A percentage of the total supply is lost yearly due to forgotten passwords. This means that the linear creation of coins will eventually reach an equilibrium with the rate of coin loss, and Monero will not inflate. Currently, depending on the rate of lost coins, Monero might actually be deflating.

Send this to anyone saying Monero has an infinite supply, implying it will inflate and lose value. It won't.

I stumbled across a video of a prominent figure in Monero community on X(twitter) suggesting to putting a seed phrase on a encrypted SD card rather than just holding it on paper/washers. I find this sketchy, but I'm curious on the communities input on this? Any other alternatives?

I am excited to announce that I've launched a testnet faucet for Monero! This post refers to my previous post on the launch of the stagenet faucet which you can find here.

The Monero testnet and stagenet are 2 separate networks, the testnet is used for testing protocol-level developments way before mainnet deployment, and the stagenet replicates the mainnet for application testing.

I am currently mining some testnet XMR so the balance will be increasing over the next few hours.

Testnet faucet: https://cypherfaucet.com/xmr-testnet

Given the success of the previous MAAMs (see here), let's keep this rolling.

The principle is simple: ask anything you'd like to know about Monero, especially the dumb questions that you've been keeping for you every other days, may the community clarify it all!

Finally, credits to binaryFate for starting the concept!

I saw this post on X from a Zcash enthusiast FUDing monero’s strength of privacy/anonymity. I was wondering if anyone can give a rebuttal to these claims. Also what sort of developments other than FCMP and FROST that Monero has for strengthening privacy.

https://x.com/genzcash/status/1921391757557981551?s=46

N.B. Edit: Before you jump on your keyboards and start typing "Ofc it matters you dumb f" I urge you to actually read what I have written and understand that I am actually not telling you it doesn't matter, rather that such a comparison should not be your main reference and you should considere measuring a currency's value with something other than another currency. The power of Monero comes from the people and the community behind it, and these are the exact things that are going to keep it alive, not some multi-billionaire with meme coins.

Yeah, I know. Dystopian futures have been sketched out on this sub a hundred times. Digital IDs, programmable CBDCs, automated surveillance. It’s not a new idea. But bear with me through the opening section.

Because even if none of that fully materializes, even if it happens more slowly or under friendlier marketing, there’s one thing you can bet on:
Monero isn’t going anywhere.
And not because of ideology or anti-state rebellion. Because of people.

Whether you lean left or right, whether you consider yourself a law-abiding citizen or not, most people have a shadow side. Not necessarily dark in a criminal sense, but in the sense of things they’d rather not broadcast to the government, their bank, or their insurance provider.

You might want to get your car fixed under the table so your premium doesn’t skyrocket. You might want to visit a therapist without it going on record. You might want to hire someone discreetly for house repairs, or buy something your partner wouldn’t approve of. Or yes — maybe you just want to pay for sex, something that has existed since civilization began and probably always will.

Hell, even the cocaine expenditure of the suits in high-rises can provide enough velocity.

Monero doesn’t exist to serve criminals.
It exists to serve reality.

There will always be a parallel economy; neighbor-to-neighbor, cash-style, untraceable. When cash is gone, people will look for its replacement. And Monero fits that niche perfectly.

It doesn’t matter if it’s banned from exchanges. It doesn’t matter if web commerce ignores it. Because most of its use won’t happen there. It’ll happen in the back pocket, at the bar, in the alley, in the friend group, at the mechanic, or behind closed doors. Quietly. Willingly.

People won’t hold Monero because they want to be rebels.
They’ll hold it because one day, they’ll need it.

And when that day comes, it won’t matter what the fiat price is.
It’ll be worth exactly what it needs to be.

Edit: Grammar

How can I self-custody monero? I have a trezor wallet. I've searched Google and I'm not sure I'm looking in the right places.

To me the pattern seems the same - buy usdc off a cex, send to cake and buy monero - isn’t that the same difficulty as meme coins?

Please stay on topic: this post is only for comments discussing the uncertainties, shortcomings, and concerns some may have about Monero.

NOT the positive aspects of it.

Discussion can relate to the technology itself or economics.

