Monero (XMR) is an anonymous decentralized cryptocurrency built on the CryptoNight protocol. The current value of the coin is $278, capitalization is $4,4 billion. Monero has been in the top 10 cryptocurrencies for a long time, but now it has been pushed out to the 12th position.
Creation
The first anonymous cryptocurrency based on the CryptoNote protocol was Bytecoin (BCN), launched in July 2012. When in 2014 it turned out that 80% of the coins were distributed in advance on the developers' wallets, this put an end to the project.
The community turned its back on Bytecoin and on April 18, 2014, a fork was held with zero prior mining, which was called Monero. The new cryptocurrency initially worked on the CryptoNote protocol, but then it was replaced with an improved version of CryptoNight.
Today, the Monero team consists of 7 top managers and 30 regular developers. A total of 240 experts on the blockchain and cryptography worked on the project. The project leader is Ricardo Spagni, known by the username “FluffyPony”.
Anonymity
Confidentiality in the monero network is ensured by hiding the details of the transaction. For example, in the Bitcoin blockchain, the outsider sees transactions as “Anya of the 100 Pass of the Coins to Vasily”, and the monerois anonymizes the information and you can only see that “X sent N coins for Y”. That is, you can find out about the transfer, but its participants and the amount is unknown.
This result is achieved with the help of ring signature technology, where one user signs several transactions at once. It is impossible to determine which of them is the real sender. And the funds themselves are sent not directly to the recipient, but through a chain of technical addresses that the network generates randomly.
In case the user wants to disclose information about income to third parties, he has a “key for viewing”. So you can declassify the data on the balance of your own wallet, but it is impossible to track where the money came from and the senders' privacy will not be affected.
Mining
Officially, the Monero team does not support any mining pool or special equipment manufacturer. You can extract cryptocurrency, both on processors and on video cards.
Monero's anonymity played a cruel joke on her, it is the most popular cryptocurrency for “cryptojacking” (hidden mining). There are many known instances of malware being installed on various popular video streaming and torrenting sites. There is also a risk of downloading an infected application to a smartphone (even from Google Play or the App Store). In addition, there have even been cases of hacking Tesla's cloud server and several UK government websites for hidden mining.
You may not even guess that you are helping hackers get XMR. While reading the news, watch the video, play games, any device with Internet access is under threat.
Monero developers are not involved in such attacks on the computing power of users, but hidden mining casts a shadow on the cryptocurrency itself. Whether the project team will be able to do something about it is still unclear, but it is definitely known about their dislike for ASIC miners.
They announced constant updates of their protocol every six months so that they could not release an ASIC device under Monero. And if this does not work, then Ricardo Spagni and Co are ready to conduct a full-fledged hardfork.
Prospects
If we talk about the prospects for Monero, then today it has excellent prerequisites for growth associated with the introduction of government regulation. The best example of this is South Korea, where demand for XMR skyrocketed after the country’s authorities banned anonymous crypto trading.
By their bans, states also play into the hands of other well-known anonymous cryptocurrencies, such as Dash and Zcash. But unlike them, Monero has Ricardo Spagni and his friendship with Litecoin leader Charlie Lee. It is stated that the developers of both projects are working on atomic swaps between XMR and LTC. There are even rumors of a merger between lightcoin and monero.
Such cooperation can bring big dividends, so you can not lose sight of Monero.