Mixin: Mixing Different Blockchains
Hi guys, we meet again in a new article about cryptocurrency. Unlike previously where I review about ICO/ITO or new cryptocurrency projects, in this article I'm gonna review an existing project that already got listed on Coinmarketcap, and even better, at the top 100. As what the title said, we're gonna review about Mixin.
Reviewing Mixin is a bit challenging to me, as most of the whitepaper covers the technical aspects that have many things unknown to me (and probably you too), because of that I'm not gonna focus on that too much. So what are we going to do now? We're gonna discuss what problems that Mixin aims to solve, cover a little bit about how they can solve it (without going into technical details too much) and reviewing other aspects such as their existing and functioning Mixin Messenger.
Without further ado, I hope you enjoy reading this article!
The Purpose and The Problems
What does Mixin exist for? What problems did they want to solve?
That's the basic question that you should ask. It's very important to understand what problems a project wanted to solve to determine whether it will worth your time and money or not.
If you read the whitepaper, there is a brief explanation of what kind of problems Mixin wanted to solve. After reading that whitepaper, in my opinion, they wanted to solve the problems of scalability, privacy, flexibility and security of many blockchain projects out there. Mixin aims to create a distributed ledger based on DAG that will empower many blockchain projects, such as Bitcoin to access higher throughput.
Some insight about Bitcoin transaction fees which reflect how congested the network is. Source: Dailycoin
Scalability, mainly transactions speed and confirmation process have become one of the major drawbacks in the current cryptocurrencies. With more and more people using cryptocurrencies, it is definitely not possible to keep cryptocurrency easy and reliable to use if they have that problem, as more people like speed. This will surely happen to every cryptocurrency that goes mainstream, and that's why solving this problem is very important to do.
Not only allowing Bitcoin or Ethereum to access higher transaction speed, but Mixin will also help to increase the security and privacy of the transactions. For example, in regular Bitcoin transaction, we can track which transactions belong to what address and where it ends, how many it went through and so on. With Mixin, they'll use a feature called Ghost Output that protects the identity of the sender and receiver and the data that was sent. This way, anyone except the receiver won't be able to know where did the transactions actually went. Imagine this as a mixer but with advanced and complex features.
Up to this point, you can imagine Mixin as a hub between blockchain that helps to validate the transaction happens here. Mixin will verify the transaction between two parties on their own network, and this means, you can imagine Mixin similar to an off-chain hub for every blockchain network. So, in other words, Mixin is the Raiden Network or Lightning Network for every blockchain. Pretty cool.
Because of those features, you can do a transaction with lower fees, probably more than you ever see before when you do an on-chain transaction on Bitcoin, Ethereum or any other network. This solution will also help many blockchains with limited transaction output to lower on-chain transaction fees as many transactions can be done using Mixin network via off-chain transactions. To put it simply, you'll be able to use the Mixin Network as the second chain for your any projects as long as it has been integrated on the network (the Mixin testnet just happens today, 30 September 2018, btw).
A Little Bit of Technical Details
So, how do they work? If you want to understand it in depth, then I suggest you read the whitepaper. However, based on my understanding of the technical structure, you can read a gist of how they work below.
Basically, Mixin has different layers. It has a kernel, domain, and a domain extension. Just like I said before, you can imagine it as a hub, where Mixin Kernel is the center of the network. All transactions verifications happen on the kernel, but this kernel doesn't produce any new assets.
After the kernel, there will be the domain. The function of this domain is to "forward" or provide assets to the Kernel for verifications and governance. The domain extension is the one where you can run a smart contract, decentralized applications and so on. Any blockchain that is supported by Mixin will be "connected" via its extension. This mean, domain extensions will provide the necessary connections toward Bitcoin blockchain so that the Bitcoin assets can be "forwarded" or send to the Kernel as off-chain transactions.
Mixin star topology. Source: Mixin Whitepaper
By using Mixin Messenger, you can see that in your wallet there are several assets that are supported by Mixin. Your peers can use Mixin to send a Bitcoin or other assets into your account via off-chain transactions (using Mixin), and you can send it into other BTC address directly, for example, an exchange. This is possible to do because every Mixin address will correspond to other address on another blockchain.
To put it simply, you can imagine that your Mixin wallet represents any other assets wallet. Off-chain transactions will happen via Mixin network, while if you want to or need to transact it directly into Bitcoin blockchain, then the Kernel will verify the transactions, and your assets will be sent to the other blockchain via the domain extensions. Every verification uses asynchronous BFT graph and the data will be stored on a DAG, therefore, preventing double spend and maintain fast verifications. Great, isn't it?
Bottom Line
We've reviewed different aspect from Mixin. At this point, we can conclude that their main goal is to provide a multi-layer framework to empower different blockchains with speed, privacy, and flexibility. The off-chain transactions happening via Mixin is a great solution for blockchains that has limited capabilities, that could save time and money to develop a solution for their problems.
If you want to read more about Mixin, don't forget to check these links below:
Mixin Website: https://mixin.one
Mixin Whitepaper: https://mixin.one/assets/Mixin-Draft-2018-07-01.pdf
Disclaimer
Don't forget to do your own research. DWYOR.