Monero (XMR) Review: a coin that offers complete privacy and anonymity

Monero is a cryptocurrency that has been developed as a response to the lack of complete privacy, security and anonymity of the classic cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin and Ethereum. His dedication to privacy, both the address of the sender and the amount of the transactions, has contributed to the broad adoption and price increase over time. A bootstrap currency, it has no company or individual behind its development and has an active community that includes its anonymous developers and founders.

The idea and the team behind Monero

Launched in 2014, Monero has been developed with particular attention to privacy. The currency has been encoded by several anonymous individuals and first known as the currency by the name of Bitmonero. Monero is a 2014 fork of the original Bitmonero coin.

Most cryptocurrencies, such as Bitcoin and Ethereum, have transparent transactions that are open to the public and can be traced back to a person's identity. There have been cases where the forces of order have been able to identify people through their bitcoin wallet address.

Monero, on the other hand, guarantees complete confidentiality and the inability to track these transactions. It does this through the use of ring technology and invisible addresses. Its privacy and anonymity allow each currency to be replaced with another currency, which means it is fungible. Its fungibility, combined with its focus on anonymity and privacy, have increased the value and adoption of the currency since its launch in 2014.

The Department of Homeland Securities has recently announced the intention to monitor Monero transactions with its own monitoring framework using forensic analysis. This announcement comes after a significant success in monitoring bitcoin transactions and the rise of Monero as the best cryptocurrency in 2016.

Monero Price History

Monero is a successful example of a bootstrap currency, having raised funds from his community. He did not have a pre-launch sale, VC funding or big investors to help him market it. None of its founders assigned any coins to themselves.

On the contrary, most of its developers and its main creators are completely anonymous. The volatility of the currency, which ranges from $ 0.25 (in January 2015) to $ 60.00 (in May 2017), has made it particularly attractive for short-term investors. Monero started trading in 2014 for $ 1.41. In early 2017 it was trading at $ 12.00. It peaked in January 2018 at $ 437.54 and has since recorded a downward trend.

Monero technology

Monero's technology is based on a Proof of Work (PoW) algorithm that is adaptable to a wide range of processors to ensure more democratic mining opportunities. The coin lock time is two minutes. Its block premium system allows it to be a disinflationary currency and continue to provide an incentive for the extraction of Monero and to maintain the security of its blockchain.

Monero implements some unique features to offer greater anonymity and privacy to its users:

Ring technology

Developed jointly by the MIT and Weizmann Institute academics in 2001, ring signatures are digital signatures that can be made by any member of a group that has the keys, which makes it much more difficult to verify the exact individual who has made the signature. Ring signatures do this by mixing account keys with public keys to make it much more difficult to draw a signature to a particular user.

Monero also uses a technique known as "Confidential Ring Transactions" or RingCT, which means that in addition to being able to hide a user's address, he is also able to hide the amount of each individual transaction. Ring CT was implemented in Monero in January 2017.

Anonymity technology

Monero is currently working on the development of Kovri. Kovri is a decentralized anonymity technology based on I2P, an anonymous overlay network that provides secure and anonymous communications over the Internet. Kovri's goal is to be a light and fast version of I2P. The company has released a alpha version of technology in August.

Stealth addresses

Invisible addresses are random addresses generated for each transaction. This allows better anonymity because only the sender and recipient know the address of where the payment was sent.

How to buy XMR

Binance is the main option for the purchase of XMR, as well as the exchange in which it has the highest trading volume at $ 1.8 million. It is available for purchase with BTC and ETH.

XMR is also available on the following platforms:

How to store XMR

There are several Monero portfolios, all available for download from the Monero website.

Monero also has a dedicated rigid portfolio that is currently under development.

As of the end of November, Ledger Nano S has announced the integration of Monero in its portfolio.

How to undermine XMR

Because Monero is based on a PoW algorithm, it is resistant to ASIC extraction operations and is more available to anyone who wants to extract it. You must first download a data mining software and then enter a data mining pool. A list of both types of software and mining pools are available on the Monero website.

Monero Roadmap and future plans

The Monero roadmap is available on the company's website, but is not updated regularly. Its current objectives according to the official roadmap include the replacement of RingCT with BulletProofs, which are designed to reduce the size of the transaction and significantly reduce Monero's transaction fees. The first phase of BulletProofs was implemented at the end of 2017. It also intends to renew its Forum Funding, which is its community-based fundraising system.

Future goals include the development of second-level solutions for speed and scalability and the continued publication of research documents.

Note: Black refers to completed tasks; orange refers to ongoing tasks; white refers to the imminent ones.