Earlier today, we concluded the MWC airdrop. When we opened the gates about 3 months ago, most guesses were that we'd get in the ballpark of 55,000 BTC registered like Bitcoin Rhodium did about 18 months ago. We had no idea that over 148,000 BTC would be registered which is about 1% of Bitcoin's circulating supply (not including Satoshi's coins or the other few million that are likely lost). So, we have to say that this airdrop was a HUGE success! Thanks to everyone on the team and in the community who helped us make this happen. In addition, for the most part, there were very few people that experienced major problems during registration. Almost everyone who contacted us in Discord was able to resolve their problems and register. We also had 6753 Bitcoin addresses registered. While many people registered multiple addresses, we know that there were many small holders who registered. 1883 addresses held less than 1 Bitcoin, but more than 0.1 Bitcoin and 1749 had less than 0.1 Bitcoin. So, we will have a large community from the start.
So, now we move on to coding. A lot of coding has been completed, but the big tasks ahead are to test and ensure the claims process goes as smoothly as possible and polish the wallet and block explorer. So far, the wallet we are working on has been well received. It not only has a great look and feel but will be easy to use and available on all major OS platforms. We think that nothing like this exists for Grin or Beam. If all goes well, mainnet will launch in Q4 along with the wallet and claims will be easy for people. The good thing is since all our code is open source, the wallet can be used on other platforms as well just as we can use code from Grin and Beam and vice-versa. And of course, everything we do is also applicable to Bitcoin. The reality is that no one knows how Mimblewimble will be implemented or used in Bitcoin or if it even will at all, but more and more people are talking about Mimblewimble extension blocks and sidechains, even in the last months the discussion has changed. And maybe it doesn't get implemented directly in the base layer, but it's hard to see the work we do not being applicable to Bitcoin in at least some way.
This brings up a point that everyone who registered for MWC is a Bitcoin holder as are the people working on this project. So this is not an attack on Bitcoin, but an opportunity to do research that extends it and improves it. MWC wouldn't be a very good cryptocurrency if you weren't able to sell it on exchanges, but maybe holding it will be beneficial in the long term to your Bitcoin holdings? I can think of a few reasons why. First off, as we mentioned everything we do is applicable to Bitcoin since we're releasing our code as open source software. Second, we are generously rewarding Bitcoin holders through this process. If this cryptocurrency is a success, there will be MANY others that follow in our footsteps and as I wrote in other articles, we can make Bitcoin not only a store of value, but also an income producing asset. That means more crypto-dividend airdrops. And if you think about it, why wouldn't Bitcoin holders favor MWC over Grin and Beam?
If you're interested in helping us, there's so many things you can do. One simple thing you can do is hold your MWC for a while instead of selling it immediately. Since you were all able to accumulate and secure your Bitcoin, I know you are good at that. Mimblewimble is not going away and you just might want to hang on to this to see what happens in the space. Or you can talk about it on social media, share this article maybe? If you're a developer, you can help us code. Join our discord and talk to us in the #developers room. Or you can help people in our discord and Telegram rooms by answering questions. There's really so many ways to help out and we will need it all if we want to be a success and make MWC live up to its full potential.
So, let's do this. We have something to prove. Let's prove that this model of distribution works and make MWC an enormous success for us all!
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