulletproof rewind scheme for Grin wallets.

As previously discussed by Cuckoo Cycle author John Tromp, there is reportedly no sign of users deploying ASICs to mine Grin yet; however, Grin’s secondary Proof-of-Work scheme Cuckaroo29 is intended to be continually iterated upon in order to prevent ASIC mining:

“In the 133 days of Grin mining so far, there is no sign of any ASIC mining. We do know of several ASIC products planned to come out in summer. To the extent that any such ASICs have built in support for Cuckaroo29, we want our tweak to brick that support.”

As previously reported by Cointelegraph, Grin proposed the mainnet hardfork for the aforementioned height and date on June 5. Grin has also planned to continue hardforking its mainnet at regular intervals, with each fork occurring approximately once every six months upon reaching 262,080 new blocks. 

As these are hardforks, previous transactions on the blockchain will no longer be recognized whenever a new mainnet version is launched. Additionally, Grin apparently uses the Mimblewimble protocol, a cryptographic protocol named after a tongue-tying curse from the popular Harry Potter fantasy series. This protocol reportedly allows for transactions to be obfuscated, with the upshot of maintaining user privacy and guarding against double spending.

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Blockchain
Cryptocurrencies
Mining
Wallet
Asic
Consensus
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