https://forum.grin.mw/u/anynomous/summary
Introduction
Cobragrin ( host): To start off; i introduce Anynomous- He was elected in May 21–2022 as Grin Community Counsil member. He is contributing GRIN voluntarily since 2019, background in genetics, data analysis, programming Python and R mostly.
Cekickafa: Hi i am @cekickafa from Grin Community, we made an interactive AMA Session with Anynomous. We talked all about GRIN MimbleWimble from his perspective.ツ. There are interesting and informative answers, hope you all enjoy.
It is pleasure to host this AMA with you Anynomous.Welcome and quickly, I begin with first question !
Q:When did you get interested in Grin, how did you joined the community?
Anynomous: Hello everyone! I joined the Grin in 2019. I saw the logo among the many crypto out there and was curious because of its unique, not marketing oriented design. When I found the forum, I quickly got hooked. I started as a lurker, mostly reading, getting deeper and deeper in the crypto until I one day just took the step to participate. From then on I organically increased my participation since my interest in Grin kept increasing.
Q: Why did you chose Grin from the tens of thousands of other cryptocurrency out there?
Anynomous: I think it was my technical intuition that told me something special, something magical, was going on with Grin.
‘’It is a bit like when you listen to amazing music or you have that ‘wow’ moment in a good book or movie where you cannot stop reading or watching. The hair on your arms and in you neck is raised, it is like your whole being is telling you something exciting is going on that deserves your undivided attention. ‘’
Cekickafa: We have a Grin poet .ツ
Anynomous: For me, reading up on Grin was like that, everything fell together so well as the pieces of a puzzle.
‘’Grin just checked all the boxes of what a good crypto project would be for me. In addition, it made me rethink and feel some of the early Bitcoin days. ‘’
At the time of Bitcoin I had a similar sensation, but I lacked the computer skills and knowledge at that time to partake in any useful way. When I discovered Grin, I was already quite deeply emerged in Bitcoin and I realised I had many grievances with it.
Do not get me wrong, I loved Bitcoin and I still do, it is just that Bitcoin is far from perfect. I think it is important to recognize the limitations of any system, whether that is Bitcoin or Grin.
The main grievances I had with Bitcoin are;
1) its lack of privacy on Layer 1, lack of privacy by default which in my opinion is the only good way to handle privacy and maintain fungibility.
2) the unfair emission schedule that makes Bitcoin explode in value and is poor for security in the long run and,
3) its poor scalability.
Each time I spend Bitcoin, I do it out of principal that I want it to be successful as digital cash, while knowing I will most likely ‘lose’ because Hodling is advantages on the long run. For me, Bitcoin is a great success as a digital gold or store of value but its function as digital cash is what I was most interested in from an idealistic point of view.
When I read up on Grinツ it basically showed a very minimal and elegant solution to all the major grievances, I had with Bitcoin which resulted in that ‘wow’ feeling I described. Grin is not ‘best’ in anything, but it is ‘best’ in balancing all the properties important for digital cash. Grin is like the ‘homo universalis’, lets call it the ‘crypto universalis’ among all the thousands of crypto currencies out there it has an excellent balance in properties which makes it stand out among all the other projects IMO.
Q: *GrinCC is established, and GRIN ツ became more decentralized since the beginning of October’21. It has not been a full year yet, but what are the things done and future projections and plan of *GrinCC for Grin? What is on the horizon?
Anynomous: Continuity and balance are IMO the keywords of what the *GrinCC [1] has done and will be doing in the coming year.
Many balls are rolling and many progress is ongoing such as:
- Partial Initial Block Download (PIBD) for more robust initial syncing,
- Coinswap for even better privacy through graph obfuscation,
- Ledger support for Grin,
- the new contract ‘Send-Sign-Sign’ (SSS) transaction flow for better usability
- as well as ongoing improvements in usability of Grin++.
Personally, I see the role of the Grin Community Council (GrinCC) as a modest one, we are just facilitating the process. Like the Original Council, we try to find a balance between protecting that which is good and facilitating innovation and experiments. Having two councils even better represents all the opinion and visions represented in the community and leads to an even better ‘balance’ between conservation and progress.
Additionally, as Community Council we are there to make sure we all are having fun while participating and contributing to the project. This is not always as successful as I hoped, for example there is only one sub teams of community members, but still, I see that there are a quite a few old and new community members contributing in various ways. Within this one year, I realise that there is no need as council to ‘drive’ innovation and interactions.
‘’We just need to be there for continuity and for facilitating and have fun while doing it. New projects and ideas emerge and ripen over time.’’
Some examples of that is the new contract flow, which I think is based on a lot of discussion or SRS, RSR and naming of steps. For a long time, it might have looked like there was no progress on the topic, but the idea slowly ‘matured’ and it feels now like it is coming together.
Similarly, we have a lack of developers, but more and more people are asking technical question on the node and wallet software and are ‘trying things’. Basically, there is a growing pool of new developers who potentially can and will contribute to the ecosystem.
Q: Grin ツ is a long time developing project, what will be the next chapter? layer2 solutions? payment processors plug in, more adoption and gaining mainstream? Which should be the focus in your opinion?