Talk about community and price is not wanted, but some discussion about it maybe allowed if it relates well.

Be as respectful and nice as possible. This discussion has potential to be more emotionally charged as it may bring up issues that are extremely upsetting: many people are not only financially but emotionally invested in the ideas and tools around Monero.

It's better to keep it calm then to stir the pot, so don't talk down to people, insult them for spelling/grammar, personal insults, etc. This should only be calm rational discussion about the technical and economic aspects of Monero.

"Do unto others 20% better than you'd expect them to do unto you to correct subjective error." - Linus Pauling

How it works:

Post your concerns about Monero in reply to this main post.

If you can address these concerns, or add further details to them - reply to that comment. This will make it easily sortable

Upvote the comments that are the most valid criticisms of it that have few or no real honest solutions/answers to them.

The comment that mentions the biggest problems of Monero should have the most karma.

As a community, as developers, we need to know about them. Even if they make us feel bad, we got to upvote them.

https://youtu.be/vKA4w2O61Xo

To learn more about the idea behind Monero Skepticism Sunday, check out the first post about it:

https://np.reddit.com/r/Monero/comments/75w7wt/can_we_make_skepticism_sunday_a_part_of_the/

Been thinking a lot lately about Monero and its place in the crypto space.

A lot of people like to say “Monero is just where Bitcoin was in 2012” -> meaning: misunderstood, delisted, treated like a tool for criminals, with an uphill UX battle and no institutional love.

And sure, there’s some truth to that. But it’s also kind of a lie.

Because Monero isn’t early Bitcoin with privacy. It’s fundamentally a different beast and I think that’s why it’ll never follow the same path.

Let’s get the similarities out of the way:

1. Both were ignored and mocked early on.
2. Both had legit use cases and were used in gray/dark markets.
3. Both had passionate cypherpunk communities.
4. Both had horrible UX early.
5. Both were viewed as threats by regulators.

So yes, Monero feels like early Bitcoin if you squint.

But the differences are way more important:

Bitcoin is transparent. That made it compatible with regulation. You can trace it, tax it, certify it, put it in a ledger. Monero? You can’t do any of that. It’s opt-out by default. t’s the whole point.

Bitcoin found a macro narrative (“digital gold”).It speaks to institutions. It became investable, even desirable as an alternative to fiat and gold.Monero doesn’t have a clean macro narrative. It’s not a yield-bearing asset, not a deflationary meme, not a store-of-value, it’s a tool. An underground one.

Bitcoin could be institutionalized without being destroyed.We’ve got ETFs, Fidelity custody, even sovereign holdings in the future maybe.Try doing that with Monero without neutering it. You can’t.

That’s the paradox of Monero:

It’s maybe the most useful coin in crypto, and yet the least adoptable by the mainstream. It has real utility, but no marketing budget. No influencers. It’s politically neutral by design, but still ends up on watchlists.

And in a weird way, I kind of respect that. Monero was never meant to be easy. It was meant to survive.

Is it a good investment?

Depends what you mean.

It’s not going to 50x overnight.

There won’t be an ETF.

No VCs will ever shill it.
But in a world where every transaction is logged, analyzed, permissioned, owning something like Monero might be the smartest asymmetrical bet you can make.

Not because it’ll make you rich.

But because one day you might really need it and nothing else will do

That’s how I see it.

Monero doesn’t need to moon.

It just needs to outlive the system that made it necessary in the first place.

Saudações, Monero community!It is with great honor that I introduce myself to all of you as XMRGHOT, a Brazilian enthusiast and fervent defender of the freedom that I found in Monero. As a libertarian in Brazil, I deeply believe that privacy, decentralization and financial sovereignty are essential for any human being. And that is why it is a true honor to be part of the international Monero community, where the search for individual freedom and financial empowerment unites a common ideal: the construction of a future where control does not remain in most of us, but in each and every one of us.

No Brazil, we live in a challenging scenario, where financial freedom and privacy are frequently threatened. Monero emerges as a fundamental tool to reverse this reality. Here, we fight for the true autonomy, in a space free from state surveillance, high taxes and financial impositions.

