Summary

Monero is an open-source cryptocurrency created in April 2014 that focuses on privacy, security, untraceability, and decentralization running on Windows, Mac, Linux, Android, iOS, and FreeBSD. Monero is based on the CryptoNote protocol possessing the CryptoNight proof-of-work hash algorithm.

Rather than using a bank, Monero as a private digital currency, allowing the user to act as their own bank. By doing so, users can access their funds safely without having their balance and/or activity being tracked.

Team

Monero was launched by “thankful_for_today” who was a Bitcointalk forum user. Since then, Monero has had a large community of developers and engineers consistently improving on Monero’s privacy mechanisms to keep Monero at the top of privacy based cryptocurrencies, as well as to avoid any future attacks or exploitation.

How Monero Works

Everyone has a public address, the funds a user ows are not associated with any particular address, unlike Bitcoin. If a user gives someone their public funds, that person will not be able to access the total amount. In the process of a transaction, the Monero platform creates a new one-time address as the destination called a stealth address, which is not linked to the recipients public address. Allowing both the sender and the recipient to keep their transaction records private. Another method Monero uses to hide the source from where the funds are sent is transaction mixing. Transaction mixing is when a user sends funds, several other funds are chosen by the user to appear as possible sources so that neither the recipient nor any other user on the platform can tell the source of which the funds came from.

Key Highlights

• Monero is fungible (every unit of the currency can be substituted by another unit)
• Transactions on the Monero Blockchain cannot be linked to a specific user
• Transactions are confirmed by distributed consensus