Anynomous: In my opinion the direction of the ship has and always will be the same ‘balance and continuity’.
Having said that, I do think in the coming cycle (like all project we are affected by Bitcoin’s ~4-year cycle) is to implement;
- the Send-Sign-Sign flow,
- implement an universal payment proof,
- implement PIBD on the main chain and,
- implement CoinSwap[3] and,
- add a robust GUI for the rust node and wallet, something similar to Bitcoin core.
‘’If all of these will be achieved in 4 years, it would be amazing. I think we will have by far the most interesting digital cash implementation in the crypto space. ‘’
The above-mentioned developments are mostly important for the core developers, which I define as the rust node and wallet and the Grin++ node and wallet. At the same time, I think we need to build a vast repertoire of scripts and code examples to interact with the core software to pull people into ecosystem development.
Building upon Grin is not that hard. It is just that we have to few examples around to make people realise how easily it is done. We need to remove this mental barrier by providing ample examples, documentation and code snippets. Payment processors and Telegram bots[2] are great examples of ecosystem projects as well as small bite size scripts in simple languages like Python to showcase how wallets are generated, slatepack addresses are generated, transactions are built and more.
Q: -A direct community question. What do you think when you hear ‘Grin is dead’ motto?
Anynomous: I am always amused when I hear that.ツ Between day-to-day Grin as project there is no change, just slow but steady progress. Dead or alive is a binary 0|1 thing. What makes it most hilarious is that people take the ‘effort’ to post “grin is dead” on a forum, which means they are alive and recognize that people are there to listen, which is the opposite of dead.
I mostly see these as cheap attempts to manipulate the sentiment in the hope to lower the price of Grin. The best response to such posts is to start a ‘Grin is dead meme contest’ and have a good laugh.
https://forum.grin.mw/t/grin-is-dead-long-live-grin-meme-contest/9097/22
Quality and quantity in community members show whether a project is alive or not. As can be seen by the approximate 80–100 people who red posts on the forum in the last month, there is a quantity of people who follow Grin. Many more follow Grin ツ on social media channels like Twitter, Telegram, Reddit and Discord. From the monthly forum visitors, there is small but consistent group of people who keep the discussions diverse and interesting.
The only aspect of Grin where I would like to see more activity, is developers working on the core.
There are some community members working towards becoming a Grin core developer. The challenge is that going from an ecosystem developer to a grin core developer is a huge leap. Hence, it is hard to find more developers since even though the will might be there, the jump in skill needed to become a core developer is huge. I considered training myself and following Rust courses to become a developer for Grin, but I soon realised I only have the skill level to be an ecosystem developer currently.
Becoming a Grin core developer would require a huge investment of time and practice to achieve this leap in skills and knowledge. I think multiple community members who would like to contribute to Grin are at this same point. The will is there, but they doubt if and how to make such a leap. Having said that, even with only one active core developer, the project is implementing the most important things. Having more developers around would just increase the speed at which these things would get implemented and would be great for reviewing RFC’s.
Q: Will Grinツ be successful in your opinion? What are the strengths of Grin?
Anynomous: I do not have a crystal ball to look in the future. For me it is not that important whether Grin ‘Fails’ or ‘Succeeds’.
Again that is very binary, probably Grin will be successfull in being adopted as cash for some, but maybe not all people like Bitcoin. On the other hand, time is on Grin’s hand. Who knows, mass adoption might happen but that might take a few decades.
It is to my knowledge by far the most interesting ‘experiment’ and implementation of digital cash.
For me it is a case of try and succeed or die trying. From a more objective point of view, Grin is amazing crypto and there are a lot of very skilled and interesting people to interact with in the project.
As long as the project is interesting and relevant, which it is, I think Grin will have a bright future. Most negativity on the forum comes from people mistaking the price of Grin for the project and people missing all the ‘hidden’ progress that comes from the many discussions we have. Good ideas need to mature and develop over time, like a good wine or whiskey, a good idea or project just ‘comes together’ when the right combination of conditions is met. As long as discussion on the forum stay objective, well argued, not emotional, they contribute to this slow and hidden progress which drive the project and will make it successful IMO.
Q:OK.Last question. So you are a council member of GrinCC, spending time, actively managing and leading, what is your expectation from Grin community? How can they contribute and help Grin?
Anynomous: Expectations should always be avoided. Grin is a decentralised project, meaning everyone is free to contribute or not to contribute, whichever they prefer.
I do however feel that there is still a lot of potential for community members to contribute that is not fully achieved. Most people underestimate the power they have to change the world they see. Every little thing matters, whether that is encouraging, asking questions, creating a meme or wallpaper, or running a node.
Many small contributions can make a huge difference and at the same time encourages those who have the time and skills to make large contributions. Hence, I would like to ask all community member to not underestimate their own potential to contribute with whichever skills they have.
If you want change, please, do not ask other to do it, but try to be the change you want to see in the world.
Cekickafa: Anonymous, it was a long and informative talk. Thanks for your time, honest answers, sharing your perspective, insight for GRIN. And many thanks for your contributions to the GRIN ツ.
Anynomous: Thank you!
[1]Grincc.mw - Grin Community Counsil.
[3] Coinswap.
