Monero Cryptocurrency Review

What is Monero?

Monero is an open source cryptocurrency, running on the leading OS: Windows, MacOS, Linux, Android, iOS, and FreeBSD. Like Bitcoin, it is a secure, untraceable money transaction system.

Short Overview

Cryptocurrencies are evolutionary inventions to the modern economy. Monero (XMR) is one of them. It is one of the leading open source cryptocurrencies. Decentralization of authority, privacy and scalability issues are its priorities. It runs on most of the operating system like Windows, MacOS, Android, Linux, FreeBSD etc. It offers utmost privacy to the users by shrouding their identities and amount of transactions as well as maintains distributive equity in mining.

History

Monero is based on the Cryptonote protocol which was instigated by a pseudonymous author Nicolas Van Saberhagen in October 2013. ‘BitMonero’ was launched by a Bitcoin user forum known as “thankful_for_today” and five days later the name was cut short to Monero.

Due to having drawbacks in Cryptonote protocol, it was attacked and allowed the formation of two subchains denying the validity of transactions on each other. Cryptonote could find the problem, sealed the leakage and the solution was implemented by Monero.

It further strengthened the privacy issue adopting the “Confidential Transactions” algorithm led forward by a Bitcoin core developer Gregory Maxwell.

Features

• Security: Decentralism provides security to the transactions. The user band operates the navigation of transactions and they are recorded in the blockchain unbent. No third party needs to be invited.
• Privacy: The blockchain maintains the privacy in three ways. 1) Ring Signatures put a shadow on sender’s identity. 2) Stealth addresses help to obscure the receiver’s identity and the amount of transaction. 3) Monero allows optional transparency as well as security to the wallet providing two sets of keys, a “view key” and a “spend key”.
• Transaction Linkability: In April of 2017, multiple research put forward some major threats to the privacy of users that include “Leveraging output Merging”, “Temporal Analysis” etc. A few days later, Monero development team introduced Ring Confidential Transactions neutralizing the treats. Monero blockchain obfuscates the whereabouts of the users and the figure transacted. Therefore the identities of users are untraceable.

Client Software

It is commonly known as wallet which is required to interact with the network. The reference implementation is created by the Monero Project that can be split into three parts: the main software Daemon knew as Monerod, Monero-wallet-cli that is responsible for managing users’ accounts, Monero-GUI that permits users to deal with aforementioned components with a graphical user interface. It is now possible for Android users to be connected to the network with the help of a web wallet known as Monerujo.

Weaknesses of Monero

To a group of users who are very much fond of maintaining privacy, Monero is 10/10. But every Achilles has heels. Critics have found a number of flaws which are not silly. Monero has to face issues like mining centralization, transaction size, development difficulties and limited merchant tools and so on.

But sometimes the strength itself becomes the weakness. The facility of privacy and intractability attracts people involved in heinous crimes. Black money can easily be transacted without leaving any trace. The egalitarian mining process allows prying hackers to secretly embed the mining code into websites and apps.

Among 700+ cryptocurrencies, Monero holds a place in top 10. It is catching the sights of developers and users due to its provided facilities and opportunities for further development. Let’s hope that Monero will win more hearts and will make its bright image permanent in the market.