The Monero Moon (Issue 55)
The Monero Moon (Issue 55)
The Monero Moon is a curated weekly newsletter covering all the latest news within Monero (XMR).
Table of Contents:
Development, Releases, and Technology
Monero underwent a network upgrade (hard-fork) on the 13th of August 2022, at block 2,688,888, with v16 being activated 720 blocks later at block height 2,689,608.
The network upgrade included a variety of new features:
Ring-size increase from 11 to 16 to increase privacy
Viewtags to reduce wallet-sync times by up to 40%
Bulletproofs+ to reduce transaction sizes by ~7%, and improve verification performance by ~7%.
According to reports, the update went through smoothly however some third party wallet providers and exchanges ran into minor issues that are mostly fixed. Note that all users must update their Monero software, such as wallets or nodes, to remain compatible with the network.
The official Monero wallets CLI & GUI v0.18.1.0 'Fluorine Fermi' have now been released. You can find more information and download links here and here.
COMIT have released xmr-btc-swap v0.11. This release improves usability and ensures compatibility for users to keep performing XMR-BTC atomic swaps after the network upgrade. It also includes a variety of added improvements. Check it out here. Additional information can be found here.
Monero-Bash v1.8.0 has now been released. This release includes a number of new features such as P2Pool statistics. Monero-bash is a Linux bash wrapper/manager for monerod, monero-wallet-cli, XMRig and P2Pool. As seen in this video, you can use monero-bash to download, setup, and mine on P2Pool in under two minutes. Please be aware that monero-bash v2.0.0 is in progress, so soon v1.x.x versions will not be compatible.
![r/Monero - [monero-bash v1.8.0] released](https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fbucketeer-e05bbc84-baa3-437e-9518-adb32be77984.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Fe030356d-cf9b-487c-b252-fd69034e977d_2157x1669.png "r/Monero - [monero-bash v1.8.0] released")
Monerujo, an android wallet for Monero that includes Ledger hardware wallet support, has released v3.0.2. Check out this post for more information!
Feather Wallet v2.1.0 has been released. Feather Wallet is a free Electrum-style Monero wallet with a bunch of handy features. You can read more about the latest update here, and find download links on the Feather Wallet website.
Ledger Monero App v1.8.0 has been released. This enables Ledger hardware wallet users to remain compatible with the network once they have updated. If you use a Ledger with your Monero wallet, be sure to update the app on your Ledger. More information can be found here.
Trezor’s firmware update to support Monero post-network-upgrade has now been released. It’s probably easier to update via the Trezor Suite, but you can also download it here. Reach out to Trezor if you have any problems.
Monero had a daily all time high of 61,305 transactions on August 12th.
Monero also had a daily all time high transaction percentage against Bitcoin of 22.8%.
Also on August 12th, Monero also experienced a 10 MB transaction pool!
CryptoMorpheus_ has released 8 brand new charts on Moneroj.net to celebrate Monero’s network upgrade. These include charts related to P2Pool, mining profitability, and Metcalfe's Model Deviation (BTC). Check them out here.
MineXMR has informed miners they have delayed the closure of the MineXMR pool until August 19th. MineXMR recommends users switch to decentralized mining pool P2Pool. More information can be found here.
MineXMR was once the largest Monero mining pool. While supportxmr and nanopool have now ended up the two largest mining pools, Hashvault has perhaps seen the biggest percentage of network hashrate gains, growing from ~2% in early July to 10% today. P2Pool has grown from 4% to 6% over this same time period.
Mindos2055 was extremely lucky to find out they had solo-mined a block after just 30mins when they left their PC on and didn’t realize they were solo mining.
Want to get involved mining Monero? aFungible has written a non-technical guide about how much you can earn per day mining Monero. Check out the full guide here!
Monero Observer have put out a new Monero Dev Activity Report to provide a big picture view of Monero development activity throughout the past week. If you’re interested in the nitty gritty, check it out here.
General News
gnuteardrops from monero.graphics has created a cool infographic in celebration of Monero’s network upgrade last weekend! Check out their website for other cool Monero graphics you are free to use and share.
