Monero: an innovative privacy coin

Monero is an open-source blockchain-based decentralized cryptocurrency focusing on privacy. Having many similarities with the world-renowned Bitcoin, Monero has tackled some issues to offer a vision of how a more private blockchain-based transaction can occur. Monero enables blockchain-based trading in a highly opaque and anonymous way. The key features of this protocol include stealth addresses and confidential transactions, increasing your security online. 

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The compact history of Monero

The story of Monero started in 2014 when the cryptocurrency was launched following a hard fork from Bytecoin, another privacy cryptocurrency. The Monero software is programmed to update every six months making this blockchain very adaptable to new features. This is a rather unique but innovative approach. Besides the ideal of anonymity, equality and equal opportunities are core values to Monero. Due to this, the project developers did not reserve any of the stakes for themselves after the Monero launch.

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Monero software trivia

Monero is a decentralized cryptocurrency project relying on a public distributed ledger and certain privacy-enhancing technologies for increased anonymity and fungibility. This enables highly private trading where observers cannot distinguish the transactions amounts, addresses or address balances, or transaction histories. This is done by shielding the participants’ identities using randomly generated pseudo-name addresses. These one-time addresses are known as stealth addresses connected to so-called ring signatures from other users of the blockchain before the transaction is recorded. These confidential ring transactions hide a lot of the transaction information from other parties for increased transaction anonymity. However, with high anonymity, there is always the risk of misusing it; as Monero’s transactions history is non-traceable, unfortunately, it can lure bad actors.

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Monero uses a proof of work-based algorithm known as RandomX for transaction validation. This makes Monero a proof of work blockchain, where miners are incentivized to add blocks to the blockchain by being rewarded for these efforts in tokens. New blocks are added to the Monero blockchain roughly every two minutes.

XMR, the token

Monero’s native token is XMR. The token can be purchased on mainstream exchanges and mined as Monero uses a proof of work-based algorithm. XMR is a rather popular cryptocurrency, though it has been delisted from some exchanges due to the fact that it is a privacy-oriented cryptocurrency. Exchanges are concerned they cannot stay compliant with the law while facilitating anonymous XMR transactions.

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