Grin (GRIN) is a community-created, permissionlessly launched MimbleWimble privacy blockchain that went live on January 15, 2019 — days after Beam, making it the second MimbleWimble production chain — developed pseudonymously by Ignotus Peverell (a Harry Potter name) and the Grin community with no ICO, no premine, no venture capital, no team allocation, and no controlling company. All GRIN is mined; the emission rate is exactly 1 GRIN per second indefinitely, creating a linear supply schedule that mimics early Monero’s continuous issuance rather than Bitcoin’s halving scarcity model.
| Stat | Value |
|---|---|
| Ticker | GRIN |
| Price | $0.04 |
| Market Cap | $8.68M |
| 24h Change | -1.8% |
| Circulating Supply | 228.10M GRIN |
| All-Time High | $25.09 |
How It Works
- MimbleWimble — Grin uses the MimbleWimble protocol (named after a Harry Potter spell). Transactions use Pedersen commitments to hide amounts. No addresses are stored on-chain. Cut-Through removes spent outputs from the chain history.
- Confidential transactions — Bulletproofs prove transaction amounts are positive without revealing them. Sender and receiver exchange blinding factors to authorize payments interactively.
- Cut-Through — Historical spent outputs can be removed from the chain, keeping blockchain size manageable. Grin’s blockchain is significantly smaller than Bitcoin’s despite similar transaction count.
- Cuckoo Cycle PoW — Grin uses two PoW algorithms: Cuckatoo32 (ASIC-friendly for long-term security) and Cuckaroo29 (GPU-friendly, ASIC-resistant for decentralized mining). The balance between the two was originally designed to phase in ASICs gradually.
- Linear emission — 1 GRIN per second = 60 per minute = 3,600 per hour = 86,400 per day. No cap, no halving. Annual inflation decreases asymptotically — at 10 years it’s ~9% annual inflation, at 100 years it approaches ~1%.
- Interactive transactions — MimbleWimble requires sender and receiver to exchange data to build a transaction (no send-to-address). Various tools (Grin wallet, slatepack format) manage the exchange.
Tokenomics
| Parameter | Value |
|---|---|
| Ticker | GRIN |
| Max Supply | Uncapped (1 GRIN per second, forever) |
| Consensus | Cuckoo Cycle PoW (Cuckatoo32 + Cuckaroo29) |
| Launch | January 15, 2019 |
| Premine | None |
| Founders’ reward | None |
| ICO | None |
| Emission | 1 GRIN per second (linear/non-halving) |
Use Cases
- Private value transfer — Send value without revealing amounts or addresses on-chain.
- Mining — GPU mining via Cuckaroo29; ASIC mining via Cuckatoo32.
- Store of value — Long-term inflation schedule designed to support adoption growth without price shocks from halving events.
History
- 2016 — Pseudonymous developer Ignotus Peverell publishes initial concept and begins coding Grin using the MimbleWimble whitepaper (itself published pseudonymously by Tom Elvis Jedusor in 2016).
- 2017–2018 — Grin development continues. Community developers join. No company, no ICO, no token sale. Funding via community donations only.
- 2018 — Beam announces its competing MimbleWimble implementation (commercial, with corporate structure). Interest in MimbleWimble peaks.
- 2019-01-15 — Grin mainnet launches. No premine, no founders’ reward. Mining begins at genesis. Days after Beam (Jan 3, 2019), Grin’s more anarchist/community model attracts attention.
- 2019 — Grin reaches speculative peak. Community celebrates the cypherpunk ethos. Trading price is highly volatile shortly after launch.
- 2020–2021 — Grin development continues but market cap stays modest. The community funding model means development is slower than VC-backed projects. Core contributors leave and return periodically.
- 2022–2024 — Grin continues operating. Its linear emission model means mining is the primary means of obtaining GRIN. Exchange listings remain limited. The project remains a philosophical statement as much as a token.
Common Misconceptions
“Grin and Beam are the same project.”
Both implement MimbleWimble but are entirely separate. Grin: no company, no premine, community-governed, linear supply, Cuckoo Cycle mining. Beam: corporate (Beam Ltd.), treasury model, fixed supply cap (~262.8M), different mining algorithm.
“No max supply means runaway inflation.”
Grin’s linear supply means its inflation rate decreases continuously (1 GRIN/s always, but against a growing denominator). By Year 10, annual inflation is ~9%; Year 50, ~2%; Year 100, ~1%. This mirrors Monero’s “tail emission” philosophy — preferring predictable, diminishing inflation over supply shocks.
Social Media Sentiment
Grin is highly respected in cypherpunk and privacy-focused crypto circles for its principled, no-premine, no-VC community launch. It is often cited as the crypto most philosophically similar to early Bitcoin. However, it lacks celebrity, exchange support, and marketing that drive price and adoption. Interactive transactions (requiring both parties online) remain a UX barrier. The developer community is small but technically dedicated. Discussions often center on Grin’s ideals vs. its commercial traction compared to Monero.
Last updated: 2026-04