Monero cryptocurrency - real value and real prospects + mining

One Monero hard fork resulted in four new projects.

On April 6, the Monero cryptocurrency carried out a hard fork to the 12th version of its protocol. However, he was not supported by everyone. Following the example once set by Ethereum Classic, some users have decided to stick with the old Monero blockchain without spinning off into a separate project. So now there is Monero Classic, Monero 0 (XMZ), Monero Original (XMO), and another project called Monero Classic (XMC): all included in version 11 of the Monero protocol. This means that they all remain compatible with the same network using the same asset (coin), just with different names.

We present to you the history of the Monero blockchain before the significant hard fork and four different projects that remain on the old blockchain (while the new one will be the full owner of Monero - XMR).

Unique electronic Monero - how was it created?

Monero was launched on April 18, 2014 and was originally called BitMonero, combining Bit (as in Bitcoin) and Monero (“coin” in Esperanto).

Unlike many online currencies that are derivatives of Bitcoin, it is based on an obfuscating blockchain protocol. This algorithm is called CryptoNote, and its modular code has been highly praised by Bitcoin programmers, in particular Vladimir Van der Laan.

After being immediately attacked upon launch, Monero has recovered from an unusual and novel hacker attack.

After 2 years, discussions appeared on financial forums: “Why is Monero growing... How to start working with a Monero wallet... Can Monero replace Bitcoin... Where is it more profitable to exchange... How to invest...”. What caused this interest?

By the beginning of December 2015, the Monero to Bitcoin exchange rate was 0.00097. 9 months later, by September 2016, this ratio had increased 27 times and was quoted as 0.0265. Considering that Bitcoin itself grew by almost 50% during this period - from 430 per 1 unit to 610 dollars, the actual growth of Monero was about 4000% over 3 quarters!

The result is that in 2016, the Monero currency demonstrated an unprecedented increase in market capitalization, from just under 5 million to almost 135 million dollars.

Just three years after its release

Currently, Monero is one of the ten most traded crypto coins, ranking 6th in terms of a combination of evaluation factors with a market capitalization of more than $380 million. This indicator is calculated as the product of the actual number of coins and the exchange rate of the alternative currency.

The stock ticker of the presented cryptocurrency is XMR. The current Monero/Bitcoin rate is 0.0156, which is almost 50% of the pair’s correction on a medium-term scale. At the same time, Bitcoin itself reached $1,720 per unit by May 2022, and a recalculation of rates will show that 1XMR, which cost about $16 with its maximum rate to Bitcoin of 0.0265, is today valued at almost $27.

Reasons for the popularity of Monero

Three factors contributed to the authority of the new currency:

1. Integration with the darknet AplhaBay - a top webmarket and more. Monero was also included in the payment system:

• AppStore – one of the sections with applications for mobile devices of the electronic store;
• The iTunes Store added XMR to the list of transfer methods in the fall of 2016;
• the legitimacy of this currency was recognized by the global consortium Oasis, which manages e-commerce standards;
• accepted for payment by the SIGAINT postal service.

1. The growing demand for private digital currencies was an independent background and became a logical consequence.
2. Reliable encryption providing a high degree of security - Monero uses the Proof-of-work algorithm, which proves the execution of the work, and in addition:

• the Cryptonight hashing algorithm itself;
• a unique protocol for creating a one-time address that hides all information about the account and its owner;
• Digital algorithms 100% protect electronic coins from hacking.

Another advantage can be considered the innovative ring signature system, which acts as a mixer of public keys and excludes the identification of any participant in the chain.

As of January 10, 2022, the confidentiality of Monero transactions has been enhanced with an option that uses the Bitcoin algorithm. The main developer of the transaction secrecy system is G. Maxwell.

The hard fork was applied to the chain starting from block No. 1220516. The ring signature algorithm has been changed so that there is no display of the number of persons involved in transactions with participants outside the system.

An improved version of ring signatures is called RingCT, which additionally allows you to hide amounts, their origin and purpose. The RingCT transaction works by default, but until September 2017 you can still make transfers without additional protection.

