Monero
| Year | 2014 |
|---|---|
| Founders | Riccardo Spagni, Francisco Cabañas |
Monero – is a Bitcoin fork known for anonymous transactions. It’s with good reason that the XMR ecosystem is known as one of the most secure.
What is Monero?
XMR (Monero) – is a digital currency based on the CryptoNote protocol, aimed at creating completely anonymous operations in the network. The core of the technology is application of ring signatures and single use addresses – this makes it impossible to find out the address of a sender and a recipient guaranteeing complete anonymity to both parties.
The CryptoNote protocol was first used in 2012, when Bitcoin was introduced. Its hardfork resulted in appearance of a new digital currency – BitMonero. At present, the coin is called Monero, XMR.
The key advantage and at the same time disadvantage of the coin is complete anonymity of the network. On the one hand, users are completely protected, but on the other, it makes it possible for the “Darknet” participants to use digital money for illegal purposes.
Today, the coin ranks 12th in terms of capitalization. The total amount of coins is about 674 million dollars. By this indicator, it is ahead of its main rivals – Dash and Zcash.
Nowadays, the exchange rate of the coin is not very optimistic. It is traded at 40.52 dollars with Dash and Zcash costing 65.19 and 52.82 dollars respectively. In December 2017 the XMR price reached its peak. Then, its exchange rate amounted to 494.16 dollars. To a large extent, the decline can me explained by the general stagnation of the cryptocurrency market.
The network hardfork in April 2018, which resulted in appearance of a new coin Monero Classic, also had a negative impact on the coin price.
The story behind
Monero – is one of the ERC20 standard coins. It was introduced on April 18, 2014 as the result of the Bytecoin network hardfork. It was also based on the CryptoNote protocol with the main purpose of ensuring the operations anonymity. It was decided to create a fork not because of disagreement. The community decided to re-issue Bytecoin under a new name Monero, since more than 80% of the emissions had already been completed.
It’s of interest that the name Monero translates as a “coin” from the Esperanto language.
A new cryptocurrency had zero pre-mining. As early as at the end of April, a program for coin mining was announced and launched.
In September 2014 was the only known case of a serious attack on the system. But even it didn’t succeed, although the attackers knew the Monero source code and the Merkle tree algorithm well.
In early 2017, the developers implemented several important innovations. As the result, the code validation was improved and the level of protection against transaction analysis was increased. And as early as in the autumn of the same year, the application of ring confidential transactions RingCT became mandatory after the next update.
On April 6, 2018 a hardfork of Monero cryptocurrency took place. The aim of its introduction was to combat ASIC mining. It resulted in introduction of a new coin – Monero Classic. Unfortunately, it failed to maintain the original cost level, and today it is traded at a rate of 0.51 dollars.
Positive and negative reviews
Monero is considered one of the most controversial digital currencies. On the one hand, it is appreciated for its high security level and complete anonymity, but on the other, the authorities are constantly trying to counteract the network development due to the fact that it is actively used the “Darknet” representatives. Crypto investors and other asset owners point out the following positive aspects:
- complete anonymity, which is its positive difference from Bitcoin, for example;
- a high security level – there is no evidence of a successful attack on the cryptocurrency ecosystem;
- a large amount of transactions and number of the network users, which makes it possible to mix operations and does not allow to track large transactions.
Miners express a little negative opinion about the coin, since the asset mining requires extremely powerful equipment, which makes the mining process significantly complicated. The disadvantages also include:
- a large size of transactions;
- a risk of losing anonymity if hackers get control of the system’ larger part;
- restraints on the part of governments due to the high interest in the currency from the “Darknet” representatives;
- emission is not limited but the amount of issued coins is small, which can make it difficult to perform large transactions and acts as a deterrent of development of cooperation with payment systems.
Projected growth
Until 2017, Monero remained a rather unknown coin, although it was introduced in 2014. The exchange rate reached its peak on December 21, 2017. Then, the coin price exceeded 490 dollars. Although the price has decreased today, many experts claim that it is a temporary effect. They predict that XMP will face significant growth in the future due to a large number of advantages.
Cost fluctuations largely depend on the number of people using the coin for payment operations. For example, a sharp price increase took place in autumn 2016, when AppStore added an option of paying with Monero. The exchange rate is also extremely dependent on informational dumps.
Analysts predict the growth of the coin in the near future. One of the most important growth factors is a significant surge of interest in the coin in South Korea. This very country is one of the centres of the global cryptoeconomy. At the same time, experts don’t mention an explosive price growth. They predict a smooth and gradual increase of the digital asset price.
How can Monero be used?
A high level of interest in Monero make some users ask about investing options. In general, the following ones can be mentioned:
- purchase and storage in cold wallets;
- purchase on currency exchanges;
- mining (however, there are complicated aspects here. For example, ASIC equipment is not suitable for mining, which requires only 64-bit architecture, since it doesn’t support 32-bit one).
The developers offer to use Monero not only as a means of storing and augmenting your assets. The coin can be used to perform payments and other financial transactions in the Internet.
Latest news of Monero
News of July 19
At the beginning of June, a blockchain developer on HackerOne made an announcement about his dropping across a severe security bug in Monero allowing granted hackers to build fake XMR and send them to exchanges.
Taking into account the potential danger from the exploit, the fake XMR bug might bring huge losses to exchanges than to traders or investors. The issue demonstrates that even the most decentralized and security-centric coins can be compromised. The issue can be considered as a threat to the entire altcoin ecosystem since there is absolutely no sense in cryptocurrency if it fails to deliver on its most foundational promise - security, transparency, and anonymity. However, the company reports on fixing all the severe security bugs in the system, so neither Monero holders nor exchanges should worry about their safety.
News of June 19
Trend Micro, a cybersecurity company, claims to have discovered a botnet spread with an XMR mining component and a backdoor. Trend Micro reported about it in its blog. According to the report, the firm ascribes malware to the Outlaw hacker group, since the methods used are almost the same as those found in the previously hidden Shellbot miner for Monero mining. This software also has the capacity to carry out DDoS attacks, “allowing cybercriminals to monetize their botnet by mining cryptocurrency and offering the services of DDoS attacks for rent.”
Trend Micro also believes that malware creators are still testing and refining it because it contains some scripts that have not yet been executed. It is reported that the telemetry company also revealed attempts at infection in China.
Just a quick reminder that earlier in June, Changpeng Zhao, the head of Binance digital asset exchange predicted that the Indian law prohibiting the possession and trade of the cryptocurrency would encourage the adoption of digital coins in the country that ensure confidentiality, such as Monero and ZCash. Zhao expressed the opinion that this development of events would set an important precedent since about 20% of the world's population lives in India.
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