Monero Talk put out Monerotopia Episode #78 earlier this week. It includes a weekly XMR price report, discussion about the Tornado Cash sanctions, the Network Upgrade with Seth For Privacy, and more. Check it out here!
Monero Talk also interviewed Benjamin Shaffer who works as legal counsel for Goldback, the company producing the world’s first physical, interchangeable, gold money notes. Check out the full interview here!
It was reported that Dutch authorities have arrested a suspected developer of Ethereum mixing service Tornado Cash, after it was recently sanctioned U.S. Department of the Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC). OFAC alleges over $7 billion worth of digital currencies were laundered through Tornado Cash since 2019. It is still unknown if the Tornado Cash developer was arrested for contributing code to Tornado Cash (an open source project), or for unrelated reasons. You can read more about the sanctioning of Tornado Cash here. DeFi Education Fund on Twitter appears to be a good ongoing source of information if you’re interested in following this story. This case is being closely watched by many within the crypto community as it has the potential to serve as a precedent for future possible cases against cryptocurrency developers.
In response to the sanctioning of Tornado Cash, Coin Center, the leading non-profit focused on the policy issues facing cryptocurrencies, published ‘Analysis: What is and what is not a sanctionable entity in the Tornado Cash case’.
Justin Ehrenhofer, VC of operations at Cake Wallet, recently appeared on Coin Desk to discuss the implications of the Tornado Cash sanctions in relation to Monero, stating:
“Monero was made for this. If you’re worried about governments going after any specific type of protocol or group of individuals running a decentralized network, that literally is what Monero and its community have invested its resources in since 2014, and making it difficult to do.”
Ehrenhofer outlines how authorities would have a hard time going after Monero because of its CPU mining algorithm, so they can’t go after Monero mining hardware manufacturers as they could with Bitcoin and ASICS. He also mentions that with private transactions, miners can’t selectively censor transactions, and while an address could be sanctioned, because the sender and receiver are private, you cannot conduct mass surveillance of the Monero blockchain. Check out the video here or below.
Steve Walbroehl, co-founder of blockchain security firm Halborn, was quoted in a BleepingComputer article titled ‘Monero hard fork makes hackers' favorite coin even more private’, explaining:
Monero’s network upgrade received press coverage from major cryptocurrency news websites.
Coin Desk published ‘Crypto Privacy Protocol Monero Is Getting a Major Upgrade’
Decrypt published ‘Monero Rolls Out Enhanced Privacy Features With Hard Fork’
Daily Coin published ‘Monero Hard Fork Goes Live, Introduces Improved Security And Privacy Features’
Events
A Monero Research Lab (MRL) meeting will take place on Wednesday August 24th at 1700 UTC. You can find links to more information regarding the meeting here, thanks to the Monero Observer. The MRL meeting will take place in the #monero-research-lab channel on IRC if you want to lurk in real time.
Exchanges and Merchants
Cake Wallet reported that since the Monero fork, Cake Wallet's unique downloads have gone up 50%, and their Monero.com wallet's downloads have gone up 110%, compared to the week before on iOS. Installs on android also saw a bump up, with a 40% increase for Cake Wallet and 10% for the Monero.com wallet.
The Cake Labs team provided an update to the terms and conditions of Cake Pay, informing users that to continue using the service, their ‘provider’ will need to start collecting an App ID along with an email. This only affects you if you use the Cake Pay gift card service. More detailed information regarding Cake Pay can be found here.
ShopInBit’s XMR payment option was unavailable for a while due to an error with the last BTCPayserver update, however thanks to Seth For Privacy they’ve fixed the issue and are back online accepting XMR. Check out this post for more information. ShopInBit are currently testing a new privacy delivery feature ‘Pickup & Meetup’ so if you're located in Germany, feel free to try it out.
A number of exchanges are reported to not be allowing XMR withdrawals after the network upgrade. According to MoneroFox, exchanges that currently allow withdrawals and deposits are:
Kraken
NiceHashEx
Bitfinex
Gate
TradeOgre
It has also been reported that after a short delay, Binance is now allowing withdrawals and deposits too.
