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# Emission speed was decelerated at half.
# Emission speed was decelerated at half.


Few weeks after launch, an optimized GPU miner for CryptoNight hash has been developed.<ref>{{cite web |title=Minting Money with Monero ... and CPU vector intrinsics |url=http://da-data.blogspot.ru/2014/08/minting-money-with-monero-and-cpu.html |accessdate=30 March 2015}}</ref> Monero development team states official GUI wallet release as one of their secondary goals do to the release of quality third party options.<ref>{{cite web |title=Editorial: Why is the official GUI wallet not released yet |url=https://forum.getmonero.org/1/news-announcements-and-editorials/190/editorial-why-is-the-official-gui-wallet-not-released-yet |accessdate=30 March 2015}}</ref> Monero teamed up with academic cryptographers,<ref>{{cite web |title=Monero Research Labs |url=http://lab.monero.cc/ |accessdate=30 March 2015}}</ref> implemented an extensive aliasing system, OpenAlias,<ref>{{cite web |title= OpenAlias official website|url=https://www.openalias.org/ |accessdate=30 March 2015}}</ref> partially funded Privacy Solution for integrating [[I2P]] in Monero,<ref>{{cite web |title=The-Privacy Solutions Project |url=https://geti2p.net/en/blog/post/2014/08/15/The-privacy-solutions-project |accessdate=30 March 2015}}</ref> created an anonymous voting system, URS,<ref>{{cite web |title=Unique Ring Signatures using secp256k1 keys|url=https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=768499 |accessdate=30 March 2015}}</ref> implemented Electrum's mnemonic seeds and released a webwallet.<ref>{{cite web |title=MyMonero |url=http://mymonero.com/ |accessdate=30 March 2015}}</ref>
Few weeks after launch, an optimized GPU miner for CryptoNight hash has been developed.<ref>{{cite web |title=Minting Money with Monero ... and CPU vector intrinsics |url=http://da-data.blogspot.ru/2014/08/minting-money-with-monero-and-cpu.html |accessdate=30 March 2015}}</ref> The Monero Core Team<ref>{{cite web |title=The people behind Monero |url=http://getmonero.org/knowledge-base/people |accessdate=1 April 2015}}</ref> states official GUI wallet release as one of their secondary goals do to the release of quality third party options.<ref>{{cite web |title=Editorial: Why is the official GUI wallet not released yet |url=https://forum.getmonero.org/1/news-announcements-and-editorials/190/editorial-why-is-the-official-gui-wallet-not-released-yet |accessdate=30 March 2015}}</ref> Monero teamed up with academic cryptographers,<ref>{{cite web |title=Monero Research Labs |url=http://lab.monero.cc/ |accessdate=30 March 2015}}</ref> implemented an extensive aliasing system, OpenAlias,<ref>{{cite web |title= OpenAlias official website|url=https://www.openalias.org/ |accessdate=30 March 2015}}</ref> partially funded Privacy Solution for integrating [[I2P]] in Monero,<ref>{{cite web |title=The-Privacy Solutions Project |url=https://geti2p.net/en/blog/post/2014/08/15/The-privacy-solutions-project |accessdate=30 March 2015}}</ref> created an anonymous voting system, URS,<ref>{{cite web |title=Unique Ring Signatures using secp256k1 keys|url=https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=768499 |accessdate=30 March 2015}}</ref> implemented Electrum's mnemonic seeds and released a webwallet.<ref>{{cite web |title=MyMonero |url=http://mymonero.com/ |accessdate=30 March 2015}}</ref>


== Name ==
== Name ==

Revision as of 18:26, 1 April 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

Project BitMonero was launched on 18 April 2014 as the first fork of CryptoNote-based currency Bytecoin.[1] It was renamed to Monero five days later[2] (but its system process is still called bitmonerod).

Two major changes compared to Bytecoin were present in the BitMonero release:

  1. Target block time was decreased from 120 to 60 seconds;
  2. Emission speed was decelerated at half.

Few weeks after launch, an optimized GPU miner for CryptoNight hash has been developed.[3] The Monero Core Team[4] states official GUI wallet release as one of their secondary goals do to the release of quality third party options.[5] Monero teamed up with academic cryptographers,[6] implemented an extensive aliasing system, OpenAlias,[7] partially funded Privacy Solution for integrating I2P in Monero,[8] created an anonymous voting system, URS,[9] implemented Electrum's mnemonic seeds and released a webwallet.[10]

Name

Monero means money (or currency, or coin) in Esperanto.[11]

Features

Monero is an open-source pure proof-of-work cryptocurrency. It runs on Windows, Mac, Linux and FreeBSD.[12]

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.[13] 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 and "memory heavy", which significantly reduces the advantage of GPU over CPU.

Privacy

Monero daemon uses the original CryptoNote protocol except for the initial changes (as the block time and emission speed). The protocol itself is based on ring signatures (Daniel 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[14]

However, several improvements were suggested by Monero Research Labs (a group of people, including core developers team), which covered the proper use of ring signatures for better privacy.[15] Specifically, the proposals include "a protocol-level network-wide minimum mix-in policy of n = 2 foreign outputs per ring signature", "a nonuniform transaction output selection method for ring generation" and "a torrent-style method of sending Monero output".[16] If implemented, these changes, as stated by the authors, can help protect user's privacy in a CryptoNote-based currency.

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.[17]

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,[18] 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.[19] Presently (as of March 2015), Monero doesn't have feature parity with Bitcoin. Notably, there is no Monero payment processor and Monero doesn't support multisignature.

OpenAlias

References

  1. ^ Latapie, David. "History of Monero". getmonero.org. Retrieved 30 March 2015.
  2. ^ "[ANN][MRO] Monero - Anonymous Currency Based on Ring Signatures". Retrieved 30 March 2015.
  3. ^ "Minting Money with Monero ... and CPU vector intrinsics". Retrieved 30 March 2015.
  4. ^ "The people behind Monero". Retrieved 1 April 2015.
  5. ^ "Editorial: Why is the official GUI wallet not released yet". Retrieved 30 March 2015.
  6. ^ "Monero Research Labs". Retrieved 30 March 2015.
  7. ^ "OpenAlias official website". Retrieved 30 March 2015.
  8. ^ "The-Privacy Solutions Project". Retrieved 30 March 2015.
  9. ^ "Unique Ring Signatures using secp256k1 keys". Retrieved 30 March 2015.
  10. ^ "MyMonero". Retrieved 30 March 2015.
  11. ^ "Monero - Wikipedia in Esperanto". Wikipedia. Retrieved 19 March 2015.
  12. ^ Latapie, David. "What's so special about Monero". Getmonero.org. Retrieved 19 March 2015.
  13. ^ Hutchinson, Martin. "Breakingviews: Bitcoin's defects will hasten its demise in 2015". reuters.com. Retrieved 19 March 2015.
  14. ^ Spagni, Riccardo. "Alright devs, own up: what's the deal with "magic" block 202612?". Reddit. 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.
  15. ^ "Monero Research Labs". Monero. Retrieved 31 March 2015.
  16. ^ Mackenzie, Adam; Noether, Surae; Monero Core Team. "Improving Obfuscation in the CryptoNote Protocol" (PDF). Retrieved 31 March 2015.
  17. ^ Latapie, David. "Why we chose i2p over TOR". getmonero.org. Retrieved 19 March 2015.
  18. ^ "OpenAlias official website". openalias.org. Retrieved 19 March 2015.
  19. ^ Latapie, David. "Why is the official GUI wallet not released yet". getmonero.org. Retrieved 19 March 2015.


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