Researcher Breaks Mimblewimble, Deanonymizing 96% of Grin Transactions

The Mimblewimble privacy technology used by cryptocurrencies such as Beam and Grin is broken. That’s the claim of researcher Ivan Bogatyy who has published a report documenting his findings. In it, he reveals how he was able to deanonymize 96% of all Grin transactions just by running a node at a cost of around $60. Bogatyy asserts that the flaw is fatal, effectively breaking Mimblewimble.

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Mimblewimble Is ‘Fundamentally Flawed’

“Mimblewimble should no longer be considered a viable alternative to Zcash or Monero when it comes to privacy.” That’s the belief of Ivan Bogatyy after deanonymizing the bulk of all Grin transactions that propagated to his node during a test. A weakness in the Mimblewimble technology, which obfuscates all transactions by default, has long been theorized. Now, Bogatyy professes to have proven this, causing him to recommend that “Mimblewimble should not be relied upon for…