Litecoin Foundation to fund Grin developer to implement MimbleWimble, Extension Blocks

At Litecoin Summit 2019, developer for privacy-centric coin Grin and self-proclaimed crypto-anarchist, David Burkett, spoke about implementing opt-in private transactions through MimbleWimble and Extension Blocks. During the talk, Burkett spoke of how he had spent the last year working on Grin++, while working alongside Litecoin creator Charlie Lee to come up with ways to add privacy features to Litecoin. Burkett also addressed in detail the Litecoin Improvement Proposals that were published recently by the developers.

These proposals were discussed widely among the community, with developer ‘ecurrencyhodler’ speculating that this could lead to Litecoin’s classification alongside privacy-centric coins like Zcash and Monero. Litecoin creator Charlie Lee, however, is positive about Burkett’s proposal for the development of privacy features, announcing on Twitter that the Litecoin Foundation would be funding Burkett to lead the team in implementing MimbleWimble and Extension Blocks, while also enabling him to continue his work on Grin.

Lee’s sentiments about the implications of these features on Litecoin were shared by the Foundation’s Community Manager Ilir Gashi too, who dismissed the likelihood of the silver crypto being classified as a privacy coin like Zcash or Monero.

Thanks @DavidBurkett38! Your presentation on MimbleWimble and Extension Blocks was awesome. ?

Good news! @LTCFoundation will fund David to lead the team on implementing MimbleWimble and Extension Blocks on Litecoin and also for continuing his work on Grin++. ? https://t.co/wyEID7aQuo

— Charlie Lee [LTC⚡] (@SatoshiLite) October 30, 2019

According to Burkett, while scalability is a problem for blockchains right now, the bigger issue is privacy.

“Every coin comes with a history. You have this concept of a tainted coin, which maybe was part of a theft in the past, maybe it was part of a hack or maybe just someone identifies a transaction as your own — maybe your political enemy. Maybe China decides that they’re going to censor certain transactions and force miners to do that. There’s enough hash power in China that they could probably do that.”

Burkett has also proposed the need for a mechanism whereby fungibility is achieved by storing as little data as possible in the transactions, “which is an important part of money.”