Monero (XMR) is an open-source digital currency that was first released in April 2014. Unlike other cryptocurrencies developed based on Bitcoin, Monero operates on the CryptoNote protocol and uses important algorithms related to Blockchain. Monero focuses on privacy, hierarchy, and scalability.
Monero was built by a team including 7 developers of which 5 have decided to keep anonymous while two appear in public. They are David Latapie and Riccardo Spagni. Monero is an open-source project and crowdfunded.
Monero’s market capitalization has increased 30 times in 2016, from USD 3.7 million in December 2015 to 111 million in December 2016, partly from the AlphaBay market – the largest black underground market in the world.
The history of Monero development
First appeared on April 18, 2014, as BitMonero, with the initials Bit (like Bitcoin) and the word Monero (meaning the currency in Esperanto). Five days after its release, BitMonero was renamed Monero. Considered as a branch of CryptoNote based on ByteCoin, however, Monero has significant changes:
- Firstly, the time required for each block decreased from 120 seconds to 60s.
- Second, time to release a block reduced by 50%.
- Also, the development team detected several pieces of poor-quality scripts and later optimized the code.
There will be 18.4 million XMR will be mined within 8 years. Then there will be a release period of 0.6 XMR every 2 minutes/block, which creates inflation constant of 1%.
Because Monero does not depend on Bitcoin, it cannot take advantage of Bitcoin technology. Therefore everything must be started from scratch. Monero transactions take more capacity in Blockchain than Bitcoin does, so it is very expensive to be able to run full nodes.
Monero’s innovative technology
Monero uses ring signatures and anonymous addresses to reduce privacy concerns.
- Ring signature: is the anonymous signature of a member of the group because they want to hide their identity from other participants in the group. To create a ring signature, Monero uses the sender’s account key and places it on the public key on the Blockchain to help hide the sender’s identity (because it cannot identify which key by creating a complex signature.
- Anonymous address: is the random address generated to use only once for each transaction on behalf of the recipient. The use of anonymous address allows hiding the true address of a transaction as well as the identity of the recipient.
In addition, for all the transactions on the Monero network, participants use the RingCT function. This is a function to hide the transaction amount, which was launched in January 2017 and is a mandatory requirement for Monero participants.
The unique features of Monero
The swap ability like cash
Bitcoin is an open ledger. That means all transactions can be traced and tracked. If the number of bitcoins you own has been used to launder money, then certainly this amount will be devalued when traded in the market. As a result, this crypto is low exchangeable sometimes. Monero is different. All transaction information is confidential and no one can know whose XMR transaction has passed. Therefore, the swaps of this coin are similar to the fiat currency.
XMR has a public view key and a private view key
One of the confusing aspects of Monero is its key. For BTC or ETH, you only have one public key and one private key for your wallet. However, XMR is not so simple. The public view key is used to create a temporary address when the coin is sent to the recipient. The private view key allows the recipient to scan the blockchain network to find where the funds sent from.
Where to store XMR?
Most used wallets to store Monero include:
- PC wallets: Monero GUI Wallet is developed by the Monero team, and available for the various operating systems.
- Smartphone wallets: Cake wallet, Monerujo.
- Online wallet: MyMonero
- Cold wallet: Ledger Nano S
Where to buy and sell Monero (XMR)?
Currently, Monero is among the top 10 largest cryptocurrencies by market capitalization. Because of that, most of the world’s exchanges like Coinbase, Binance, Huobi, Bittrex … support XMR trading.
Monero’s Potential
The following factors let us realize that this is a very potential digital currency:
- Monero is developed constantly and continuingly by a strong team, focusing on classification and security.
- Monero cryptocurrency is gradually gaining widespread acceptance in many places around the world.
- Monero is a currency with outstanding growth, currently, its price is 47 USD, sometimes up to 450 USD.
According to many experts’ predictions, the Monero will soon jump high when the market has an uptrend in long term. However, the cryptocurrency market always has unpredictable price fluctuations, so be conscious to make your own.
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