tweak intro (#728)

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John Tromp 2018-02-24 14:59:21 +01:00 committed by Yeastplume
parent 452996a421
commit bc9a1cfeed

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@ -14,8 +14,8 @@ The main goal and characteristics of the Grin project are:
* Privacy by default. This enables complete fungibility without precluding
the ability to selectively disclose information as needed.
* Scales with the number of users and not the number of transactions, with very
large space savings compared to other blockchains.
* Scales modestly with the number of transactions, keeping only a ~100 byte `kernel' for
historical transactions, resulting in a large space savings compared to other blockchains.
* Strong and proven cryptography. MimbleWimble only relies on Elliptic Curve
Cryptography which has been tried and tested for decades.
* Design simplicity that makes it easy to audit and maintain over time.
@ -45,12 +45,11 @@ dive deeper into those assumptions, there are other opportunities to
[learn more](http://andrea.corbellini.name/2015/05/17/elliptic-curve-cryptography-a-gentle-introduction/).
An Elliptic Curve for the purpose of cryptography is simply a large set of points that
we will call _H_. On those points,
the addition and multiplication operations have been defined, just like we know how
to do additions and multiplications on numbers or vectors. Given a number _k_ and
using the multiplication operation we can compute `k*H`, which is also a point on
_H_. Given another number _j_ we can also calculate `(k+j)*H` which is equivalent
to `k*H + j*H`. The addition and multiplication operations on an elliptic curve
we will call _C_. These points can be added, subtracted, or multiplied by integers (also called scalars).
Given an integer _k_ and
using the scalar multiplication operation we can compute `k*H`, which is also a point on
curve _C_. Given another integer _j_ we can also calculate `(k+j)*H`, which equals
`k*H + j*H`. The addition and scalar multiplication operations on an elliptic curve
maintain the commutative and associative properties of addition and multiplication:
(k+j)*H = k*H + j*H