Alternative protocols to the Bitcoin network and futuristic projection

In the last decade, blockchain technology has revolutionised the financial sector, both public and private, due to the advantages offered by blockchain algorithms in terms of asymmetric key encryption, and the real potential to facilitate highly secure financial transactions between various actors.

However, it is important to highlight that the first blockchain protocols were conceived under the characteristics of immutability, transparency and trust through distributed and fully replicated database systems, with the particularity of preserving in time each of the records that are executed in a network, and where the transactions carried out are stored in each intersection point or node that participates in a given network.

In the case of the Bitcoin network, even though its protocol itself evolves over time, as it is a public chain, users or participating actors can access each of the transactions that have been executed on the blockchain, therefore, it shows extremely important data and user privacy, namely; IP address, amount of resources sent or received, time, transaction date, commissions for the use of the network, among other data of equal or greater relevance.

In this sense, the Bitcoin network's operating logic, while it has a solid acceptance because it supports a paradigm shift in financial transactions, also has detractors, mainly because its operating protocol reveals information that some actors wish to keep private.

The constant evolution of blockchain technology has been providing us with new protocols, including the Mimblewimble protocol which, unlike the Bitcoin network, improves the elements related to privacy and scalability, an element that in the last 5 years has been revolutionising the entire blockchain, fundamentally because the Mimblewimble protocol offers privacy and greater security when carrying out transactions in the cryptocurrency market.

One of the advantages of the Mimblewimble protocol is that only the users involved in a given transaction are the only ones who can see the data between themselves, which means that the rest of the users cannot access the information of these transactions.

Other elements of vital importance are that transactions executed using the Mimblewimble protocol offer anonymity, scalability and fungibility, i.e. the protocol does not allow the origin of transactions to be traced, guarantees more scalability than other protocols, and best of all, the value of the cryptocurrency is not lost in the exchange.

➊ Jie Yee Ong What Is Mimblewimble and How Does It Work?. Link