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_nur (OP)
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June 23, 2016, 03:18:26 PM |
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Monero’s most unique features is the use of CryptoNote, a codebase developed in 2012 independently of BitCoin and other Altcoins. CryptoNight, the hash function of CryptoNote, is designed to privilege CPU miners over ASIC miners and GPU miners, and it has been one of the most successful cryptocurrencies at resisting ASIC mining.
CryptoNote also employs several strategies to render transactions anonymous while preserving the integrity of currency. In brief, it employs ring-signatures for verifying transactions, generates transaction-specific keys to de-couple person-keys from transactions, and uses key “images” (one-way functions of the transaction-specific keys) to verify transactions. An explanation of the technical details can be found here.
One final implication of this misdirection is that the network is highly resistant to blockchain analysis. Linking transactions to specific senders and receivers is nearly impossible, meaning network statistics are difficult to gather and interpret. Even exact transaction amounts are hidden. This obscures not only individuals within the network but behavior of the network as a whole.
Interestly, Monero highlights this feature as an element of Net Neutrality while ByteCoin does not. The hidden identities of users means traffic from certain sources and to certain destinations can’t be targeted, blocked, or slowed.
As of October 11th, 2015, Monero’s marketcap was 75% of ByteCoin’s, despite the latter’s greater supply and age. Some consider Monero as the leading cryptocurrency for anonymity.
Mining / Minting
Monero uses a proof-of-work (POW) scheme that is highly dependent on memory rather than calculation speed. This, and several other features, privileges CPU mining over ASIC mining, lowering barriers to mining participation. The POW scheme also functions as a voting system for the order of transactions, supply distribution, and new features. Prioritizing CPU mining helps CryptoNote currencies realize Satoshi’s original vision of “one CPU, one vote.” Shortly after Monero’s launch, a GPU miner was introduced, but it hasn’t had a significant edge over CPU mining.
Difficulty
The target time for creating a block is 60 seconds, and the difficulty retargets each block. The max supply is 18.4 million XMR. The block reward decreases each block, starting with 17.59 Monero, but at the fast rate of coin emission (ever 60 seconds) and fast rate of reward diminishment, the coin will be 85% mined in four years and almost 100% mined in eight, after which a 1% inflation rate will maintain the incentive to mine.
Launch
Monero launched on April 18, 2014 with no instamine or premine. It was hailed as a ‘fair’ launch, in direct contrast the mysterious launch of its parent ByteCoin.
Community and Founders
The two public members of the Monero Core Team are Riccardo Spagni, in South Africa and David Latapie, of France. The other five members are choosing to stay anonymous. Five members of the Core Team prefer to stay pseudonymous for the moment, but two of them are more public and have revealed their real identities. Monero Research Labs is the developer community (including but not limited to the core developer team) which proposes improvements, and the three official members go by the pseudonyms Surae Neother, XXX Neother, and XX Neother.
Newsworthy Events
On Sept 4, 2014, an unknown actor executed an attack on Monero which partitioned the network into two subsets. The code targetted was introduced after the ByteCoin fork (verify), though given available documentation on the code, the attacker is presumed to be deeply familiar with the CryptoNote codebase. The attack exploited the fact that the Monero code rounded data structures to fit into Merkle Trees, allowing the attacker two create two blocks with the same hash. This split the network into two, though it wasn’t an intentional fork and major exchanges still treated Monero as one currency. This effectively doubled everyone’s balances for a brief period, allowing coins on network A and network B to be spent differently. The fix was introduced on Sept 6, 2014. For reasons unknown, most mining pools ended up in one network, and slowly the second network was starved. The full ramifications of this partition are still unknown. An explanation of the attack, published on Sept 12 2014, can be found here.
Monero strangely had a number of clones that launched almost immediately.
Research and References
CryptoNote has an official WhitePaper dated October 17, 2013, authored by Nicolas van Saberhagen, and titled “CryptoNote v 2.0.” Surae Neother, a mathematician hired by Monero developers, criticized the math behind the white paper in a separate white paper released July 14, 2014. Surae Noether, a psuedonym, is currently the lead researcher forthe Monero Research Lab.http://www.smithandcrown.com/currency/monero/
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