Community Crowdfunding
A CCS proposal to fund the next 18 issues of The Monero Moon newsletter is currently open and it would be great if you could comment on it here.
Several crowdfunding proposals are awaiting community feedback before they can start accepting funds through the Community Crowdfunding System (CCS). For now, they are just proposals, but if they receive some positive feedback from the community they will be moved to a “Funding Required” stage so that they can accept Monero donations through the CCS.
CCS Projects requiring funding or have been recently funded:
The MAGIC Monero Fund is raising funds for noot to continue development on ETH-XMR atomic swaps. View the GoFundMe page here. You can also donate directly with crypto or credit/debit card here.
Trading & Speculation
XMR market cap dominance has trended upwards for more than six months since the end of January 2022.
On the XMR/BTC weekly chart it appears resistance at ~0.0066btc has now been back tested twice and held as support. If this is more than just a 'bear market rally' then one hopes for trend continuation to the upside.
Check out this price report from the latest Monerotopia episode #78 thanks to aFungible!
Mownehro shared a Tweet showing a high number of large orders for XMR.
bawdyanarchist has provided some interesting speculation regarding Monero’s price action over the past few weeks. Read it here!
Performance
Total Monero in Circulation — 18,162,476 XMR
Monero Total Marketcap — $3,055,155,579
Coinmarketcap Ranking — #27 (last week #29)
XMR/USD Price — $168 USD
XMR/BTC Price — 0.007177 BTC
LocalMonero.co Peer to Peer Street Price — $176 USD
Average Transaction Fee — 0.00013 XMR ($0.02)
Monero Network Hashrate —2.471 Ghash/s
Monero Mining Pools Hashrate Distribution —
Entertainment
Donate
If you like the newsletter and want more of this content, then shout me a round of beers by donating some spare Monero you didn’t lose during your boating accident.
49koJtBLRCjcfqVD93fosJGKLYFPZuBUz1iRvqJdMz9yBXV93UgKdSyDSbwUkdsytdSRvwKZhRTPp3de4fXzcioQGAFzWUU
Support Monero
Want to help contribute to the Monero Project? Developers, marketers, event coordinators, translators, Instagram personalities, meme creators, public speakers — whatever your skills may be, it is extremely likely there is something you can do to assist. Reach out to the Monero community on Reddit, IRC, GitHub, Twitter, or Telegram. The official Monero website is GetMonero.org.
Past Issues
Issue 54 / Issue 53 / Issue 52 / Issue 51 / Issue 50 / Issue 49 / Issue 48 / Issue 47 / Issue 46 / Issue 45 / Issue 44 / Issue 43 / Issue 42 / Issue 41 / Issue 40 / Issue 39 / Issue 38 / Issue 37 / Issue 36 / Issue 35 / Issue 34 / Issue 33 / Issue 32 / Issue 31 / Issue 30 / Issue 29 / Issue 28 / Issue 27 / Issue 26 / Issue 25 / Issue 24 / Issue 23 / Issue 22 / Issue 21 / Issue 20 / Issue 19 / Issue 18 / Issue 17 / Issue 16 / Issue 15 / Issue 14 / Issue 13 / Issue 12 / Issue 11 / Issue 10 / Issue 9 / Issue 8 / Issue 7 / Issue 6 / Issue 5 / Issue 4 / Issue 3 / Issue 2 / Issue 1
Socials
If you have any suggestions, corrections, or feedback, please contact me on Twitter @johnfoss69 or on Reddit u/johnfoss68.
DISCLAIMER: This publication contains opinions for informational and entertainment purposes only and does not constitute investment advice. Information may contain errors and omissions. Use solely at your own risk. The author of this publication and/or the authors of articles linked to and from this site may have financial investments that may bias their opinions, including ownership of Monero currency. Always do your own research, form your own opinions, and never take risks with money or trust third parties without verifying their credibility.
