Grin only launched a month ago. It’s based on a new privacy protocol called Mimblewimble. Grin claims to offer the most private and lightweight privacy coin, but can it compete with established giants such as Monero and Zcash?
Unlike Bitcoin, grin coins are impossible to trace. There are no addresses, only shared secrets that identify who is sending and receiving a transaction. The amounts are also kept completely hidden, so no one can see how much you’re sending. However, what really separates it from the other privacy coins is scalability.
Its storage requirements are 10 times smaller than Bitcoin’s, and compared to Monero or Zcash the gap is even bigger.
But Grin also has a few disadvantages. For example, to complete a transaction both users have to be online to confirm it, and the protocol doesn’t have any scripting language. That means that there won’t be any escrow mechanisms or decentralized exchanges anytime soon, but developers say they’re working on it.
Speaking of the team, the developers are all anonymous and are funded only by community donations. There are no ICOs or founder rewards, and it can be mined with common laptops, which means that it’s one of the fairest coins out there.
Competition is fierce, and the lack of a foundation to speed things up might actually become a disadvantage. The other privacy coins had many years of headstart, but Grin could still catch up.
GRIN launched its token on January 15th, 2019 so data for its price action is still very limited.
Its price has been capped below $5 in February. Even though it’s been seeing some gains in the past couple of days, versus Bitcoin it’s actually dropping because Bitcoin’s gains have been far greater than GRIN’s. At this point, if you’re looking to add GRIN to your portfolio, it’s best to rely on detailed fundamental analysis rather than technicals.