An Upcoming Cryptocurrency Is Trialling a Trio of Bitcoin Tech Advances

With that, pseudonymous forum user 'Monkeyyy' just might have summed up the sentiment surrounding a forthcoming cryptocurrency called "Grin." Rising to renown last year as the first software implementation for a code proposal known as MimbleWimble, the idea is to start a new blockchain that has better scale and privacy than bitcoin.

As the team wades into their second test stage, preparing to launch a working payment system, they've been among the first to implement Schnorr, Bulletproofs and Dandelion, all promising technologies originally intended to improve bitcoin's scale and privacy, but that just haven't made it into the hard-to-change cryptocurrency just yet.

"Signature aggregation," for instance, has been in the works for bitcoin since 2014 and is one of its most highly anticipated code changes.

A working prototype has already been implemented, though it's unclear when it will be added to bitcoin and if the community will ultimately embrace the change.

Bitcoin is a living payment system, so developers and the community are particularly cautious when making changes that could be dangerous to its users.

Unlike bitcoin, grin uses signature aggregation by default in transactions to remove data bitcoin normally has to keep to preserve the security of transactions.

A breakthrough privacy technology unveiled by bitcoin developers late last year.

Though bitcoin developers are worried about cryptocurrency privacy, and bulletproofs could help significantly with that, there are still major drawbacks.

Peverell contends grin is the first cryptocurrency to adopt Dandelion, a long-proposed privacy addition to bitcoin.

Bitcoin Core contributor Jonas Schnelli told CoinDesk he's optimistic bitcoin will eventually adopt the change, calling it a "Pretty important" privacy feature.