Monero blockchain stock
Monero is a decentralized cryptocurrency, meaning it is secure digital cash operated by a network of users. Transactions are confirmed by distributed consensus and then immutably recorded on the blockchain.
Third-parties do not need to be trusted to keep your Monero safe. Monero uses ring signatures, ring confidential transactions, and stealth addresses to obfuscate the origins, amounts, and destinations of all transactions.
Monero provides all the benefits of a decentralized cryptocurrency, without any of the typical privacy concessions. Sending and receiving addresses as well as transacted amounts are obfuscated by default. Transactions on the Monero blockchain cannot be linked to a particular user or real-world identity.
Monero is fungible because it is private by default. Units of Monero cannot be blacklisted by vendors or exchanges due to their association in previous transactions. Need it for a different operating system? View all available downloads here. Would you like to look up the meanings of the terms and concepts used in Monero?
Here you will find an alphabetical guide to terms and their meanings from both the Monero and Kovri projects. Step-by-step guides to all things Monero are separated by category and cover everything from creating a wallet to supporting the network, and even how to edit this website.
Monero uses a public ledger to record transactions while new units are created through a process called mining. Monero aims to improve on existing cryptocurrency design by obscuring sender, recipient and amount of every transaction made as well as making the mining process more egalitarian.
The focus on privacy has attracted illicit use by people interested in evading law enforcement. Unlike many cryptocurrencies that are derivatives of Bitcoin, Monero is based on the CryptoNight proof-of-work hash algorithm , which comes from the CryptoNote protocol. This makes Monero different from public-ledger cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin , where addresses with coins previously associated with undesired activity can be blacklisted and have their coins refused by other users.
In particular, the ring signatures mix the spender's input with a group of others, making it exponentially more difficult to establish a link between each subsequent transaction. Finally, the "ring confidential transactions" mechanism hides the transferred amount. Monero is designed to be resistant to application-specific integrated circuit mining, which is commonly used to mine other cryptocurrencies such as Bitcoin.
The underlying CryptoNote protocol that Monero is based on was originally launched by pseudonymous author Nicolas van Saberhagen in October In September , Monero was attacked when an unknown party exploited a flaw in CryptoNote that permitted the creation of two subchains that refused to recognize the validity of transactions on each other.
CryptoNote later released a patch for the flaw, which Monero implemented. Monero experienced rapid growth in market capitalization and transaction volume during the year , partly due to adoption in by major darknet market AlphaBay , [3] which was closed in July by law enforcement.
On January 10, , the privacy of Monero transactions were further strengthened by the adoption of Bitcoin Core developer Gregory Maxwell's algorithm Confidential Transactions , hiding the amounts being transacted, in combination with an improved version of Ring Signatures.
In April research highlighted three major threats to Monero user's privacy. The first relies on leveraging the ring signature size of zero, and ability to see the output amounts. Finally the third threat, "Temporal Analysis", shows that predicting the right output in a ring signature is easier than previously thought.
Monero development team addressed the first concern in early with introduction of Ring Confidential Transactions ringCT [14] as well as mandating a minimum size of ring signatures in the March protocol upgrade. Monero developers also noted that Monero Research Labs, their academic and research arm, already noted and outlined the deficiency in two public research papers in and A user needs client software, a so-called wallet , to interact with the Monero network.
The Monero Project produces the reference implementation of a Monero wallet and there are also third party implementations of Monero clients exist such as Monerujo [15] and Cakewallet [16] which also make it possible to use Monero on Android and iOS.
Finally, a web wallet allows users to interact with the network entirely through the browser using a third party website. The feasibility of CPU mining Monero has made it viable for malicious actors to covertly distribute miners embedded in malware, using the victim's hardware and electricity for the financial gain of the malware developer as well as legitimate uses with user consent.