Recently, I've been thinking about Grin. If you're a bit new to bitcoin or "crypto" (like since 2021 or 22-ish), you may not be familiar with Grin. And that's essentially why I'm writing. It used to be a thing, now it seems to be nothing much at all.
Quick refresher for those familiar with Grin and intro for those unfamiliar
Grin began to germinate in 2016 and went live in January of 2019. Soon it was labeled "Bitcoin 2.0". It used "Mimblewimble" (there's a term you likely haven't heard in a while) to help give transactions anonymity--like bitcoin, but anonymous bitcoin. The reasons it was called "Bitcoin 2.0":
- mysterious whitepaper - Aug. 1, 2016 Mimblewimble whitepaper by "Tom Elvis Jedusor" (French for Voldemort, apparently, two Harry Potter allusions)
- mysterious creator - called "Ignotus Peverell" (Harry Potter allusion) who quickly disappeared, Grin named (after a bank on Harry Potter stories)
- "fair launch" - Jan. 15, 2019 meaning no pre-mine nonsense, no ICO nonsense, no coins to devs, just PoW
- economics - hard coded emission of 1 GRIN per second, predictable (diminishing) inflation rate (though emission/inflation was/is stable, there is an infinite supply which, of course, actually differs greatly from bitcoin)
Remember, there were a lot, A LOT, of new cryptocurrencies popping up at that time. Most of them had an ICO attached with them and most of them doled out tons of coins to the founder or devs or backers...just in case they caught fire. Occasionally, one would indeed catch fire at first, and often, these founders and devs would dump and run. The market would crash, everyone would see what had happened, and yet another rug pull would be written into the books.
Grin, with its "fair launch" seemed determined to not go this route. It seemed very cypherpunk and garnered a good amount of support. Evidence that there was a generous amount of excitement at the outset toward Grin came in a surprise gift. During a dev meeting held on chat interface Gitter.im, Grin got a 50 BTC donation donated mid-meeting. It stunned those who were online.
Very few of the coins that started in those years, like only one, got a 50 BTC donation. It actually happened again, that I know of, in Nov. 2019 with a second 50 BTC. Also interesting, the coins came from a very early address, from the actual coinbase of mined coins. In other words, someone from Jan. 2010 donated the coins. This is someone who mined the coins just a couple of weeks after bitcoin's first birthday, let them sit unmoved for nearly 10 years, then moved them to Grin. Some people wondered if it was Satoshi himself.
Essentially, this was a nod of approval by a very early Bitcoiner that Grin was doing the right things in the right way.
Today, Grin is still there, but kind of just there. If you measure in price, which I'm not sure is the best measurement, Grin is flat at best. I'm reminded of the line from "Bright Lights, Big City" where the protagonist says something like he belongs in the "Brotherhood of Unfulfilled Early Promise" (I enjoyed that book, very Hemingway-esque in a 1980s way).
I'll admit, I was a bit of a Grin fan boi at the start and took (too many) notes on early Grin. I toyed with the idea of writing a quasi-history one day. That idea fell by the wayside on the Boulevard of Unfulfilled Early Promise. Maybe some links could be of interest today or some day. Looking over those notes, there are some familiar names listed that would be familiar to bitcoiners.
Note that Gitter.im evidently changed and went to Matrix. Gitter links no longer work and changing to Matrix links is either too tricky for me to figure out or it's impossible altogether. ☹️ The Gitter Grin chat kind of looked like this though.
So, what went wrong?
In my opinion what went wrong with Grin can be summed in these two words:
- bitcoin
- bickering
Regarding number 1, bitcoin, I think people just tired of the altcoins and the exhausting drama that came with them. People simply returned to bitcoin. This was no fault of Grin, just a reality.
Regarding number 2, bickering, the Bible says, "The root of all kinds of evil is the love of money." Well, after the BTC landfall came to Grin, so did interest in the project. To their credit, the Grin leadership tried to be open and transparent about everything, almost to the point of fault. People could "put in" to be rewarded for their work on the project. For instance, a dev who was building out the code could ask for X amount of BTC to pay for his time. Written in Rust, not many had the skill to code (this was pre-AI). A skilled coder could easily spend his time doing something for real pay, real money. They have families, have bills, and can't be spending hours and days volunteering work. That's fair. But, with all those bitcoins in the cookie jar available, more and more people began asking for X amount of BTC. Then, the judging and in-fighting began. In my notes, note number 10 says Ignotus (the "Satoshi" of Grin) was already in 2017 lamenting having to spend so much time refereeing personal squabbles and less time coding.
The management of the coins reveals another issue: governance. How does a decentralized anything, like Grin, decided who gets the BTC award for their efforts and who doesn't get it. There was an inner circle of a handful who made the yes or no decisions. As you might imagine, feelings got hurt and words got ugly. The leaders, Lehnberg (essentially the "secretary"/admin) and Yeastplume (main coder), in my view, tried to be super patient with hard to deal with people. But, they're human too and at times frustration shown through. I think neither is involved in the coin anymore. Enough is enough.
Maybe it's overreach to say Grin went the way it has due to personal issues. Maybe it's just as much that the hard core cypherpunks and bitcoiners just stopped fooling with other-coins and returned to bitcoin. It's like you've been dating a solid girl next door for a while, but then you go through a phase where you set her aside and date a series of seemingly hot chicks from the city who turn out to really be empty and without any substance and a waste of time and money, and crazy, so you eventually wise up and return to the solid girl and you settle down. Or it's that and the in-fighting drama, which reminds me, "We never really get out of high school."
Lesson for bitcoin?
Avoid the bickering. The altcoiners are super-tribal, bitcoiners seem to be tribalistic too and love the drama in house. For instance, Jameson Lopp's recent X post essentially said the same thing.
The feuding well is deep:
- ossification vs innovation
- quantum risk vs quantum fud
- knots and core (why did the song from the movie "Stepbrothers" just come into my head?)
- ordinals/inscription spam vs ordinals/inscriptions censorship
- spend vs hodl
- ETF is great vs ETF is fiat
- Saylor is great vs Saylor is terrible
Healthy discussion is good. Silly drama is not (but it's entertaining). Just because someone has a different opinion, it's okay. Keep your eyes on the ball boys and girls.
I go by 