Our advantages

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Clear interface. You will not have any difficulties learning the functionality. Any user, even those who have never used such services before, will quickly understand the convenient navigation.

Possibility to exchange Monero (XMR)

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Interesting facts about cryptocurrency

1. The Monero project was developed without funding by a group of programmers as a hobby.
2. The encryption foundation was laid by mathematician D. Bernstein (USA).
3. Kraken, a large exchange platform based in San Francisco, launched Monero trading with Bitcoin, USD and EUR at the beginning of 2017.
4. An unlimited number of coins are available for release. The initial issue will be 18.400 million coins, which will take 8 years - until the end of May 2022. After this, only miners will support the system - opening a new block will take 120 seconds, and the reward will be 0.6 Monero.
5. In total, about 14.4 million coins were found (as of 05/10/17).
6. Monero ranks sixth in the electronic money ranking based on the following criteria:

• liquidity - 78%;
• support on social networks 52%;
• activity in improving the source code - 85%.

The leaders in popularity among digital coins are Bitcoin and Ethereum. It is noteworthy that Monero is slightly inferior to the following currencies - Ripple, Litecoin and Dagcoin only in terms of popularity in the social environment and is quite capable of getting into the top three in the near future.

Digital currency vulnerabilities

Mining Monero using a GPU is inefficient, as it requires a significant amount of memory, approximately 8 times the size required for Bitcoin operations.

The anonymity of transfers in Monero is not yet 100% guaranteed. Hypothetically, an attacker who manages to take over most of the network could gain control of some transactions.

Monero-Classic (XMC)

On the project's website, the person behind Monero-Classic (XMC) introduces himself as "PZ, early Bitcoin advocate and blockchain ecosystem developer."

Just like the representative of Monero Classic described above, PZ explains on the site that “the emergence of specialized cryptocurrency mining machines is a normal phenomenon in a market economy.” In addition, PZ argues that professional mining devices could protect against botnets attacking Monero (there are more than 500,000 of them), which are unauthorizedly used to mine this cryptocurrency.

Since the project is being actively promoted by Bitmain's AntPool mining pool and, of course, because Bitmain will benefit from mining Monero using CryptoNight, some users have become suspicious that this ASIC manufacturer is involved in the Monero-Classic (XMC) project. However, speaking with Bitcoin Magazine journalists, a Bitmain employee rejected such assumptions.

Bitcoin Magazine was unable to contact PZ or other representatives of Monero-Classic (XMC) by the time this post was published.

How to mine Monero?

The CryptoNight Monero algorithm is designed to support viable CPU mining, although currently GPU mining is the only profitable method.

There are no specialized hardware ASICs for Monero mining yet. The mining algorithm itself actively uses AES or Rijndael - a symmetric block encryption method for microprocessors.

You should avoid resources with aggressive advertising, bright design and the promise of high rewards. Such “pools” are 110% hype and have nothing to do with digital mining.

For mining, you need to download software from the official website, which consists of 2 files - bitmonerod and simplewallet:

• unzip with the “extract all” command and save on your hard drive;
• run MoneroClient.Net.exe, a system warning may appear, it should be ignored;
• if access to the Network is blocked, you need to enable the Private networks option - private network;
• together with the running Monero client, a wallet and a daemon (simplewallet and bimonerrod) will start working;
• on MoneroClient.Net.exe, the right mouse button opens the menu. Here you can make custom settings.

You should back up regularly and store documents independently of your PC. This operation is carried out by the Backup Manager command on the selected file, and the client settings also have an automatic self-saving mode.

Hard fork

To update its current protocol, the Monero project carries out a hard fork every six months. The latest hard fork introduced several new features: an increased ring size to improve the privacy of larger and more resource-intensive transactions, multi-signature transactions, initial support for the Ledger Nano S hardware wallet, and more.

The latest hard fork also introduced customization options for the CryptoNight hashing algorithm. This backwards-incompatible change makes the use of ASIC miners useless. The use of such hardware is a greater concern for CryptoNight than for other algorithms, since ASIC miners will be able to launch DDoS attacks on GPU miners and on network nodes that are not involved in mining.

