Monero was born in 2014 with the features of higher anonymity and faster transaction speed by contract with bitcoin. In terms of Monero, it is necessary to mention an insignificant but important incident in the blockchain industry in September 2017, that is, the official adoption of RingTC anonymous technology. In the situation of dominance by bitcoin, the original cryptocurrency and popular DASH in the market, the Monero also developed into one of the mainstream currencies by means of the technology upgrading.

 

Privacy Coin in the Market

Cryptocurrency is divided into overt coins and privacy coins.

For the overt coin, the amount of each transaction, the transaction time, the sender and the receiver through the blockchain browser can be viewed; while for the privacy coin, all the aforesaid information cannot be traced.

Take bitcoin as an example, to start a transaction, the address of both parties and the transaction data will be packaged and sent to the mining workers. That’s to say, once I know your address, I can know the object of the transaction.

Then, all the transaction information can be viewed through the blockchain.

Privacy coin is a special blockchain token which hides the trading amount in the transaction as well as the sender and receiver.

In the Monero blockchain browser, only the block information is provided while the trading amount is encrypted. The only information to be viewed is the amount of Monero having been mined.

Shen published a paper Ring Confidential Transactions in 2015, which laid the foundation for the algorithm of Monero. RingCT means a ring privacy transmission. We can describe it as the joint letter in ancient times. In order not to expose who is the initiator, all the signatures are designed in a ring without the sequential order so that nobody can know who is the real initiator.

Then, when being applied to the blockchain of Monero, the same transaction will carry many public key signatures. The ring encryption technology is still the same as the public key and private key encryption mechanism of the bitcoin based on the hash. The ring encryption technology only adopts multiple public key encryption to conduct decryption and verification with the receiver’s private key.

 

Surging Undercurrent

After discovering the problem of low anonymity of bitcoin, Monero focuses on the anonymity of DASH, so it has been greatly favored in the market since its birth. Especially as DASH gradually shifted from privacy coin to overt coins, the problem of short supply was even more serious.

Today, Monero has been widely used in many situations, such as smart contract, bidding, auction, public welfare and so on. Meanwhile, the criminals and black trades also values the anonymity of Monero and choose to use it as a circulation tool.

So, it also highlights the strong circulation of Monero.

 

Mysterious Team

Monero is under the leadership of a seven-people team, five are still anonymous while two have revealed their identities. They are David Latapie and Riccardo Spagni aka “Fluffypony”. The project is carried out in the form of open-source crowdfunding. Although there is only limited information about the team, it is still hard to find out what kind of people are maintaining Monero blockchain network behind. However, it never affects the popularity of Monero.

In April 2018, the Monero was severely divided and the hard fork resulted in the birth of four branches, and each of them claimed itself the original Monero. However, the incident did not result in a negative effect. On the contrary, the price of Monero hit a record high of US$286 during that period.

 

Excavate Potential Value

Actually, the fork is not a bad thing for the mining workers.

Price	1 XMR = 1267 RMB
Hashrate of 6 Radeon RX 580 cards	8000 H/s
Power	2000w
Electricity cost	0.5 yuan/KWH
Pool rate	1%
Total cost of miner	15,000RMB
Daily income	50RMB

Daily income is about ¥50, that is, about 1,500 yuan per month, cost recovery within 1-1.5 years.

According to the data above, it’s still relatively safe to conduct mining based on different understandings.

Strictly speaking, Monero is not “ASIC resistant”, but creating ASIC for Monero will be so costly that it is not worthwhile. When people say Monero is based on the CryptoNote system, it means people have made it very different from bitcoin. The hash algorithm adopted in CtryptoNote-based systems is called “CryptoNight”.

Cryptonight was created to build a more fair and more decentralized currency system. The cryptocurrency adopting Cryptonight cannot be mined with ASIC. Its purpose is to prevent the appearance of pools to make the currency more evenly distributed.

Although the market response is inactive, the cost of mining is not so high. The currency market is full of ups and downs, so once the price skyrockets with the rising costs, many mining workers will return with higher hashrate and difficulties. The profits increases, so it’s the same with the difficulty.

Just as we have said, mine first and hoard it!

 

Appendix

Series articles on cryptocurrency introduction and analysis at EastShore:

• What Are People Arguing Against and for Bitcoin? | EastShore Mining Devices
• With the upcoming Litecoin Halving, Will Litecoin Maintain Its Status? | EastShore Mining Devices
• Where are the Mainstream Cryptocurrencies Heading to? | EastShore Mining Devices
• What’s the Charm of DASH? | EastShore Mining Devices
• The Untraceable Private Crypto Currency Monero | EastShore Mining Devices
• What’s Going on with DAG? | EastShore Mining Devices
• Is XDAG the Next Dark Horse? | EastShore Mining Devices
• Introduction of New Cryptocurrency Grin and Beam Based on MimbleWimble | EastShore Mining Devices
• Emerging New Cryptocurrencies | EastShore Mining Devices
• What will Facebook’s Libra bring to the world? | EastShore Mining Devices
• Observation and Reflection on Application of Private Currency | EastShore Mining Devices
• Introduction to Technical Framework and Applications of IPFS | EastShore Mining Devices

 

* Graph Credit: getmonero.org