Difference between revisions of "Monero"

Latest revision as of 17:37, 22 June 2026

Monero (ticker: XMR) is a privacy-focused cryptocurrency launched in April 2014. It is one of the most widely used cryptocurrencies for which cryptographic privacy is a core design principle rather than an optional feature.

History

Monero grew out of the CryptoNote protocol, which was described in a 2012 whitepaper by the pseudonymous author Nicolas van Saberhagen. The first CryptoNote-based coin was Bytecoin, but concerns about its large premine led community members to fork it in April 2014 under the name BitMonero, which was quickly shortened to Monero (Esperanto for "coin").

Privacy Features

Monero uses three complementary technologies to obscure transaction details:

• Ring signatures — blend a sender's transaction with others drawn from the blockchain, making it difficult to identify the true source of funds.
• Stealth addresses — generate one-time addresses for each transaction so that only the sender and recipient know where funds were sent.
• RingCT (Ring Confidential Transactions) — introduced in 2017, this hides the amounts being transferred in addition to sender and recipient identity.

Together these features make Monero transactions unlinkable and untraceable by default, unlike Bitcoin or most other cryptocurrencies where the ledger is fully public.

Mining

Monero uses a Proof-of-Work algorithm called RandomX, designed to be resistant to ASIC mining and favor general-purpose CPU hardware. This is a deliberate choice to keep mining accessible to ordinary users and avoid centralization. The network adjusts its block size dynamically based on transaction volume.

Unlike Bitcoin, Monero has no hard supply cap. After the initial emission curve, a small "tail emission" of 0.6 XMR per block continues indefinitely to provide ongoing incentive for miners to secure the network.

External Links

• Monero Project
• Moneropedia — official glossary