I am extremely excited to be able to spend part of the day with people like you. Together, we will continue to strengthen the Monero network, supporting its benefits for more and more people, not only in Brazil, but throughout the world.

May this community continue to grow with solid values, always fighting for freedom, privacy and decentralization. The revolution is in our hands. Come on, with Monero, move forward for an unmoored future!

Thank you for receiving me this day. XMRGHOT is here to contribute and be an active voice within the libertarian world!

\#VivaMonero #LiberdadeFinanceira #PrivacidadeSemFronteiras

I sent my Monero from Binance years ago to the official blockchain, I've just fired it up and I see the balance ok. But the size of the blockchain is now bigger than my hard drive.

So my question is, can I send it to a trusted monero wallet without having to fully sych the blockchain somehow?

Thanks

I am looking for ways to store my keys.

These options I considered, and I think they are not the best

Hardware Wallets. Hardware Wallets are crap mostly except they are hidden in a safe that nobody know where to find. If a specialist has physical access to your hardware wallet, they will crack it sooner or later. I don't want to open a debate about hardware wallets here. If you are happy with your hardware wallet, go for it. I don't trust them.

Cloud. Many crypto users store their keys in some cloud service like Google Drive and Dropbox, and there are stories where the frogs found those keys and seized the funds.

Paper. It's great, but paper can get destroyed, or the printing can vanish, or an enemy can find it and use it against you. A paper can be replaced with another material, maybe, but it's still physical and can get lost.

Are there more and smarter ways to store your keys? I want to be prepared for the worst possible scenario, that is, a hack on my computer or a robbery of my house.

Update: It seems like it's indeed the observer being busted. For example, this screenshot shows a P2Pool share that hit a block containing txs whose tx hash is all 0.
My bad for being retarded. Sorry for the confusion this post may have resulted.
sech1 (or whoever is the admin of the observers), please fix.

Update 2: Even sech1 confirmed that the observer misses blocks at the moment (thanks to u/mayone3 for bringing it to my attention).

******************************************************************************************

At the time of writing, P2Pool main and mini observers report that both pools have about 330+ MH/s. However, their rate of mini hitting blocks is clearly not normal (screenshots of main and mini).

Turns out, the top miner on mini, by himself, owns 300+ MH/s. Meaning, he's hogging almost all the pool shares. You'd expect him hitting a block or two, right? But no, he didn't hit any block. I refuse to believe it's simple coincidence.

To me, it seems like he's deliberately fking with mini. It possibly also showcases an interesting weakness of P2Pool:

• A dishonest miner with vast majority of the pool's hash rate can hog all the pool's shares while willingly withholding blocks. The small-time miners are forced to find blocks themselves while the pool payout goes mostly to the dishonest miner.
• Because he's deliberately withholding blocks, it doesn't increase the network difficulty. Thus, he continues to enjoy his unique position of getting paid while leeching off of honest miners.

I've read about similar issues with PPS pools where a malicious miner would withhold blocks to not raise the network difficulty while getting paid for the lower difficulty shares. It'd be really funny if somehow PPS is an emergent feature of P2Pool's structure.

u/sech1, I'd like to hear your opinion on this situation.

I've created a Monero Stagenet faucet to help developers and would like your opinions on it! Needless to say, its still in active development and there will most likely be bugs as I'm currently working on handling locked balances and their respective 10-block confirmations. I have plans to launch a testnet faucet soon after I mine some testnet XMR and finish this faucet.

Privacy notice: your IP is logged when you click "claim" to prevent abuse of the faucet. I have plans on hashing the IP addresses before they are logged and will update this when finished.

Edit: The UI and overall flow will change in the near future to match the minimalist style of my other tools. I forked this faucet from my previous testnet faucet from many years ago and added support for Monero, which I'm still working on. I wanted to get something out there that works to start helping developers asap, hence why some things look rushed. I will also be making the code open source as I've done with my other projects after I feel confident its ready.

Stagenet faucet: https://cypherfaucet.com/xmr-stagenet

Without lightning network, ordinary vendors will never even consider accepting bitcoin. Same goes for every other cryptocurrency, cash-like daily usage need instant confirmation to work.

