From bc9a1cfeedf782bffe9a635715b08d2bd8e76454 Mon Sep 17 00:00:00 2001 From: John Tromp Date: Sat, 24 Feb 2018 14:59:21 +0100 Subject: [PATCH] tweak intro (#728) --- doc/intro.md | 15 +++++++-------- 1 file changed, 7 insertions(+), 8 deletions(-) diff --git a/doc/intro.md b/doc/intro.md index 132171d51..c677b9084 100644 --- a/doc/intro.md +++ b/doc/intro.md @@ -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