About Monero

Monero was launched in April 2014. It was a fair, pre-announced launch of the CryptoNote reference code. There was no premine or instamine, and no portion of the block reward goes to development. See the original Bitcointalk thread here. The founder, thankful_for_today, proposed some controversial changes that the community disagreed with. A fallout ensued, and the Monero Core Team forked the project with the community following this new Core Team. This Core Team has provided oversight since.

Monero has made several large improvements since launch. The blockchain was migrated to a different database structure to provide greater efficiency and flexibility, minimum ring signature sizes were set so that all transactions were private by mandate, and RingCT was implemented to hide the transaction amounts. Nearly all improvements have provided improvements to security or privacy, or they have facilitated use. Monero continues to develop with goals of privacy and security first, ease of use and efficiency second.

Monero is more than just a technology. It’s also what the technology stands for. Some of the important guiding philosophies are listed below.

Security

Users must be able to trust Monero with their transactions, without risk of error or attack. Monero gives the full block reward to the miners, who are the most critical members of the network who provide this security. Transactions are cryptographically secure using the latest and most resilient encryption tools available.

Privacy

Monero takes privacy seriously. Monero needs to be able to protect users in a court of law and, in extreme cases, from the death penalty. This level of privacy must be completely accessible to all users, whether they are technologically competent or have no idea how Monero works. A user needs to confidently trust Monero in a way that this person does not feel pressured into changing their spending habits for risk of others finding out.

Decentralization

Monero is committed to providing the maximum amount of decentralization. With Monero, you do not have to trust anyone else on the network, and it is not run by any large group. An accessible “Proof of Work” algorithm makes it easy to mine Monero on normal computers, which makes it more difficult for someone to purchase a large amount of mining power. Nodes connect to each other with I2P to lower the risks of revealing sensitive transaction information and censorship (tba). Development decisions are extremely clear and open to public discussion. Developer meeting logs are published online in their entirety and visible by all.

Here are listed some basic technical info about Monero. For more in-depth details, consult the library or get in touch with the community.

Proof of Work

Monero uses RandomX, an ASIC-resistant and CPU-friendly POW algorithm created by Monero community members, designed to make the use of mining-specific hardware unfeasible. Monero previously used CryptoNight and variations of this algorithm. More info in the GitHub repo.

Emission curve

To make sure there will always be an incentive to mine Monero and keep it safe, the emission is infinite. There are two main emissions: first, main curve: ~18.132 million coins by the end of May 2022, then, tail curve: 0.6 XMR per 2-minute block, kicks in once main emission is done, translates to <1% inflation decreasing over time (Tail Emission).

Blocks

A new block is created every ~2 minutes. There is no maximum block size, but instead a block reward penalty and a dynamic block size, to ensure a dynamic scalability.

Main privacy enhancing technologies

• ringCT
• stealth addresses
• Ring Signatures
• Transactions over Tor/I2P
• Dandelion++