Monero is well-known in the cryptocurrency industry as the leading privacy coin. The network uses these technologies to maintain the anonymity of transactions and who may be involved.
Ring Confidential Transactions (RingCT)
Mastering Monero defines RingCT as a “cryptographic technology that conceals the amount of moneroj (plural of Monero) being sent in any transaction.” With most crypto transactions, the amount is visible. RingCT conceals the amount by enabling the sender to verify that they have enough XMR without disclosing the amount.
Stealth Addresses
Stealth addresses are used to maintain a recipient’s privacy. For every Monero transaction, the network creates a disposable onetime address. This is to prevent recording of a recipient’s wallet address on the blockchain. The recipient can get the funds by using the private keys he/she got during the creation of their wallets. Senders will use the public keys in your address when they want to send you funds.
Ring Signatures
Ring signatures are used to maintain a sender’s privacy. Monero uses ring signatures to complete the verification process. Monero’s group-signing method enables one member of the group to sign verification digitally on behalf of the group. The transaction is verified, but impossible to find out which of the group members signed digitally.
Dandelion++
Dandelion++ is a protocol that obscures the IP address of any device used to complete transactions. Aside from keeping IP addresses private, the protocol decreases the risk of attacks on the Monero network.
These technologies guarantee the privacy, fungibility, and security of XMR.
Another feature that’s unique to Monero is its tail emission. A tail emission is a perpetual subsidy of block rewards even after the “last” XMR is minted. Monero miners receive incentives to secure the network by mining hashes. They receive the fees you pay for completing transactions, as well as a predetermined amount from the protocol itself, called a “block reward.” This block reward is how miners make the most money and keep them financially invested in the network’s security and to get new coins into circulation. The block reward will decrease over time in most crypto protocols, but Monero will always have a 0.6 $XMR block reward through tail emission. Block rewards in other cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin will reach 0 eventually and its miners will be fully reliant on transaction fees.
The benefits of Monero’s tail emission are:
• It will keep transaction fees reasonable and ensure network security;
• It will enable dynamic block sizes, which will make the network to be much more flexible in handling congestion. The dynamic block size will allow Monero to keep blocks small under ordinary circumstances and temporarily increase in times of congestion;
• It will Monero disinflationary, so XMR stays ahead of the inflation parameter without having to limit the token supply;
• It will assure Monero miners that they will not have to rely on transaction fees and gives them security of having an income for themselves regardless of the fee market;
• It will ensure that there will always be new XMR and allow new participants to get Monero without KYC via mining.
All these benefits will strengthen Monero as a digital cash and preserve its store of value. The tail emission is coming at block 2,541,623 around June 8, 2022 and will contribute to XMR’s long-term value.
XMR miners, users, and investors need to have a wallet to keep their XMR in. XMRWallet is an open-source secure Monero wallet. It’s web-based and there’s no need to download any software. Simply create an XMRWallet account. With XMRWallet, you are in control of your coins and your keys. It has multiple language support and best of all, it’s totally free.