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== History ==
== History ==
Monero was launched on 18 April 2014 as ''Bitmonero''. It was renamed Monero five days later.
Monero was launched on 18 April 2014 as ''Bitmonero''.<ref>{{cite web|url=https://forum.getmonero.org/20/general-discussion/211/history-of-monero|title=History of Monero |website=getmonero.org|accessdate=30 March 2015}}</ref> It was renamed Monero five days later.


== Name ==
== Name ==

Revision as of 19:10, 30 March 2015

Monero (XMR, ISO 4217-like ticker) is a cryptocurrency focusing on privacy, decentralisation and scalability. It was created in April 2014 and is sometimes described as "electronic cash". Its code is not based on Bitcoin.

History

Monero was launched on 18 April 2014 as Bitmonero.[1] It was renamed Monero five days later.

Name

Monero means money (or currency, or coin) in Esperanto.[2] During the first five days after its inception, Monero was called Bitmonero.

Features

Monero is an open-source pure proof-of-work cryptocurrency. It runs on Windows, Mac, Linux and FreeBSD.[3]

Its main emission curve is approximately 18 millions tokens mined in 8 years. After that, a "tail emission" will create a sub-1% perpetual inflation to prevent the lack of incentives for miners once a currency is not mineable anymore.[4] The emission uses a smoothly decreasing reward with no block halving (any block generates a bit less moneros than the previous one). The proof-of-work algorithm, CryptoNight, is AES-intensive a.k.a. "memory heavy", which significantly reduces the advantage of GPU over CPU.

Privacy

Monero uses an improved[5] version of the CryptoNote protocol, itself using both ring signatures (Dan J. Bernstein's Curve25519 + Ed25519, Schnorr signatures on a Twisted Edwards curve) and stealth addresses. The end result is passive, decentralised mixing based on heavily-tested algorithms[6]

As a consequence, Monero features an opaque blockchain (with an explicit allowance system called the viewkey), in sharp contrast with transparent blockchain used by any other cryptocurrency not based on CryptoNote. Thus, Monero is said to be "private, optionally transparent". On top of very strong privacy by default, such a system permits net neutrality on the blockchain (miners cannot become censors, since they do not know where the transaction goes or what it contains) while still permitting auditing when desired (for instance, tax audit or public display of the finances of an NGO).

Monero developpers are also working on implementing a C++ i2p router straight in the code. This would complete the privacy chain by also hiding the IP addresses.[7]

Scalability

Monero has no hardcoded limit, which means it doesn't have a 1 MB blocksize limitation preventing scalability.

The Monero Core Team also released a standard called OpenAlias,[8] which permits much more human-readable addresses and "squares" the Zooko's triangle. OpenAlias can be used for any cryptocurrency and is already implemented in Monero, Bitcoin (in latest Electrum versions) and HyperStake, as well as several websites such as mymonero.com and coin.space.

Limitations

Since it is not based on Bitcoin, Monero cannot take advantage of the Bitcoin technological ecosystem, like GUI wallet or payment processors. As a consequence, everything has to be written from scratch.[9] Presently, Monero doesn't have feature parity with Bitcoin. Notably, there is no Monero payment processor and Monero doesn't support multisignature.

OpenAlias

References

  1. ^ "History of Monero". getmonero.org. Retrieved 30 March 2015.
  2. ^ "Monero - Wikipedia in Esperanto". Wikipedia. Retrieved 19 March 2015.
  3. ^ Latapie, David. "What's so special about Monero". Getmonero.org. Retrieved 19 March 2015.
  4. ^ Hutchinson, Martin. "Breakingviews: Bitcoin's defects will hasten its demise in 2015". reuters.com. Retrieved 19 March 2015.
  5. ^ By Monero Research Lab, especially MRL-0004"Monero Research Labs". Monero. Retrieved 19 March 2015.
  6. ^ Spagni, Riccardo. Reddit https://www.reddit.com/r/Monero/comments/30jp2n/alright_devs_own_up_whats_the_deal_with_magic/cptek2g. Retrieved 29 March 2015. Based on our current level of technology and our current understanding of cryptography there is no vulnerability in ring signatures, not in theory nor in our implementation (which is mostly based on old, exceedingly well-tested cryptography and code from SUPERCOP / libsodium / NaCL). The cryptography is directly based on work that is nearly 10 years old, which in turn is grounded in cryptography in a paper from 1991, so we're talking about something that has already been analysed by very gifted cryptographers. {{cite web}}: Missing or empty |title= (help)
  7. ^ Latapie, David. "Why we chose i2p over TOR". getmonero.org. Retrieved 19 March 2015.
  8. ^ "OpenAlias official website". openalias.org. Retrieved 19 March 2015.
  9. ^ Latapie, David. "Why is the official GUI wallet not released yet". getmonero.org. Retrieved 19 March 2015.


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