Considering Mimblewimble for Bitcoin Integration

I know this might sound a bit out there, but I’m really curious and I wanna see what everyone here thinks. A few weeks ago, I came across a thread that really got me thinking. It stated: Bitcoin isn't truly anonymous; it's more like pseudonymous, meaning privacy isn't fully guaranteed. Edward Snowden pointed this out, urging the Bitcoin community to take privacy seriously. Considering the recent developments in how Bitcoin transactions are tracked, he definitely has a point. For some, Bitcoin privacy might seem like no big deal, but for many including me it’s super important and we see a real need for improvements. My question is, when will the Bitcoin community make this happen? Being the curious person I am, I started doing some digging, checking if there's a possible solution out there. We’ve already seen the Lightning Network change things up a lot since it came into play. Then I stumbled upon this thing called the Mimblewimble protocol. So, the Mimblewimble protocol, which is used by MWC and a few others, operates under this distinct method that developers think works like a magic spell. Transactions under this protocol are fully anonymous, easily interchangeable, and can scale well (which is what a lot of people are after). From what I've learned, Mimblewimble is different from other privacy coins mainly due to its scalability. But it does have its downsides, like being prone to certain issues.

IIRC it isn't really feasible to implement this in Bitcoin, though the details have slipped my mind, so here's an old thread discussing this matter: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=281848.0 The original post is regarding transaction cut-throughs in general, but the later posts then touch upon MimbleWimble as well.

I think never. Or rather: not in a way, that was originally proposed by the creators of MimbleWimble. If anything, those things should be wrapped into existing transactions, to hide the fact, that someone is even trying to use MimbleWimble (the principle of "always was there, since 2009" is a good method of activating things, to hide them properly). No, because if you can look at some transaction, and see, that the amount is "confidential", then it does not make it less suspicious. It is actually the opposite: if you want privacy, then everything should be visible in plain sight (except for things like private keys). Then, if you have a regular transaction, and nobody knows, that it is "focused on privacy", then you are safer, than if you are explicitly trying to hide. Think about it in this way: if you have 1 BTC, and a single Schnorr signature, then what is safer? To have that amount explicitly stated on-chain, and hide the fact, that there are 100 people, each having 0.01 BTC, and doing 100-of-100 multisig? Or to have 100 separate outputs with unknown amount, marked as "confidential"? In the first case, nobody even knows, that there are 100 people involved. And by doing simple things, you can pretend, that you are just getting 0.01 BTC from some exchange, and nobody will notice anything suspicious. Imagine how powerful that model could be, if you could only see a single output with 21 million coins, and only know, that the signature is valid. In the second case, you are explicitly in a group of "people trying to hide", so your coins are not in a group of "all users", but in a group of "hidden users" instead. That means, your anonymity set is lower, and you are more exposed, like a man, trying to hide in bushes, instead of walking normally in a crowd.

Privacy isn't about being less or more suspicious. It's about being incapable to de-anonymizing the outputs, ergo hold the financial activity private. You'll have to define what "plain sight" means. A coinjoin is visible in "plain sight", yet it can provide sufficient levels of privacy and might be considered "suspicious" according to this definition. The former hides the inputs. The latter hides the amount. Both are good for privacy. That's your best course, since hiding in people with no privacy will inevitably de-anonymize you as well. Think of the Tor example. If you use Tor, you're in the "hidden users" group, even though you can use your ISP's IP address, and belong to the "all users" group with "stronger anonymity set", which is obviously false.

There's no need to hide that fact if all txs use MW. If you want privacy, then obviously everything should be confidential. And with MW, you're not explicitly trying to hide; you're using a more scalable blockchain protocol that just happens to come with significant privacy benefits. Why not have a 100-of-100 multisig on a confidential amount, where nobody knows there are 100 ppl involved?

Works well in LTC as proof of concept. I don't see why Bitcoin could not add MWEB and give users privacy tools. One of the reason is probably the mixers and coinjoin services would lose there income as people stopped using them. This is more of a reason you would not see it added.

No; people would still want to obfuscate the transaction graph, which MW by itself doesn't do (transaction boundaries are visible in the mempool). But they'd use an MW-specific mixer design [1] that offers many advantages over bitcoin mixers. [1] https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=567625.msg56288711#msg56288711

I really find this confusing. Making my transaction visible shouldn't be privacy in anyway, but rather a better explanation for decentralization, where everything is in plane site, and everyone can see it clearly. And we know that decentralization also signifies transparency. This Explaination is quite clear, but it sounds like the privacy is only important to certain people who uses Bitcoin. So do you think others don't really care about their privacy?. Yeah, it has worked really well on LTC. But as the crackdown on mixers keep increasing and more mixers getting ban, I think the Bitcoin community would be left with no choice than to do something about privacy. At least, the government won't have any say on the implementation (if there is any), since we just need majority of the developers to agree.