The risks associated with using ASIC miners were the main reason why most Monero developers and users agreed to the hard fork. However, for some it only brought grief. For example, major hardware manufacturer Bitmain, as well as smaller ones Halong Mining and PinIdea, recently announced that they had developed ASIC miners for the CryptoNight algorithm. After the Monero hard fork, all this equipment will be useless.

Over the past two weeks, four projects have announced that they will continue to use the protocol that was in place before the Monero hard fork. Since they all work with the same protocol, they represent (at least according to Bitcoin Magazine) the same network and coin, despite different names and logos.

That is, these are four new projects that continue to use the blockchain that existed before the Monero hard fork.

Creating a virtual wallet

A form for creating a wallet will appear in the launched program. After entering and confirming the password, the new wallet is synchronized with the blockchain. It is suitable not only for this cryptocurrency, but also for testing the program.

Most of its options are similar to other crypto wallets, but there are some differences. So, when making a payment, a large amount will be withdrawn from the balance, then it will be corrected to the correct values.

You can replenish your wallet by receiving transfers from other persons, exchanging or buying cryptocurrencies on the exchange. The wallet address itself can be provided to anyone. You must keep your login password secret.

It is possible to restore your wallet using a specially created phrase of 24 English words; you need to save it and use it, if necessary.

Mining algorithm

Using pop-up tips, you need to configure the mining speed and dashboard widgets - PPLNS for long-term mining and PPS for short-term mining.

Using a video card, you can speed up the process, but energy consumption will increase. With the help of a GPU and Linux OS, costs are optimized and mining efficiency is increased.

Withdrawal of mined coins to your wallet is available from 0.01 units.

Monero Original (XMO)

Not much is known about the Monero Original project and the people behind it.

The project is listed on GitHub and he sent a press release to several media outlets. The latter contained a statement from the “lead developer of the Monero Original team”:

Monero has always been about freedom of choice, project individuality, and a strong community. We provide Monero fans with the opportunity to support the iconic coin and remain on the original blockchain. The Monero Original team stands for individuality and originality - attributes of the evolutionary path of development. We are very pleased to see that our beloved coin has matured, and we want to preserve these qualities.

The HitBTC exchange stated that all holders of XMR at the time of the hard fork will receive XMO. However, HitBTC does not claim that it will list XMO, although this is a possibility.

Bitcoin Magazine reached out to Monero Original for comment but did not receive a response.

Development forecasts

3 factors will influence the price of Monero in the future:

1. List of suppliers of goods and services that use Monero for payments. Recalling that the cryptocurrency's stunning rise in 2016 coincided with its adoption by the AppStore, similar plans by other major electronic players will be a positive signal for Monero prices. Currently, the currency serves more for exchange transactions with crypto coins.
2. The advantage over Bitcoin in terms of anonymity must be confirmed by time. The upcoming upgrade in September 2022 may attract new interest in the currency; perhaps some participants in the Internet commerce market are expecting this event. Maximalists devoted to Bitcoin expect that Monero will re-qualify as a version of the father of all cryptocurrencies. The Monero developers probably have other ideas.
3. Even if it succeeds as an economic instrument and remains competitive with Bitcoin, Monero may still not have enough existing emission to fully participate in crypto-commerce, which will limit its acceptance for settlements.

Monero 0 (XMZ)

In a conversation with Bitcoin Magazine, a representative of Monero 0 (XMZ) called his group “engaged users” and “Proof-of-Work maximalists” for whom mining is a hobby.

The Monero 0 website states:

We decided that the Monero Project strategy with its endless hard forks has ceased to be stable and reasonable. We believe that Satoshi's Proof-of-Work is the only decentralized consensus mechanism. The so-called network updates that are centrally enabled by the Monero Project are a Trojan horse that compromises the effectiveness of Proof-of-Work on the Monero network. Monero 0 is not a hard fork; this is a real Monero coin.

The Monero 0 spokesperson also said that Monero (XMR) is an “NVDA project,” that Proof-of-Fork is not a consensus method, and that “Bitmain is trying to destroy Monero.”