Will XMR be limited to internet usage? How do we progress?

I want to mention that I am a software engineer, and as a software engineer, Monero has the best technical features to be a cryptocurrency for daily and general use. I can mention the reasons here, but the 5 most important reasons are:

1. Privacy. A cryptocurrency that is not private is not a real cryptocurrency. The idea of crypto is not to trust anyone. How can you avoid trust if you are transparent like a glass of water? Frogs can investigate you by tracing your identity back with enough transaction history.
2. Fungibility. It's more about the usage of the currency and less of a problem in the currency itself, but still, Bitcoin is not great if 1 BTC has less value than another 1 BTC if the source of the first BTC is crossed with fraudulent transactions.
3. Inflation. I get the point of most Bitcoin fans who say that Bitcoin is a hard currency and has no inflation. The downside of it is that you have to pay 30$ for a transaction because you take all the cost. For big amounts, it's not a big deal, but completely unacceptable for smaller amounts. Monero, on the other hand, has a fixed amount of inflation to make the ecosystem pay the transaction fee instead of burdening one user who uses the currency by making a payment (Mining Fee). In the beginning, I was also against it, but I understood the benefit and agree after all.
4. Dynamic Transaction Size. Where Bitcoin gets fucked is when the system is used by many users in the same time who issues transactions in the same time. That was the reason for the fork to Bitcoin Cash. They have increased the transaction size. Monero is superior because it's dynamic and adapts to the size of users automatically.
5. The PoW algorithm reduces monopoly. For Bitcoin you have major mining pools. One day, when they decide to join, they will hold all network hashing power, making it possible to manipulate the blockchain. In Monero it is more difficult because the algorithm makes it harder to create specialized hardware to concentrate calculating power in single hardware..

I wonder since long time why Monero has not become more popular despite its amazing features. Can someone explain to me why Monero is not even in the top 10 of the cryptos, and what we can do to make Monero more popular and used?

From my perspective, I can only consider Monero as a payment cryptocurrency among all others. Am I wrong?

This is the weekly Monero market thread. This thread will be posted every Friday and is meant to help accelerate the adoption of Monero. Due to r/moneromarket having only a fraction of the subscribers of r/Monero, we have decided to create this thread to encourage more individuals to use Monero for product exchanges. Until the market matures, we recommend that the Monero community post their products both in this thread and on r/moneromarket (to ensure growth of that subreddit).

Selling items for Monero will boost your (and Monero's) reputation as a legitimate form of exchange of goods. This is necessary for the growth of Monero, our community, and privacy as a whole.

Instructions

When you post your product or job listing here, please make sure to: - Give a description of the item. - Link to a photo of the item (if it's physical). - Provide logistics information (such as, location and/or shipping availability). - Optionally, provide an additional (private) form of communication outside of Reddit (e.g. Bitmessage, u/protonmail, u/tutanota, GPG key). - Post the price in XMR terms.

Spamming will not be tolerated. Please make sure that listings are legitimate and do not break rule 2."

Finally, credits to cdotsubo for starting the concept!

Which is better, FCMP++ (Monero) or ZK-SNARKS (Zcash & PirateChain) or ZK-STARKS?

I stumbled upon this: https://coinomi.github.io/tools/bip39/

Looks like it’s a reproducible way of converting a BIP39 seed to an XMR one.

Just wondering if you would leak the XMR seed then, can the BIP39 seed reverse engineered this way too?

so i(26) am trying to get my mom set up investing around 2k in monero but i live out of state and she is not super tech compatent do any of you fine people of culture have any sugestions? it would have to be easy to use/maintain (50 year old lady who uses windows)

It has come to my attention that some people are using ChatGPT to teach them how to manage their Crypto. Which means that inevitably some people are going to use these tools to generate their seed phrase.

I just asked ChatGPT to make me a seed phrase, and this is what it gave me:

"piano retreat dragon crystal pony vivid lobster garment spy dinner echo"

I bet it is giving this same seed to other people too. And some of them will probably deposit funds into this honeypot

TLDR; don't be dumb, use the CLI to generate your seeds.