Monero is a decentralized and anonymous cryptocurrency with CryptoNight algorithm and which is based on CryptoNote protocol. CryptoNote is a technology that allows the creation of cryptocurrencies which are privacy-centric. Monero is currently trading at $12.67 and has a market cap of $176,198,750. It also has the fastest block generation speed among all CryptoNotes, 1 minute to be exact. Regarding market cap, Monero is the second most successful CryptoNote currency, with a very active community around the coin.
Monero, launched in 2014, aims to be an untraceable and fungible digital exchange medium. its various forks. You are your own bank with Monero. Only you are responsible and control your funds, plus your accounts and transactions are kept private from prying eyes. Monero features untraceable payments, unlinkable transactions, blockchain analysis resistance and adaptive parameters. Backup of the functionality is done by cryptographically proven schemes academic research. The Research Lab of Monero does most of this research. Currently, Monero is ranked fifth among all cryptocurrencies regarding the market cap. Monero implements four main features which are privacy-enabling that make it stand out from the cryptocurrency market.
One is the dual key stealth address feature which Monero implements to hide the location of a sent payment. On the Monero blockchain, the transaction where the receiving address is sent can be seen. However, it is an address that is only used once and is generated automatically from Monero's public receiver's address. The addresses that can only be used once and are used for payments are not connected to Monero user public addresses. That public address is incorporated in generating a receiving address which is new for each payment.
Also, Ring signatures are incorporated by Monero in masking transaction origin. It is not clear which outputs were employed in a transaction which is from the point of view of someone who is looking at the blockchain. In other words, rather than the one true source of payment, a person observing the blockchain sees few origins of payment. The anonymity signal provided by the ring signature feature improves when time goes by since the number of probable outputs incorporated in a transaction goes up with each transaction that is newly created. This is because, from an observer's point of view, the output is never really "spent". A Multi-layered Linkable Spontaneous Anonymous Group signature is an improved version of ring signatures introduced by RingCT which allows for destinations, hidden amounts and origins of transactions with reasonable efficiency and verifiable coin generation.
A Ring confidential transaction is another Monero privacy feature based on confidential transactions of the Blockstream. Masking the amounts involved in transactions is the basic idea here. Transaction inputs are split into common denominations in Monero. Via a hard fork, RingCT was recently added to Monero, and via another hard fork later this year, it will become a mandatory feature.
Incorporation of i2p to mask the original IP address of a transaction is the 4th privacy feature found in Monero. When a new transaction occurs, a node gets a notification. The node only has knowledge of the i2p address where the transaction originated from, which is not easily cuffed down to any physical location (unlike common IP addresses). However, the i2p integration on Monero is still work-in-progress.
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