Monero ($XMR) is a digital asset that provides users and their crypto-related transactions with a high level of privacy and anonymity. As it is with Bitcoin—the leading cryptocurrency—Monero is also decentralized and a secure peer-to-peer cryptocurrency but more privacy-oriented than BTC.
It has the third biggest developer community among digital assets and only trails Ethereum and Bitcoin. Monero’s protocol is open-source and its roots can be traced back to CryptoNote, which Nicolas van Saberhagen described in his 2013 whitepaper.
The privacy-based project relies on zero-knowledge proofs, ring signatures, IP obscuring methods, and stealth addresses to obscure transaction details. These features of Monero are baked into its protocol, although its users can choose to share view keys in case of third-party auditing.
Monero validates transactions via a miner network running RandomX, which is proof-of-work. With Swapzone, users can easily swap XMR to BTC and over 1600+ other assets in just a few clicks.
Monero is a decentralized, untraceable, secretive, and safe digital asset. It uses a unique type of encryption to make sure all transactions are untraceable and unlinkable. The project’s rise in the crypto space is down to several factors, one of which is its anonymization feature.
Users of the average token, such as BTC, get a public key or unique wallet address they use for transactions. When a sender receives the public address for whatsoever reason, they can see how many tokens the address holds and even find out the recent transactions conducted through the address.
Most blockchain networks, including Bitcoin, Ethereum, and Tron store or record these transactions. However, with Monero, the sender has no access to the recipient’s crypto holdings, even if they know the receiver’s public address. All deals are untraceable, and the coins given to the recipient go through a one-time randomly generated address for that transaction.
Monero’s ledger also does not store the recipient and sender’s actual stealth addresses, and the one-time generated address that it records isn’t traceable to any party’s actual address. This makes inspecting or identifying the project’s opaque blockchain ledger a fruitless activity.
When Monero was in the works, the cryptocurrency industry didn’t have as much popularity as now, so the developers working on the project did so out of curiosity. While there have been rumors that Satoshi Nakamoto invented XMR, it has never been confirmed.
The first Monero team had five developers—three were anonymous and known by pseudonyms, and two were publicly known. Over the years, hundreds of developers have made contributions to developing XMR. Here are members of the core development team:
Monero is one of the leading privacy coins globally and is unique for many reasons, including the following:
Most users consider anonymity and privacy the two factors that give Monero its value. It offers millions of users the chance to make transactions whenever they want without worrying about their wallet address being tracked by hackers, the government, or third parties.
Companies can’t blacklist XMR for suspected criminal links because there’s no way actually to trace them—they are fungible. Besides, it has value for investors who believe and hope that the demand for anonymity and privacy will increase and make the market for privacy coins bullish, driving up market cap and price.
Bitcoin uses randomly generated alpha-numeric pseudo name addresses to shield the identity of participants but with limited privacy. Transaction details on bitcoin are registered on the blockchain and hence open to public access.
Monero uses a randomly generated one-time address for every transaction, and transactions have non-traceable history. Bitcoin relies on the SHA-256 algorithm for its mining, while Monero uses Cryptonight/GPU mining.
Monero removes privacy concerns and improves them by using important concepts that are at play in some of the recent privacy-based projects.
No doubt, the rapid adoption of Monero has been down to its privacy features, but this also brings some challenges.
You can leverage Monero for daily transactions or simply buy and hold. It can be used the same way as fiat money, allowing holders to make deposits, transfer funds, or swap for other cryptos or fiat discretely and anonymously.
Monero runs on all the top operating system platforms such as macOS, Linux, Windows, FreeBSD, and even Android. The mining process allows individuals to receive rewards for their activities by joining mining pools or mining individually (solo mining).
You can mine on a standard computer without using specific hardware like the expensive application-specific integrated circuits (ASICS). Your computer’s CPU or GPU can help you mine XMR with Monero’s proof-of-work mining algorithm.
Regarding where to buy Electroneum for any crypto of your choice, you can do that on popular crypto sites like Swapzone, Changelly, EasyBit, and much more. On some of these sites, you might need to create an account to access them while on some like Swapzone there is no need for that. Some may also require KYC.
You will find Electroneum coin on several cryptocurrency exchanges. However, you can find the best Electroneum exchange rate on Swapzone. The site allows you to browse through many Electroneum exchange rates collated from different Electroneum coin exchanges.
Currently, as of 22 November 2021, 1 BTC will give you 184551.49253731 ETN.
VeChain uses a PoA consensus mechanism to validate transactions. In the VeChain Proof of Authority 2.0, validators are vetted and chosen based on reputation and what they can offer to the network instead of just funds like the Proof of Stake protocol. Therefore VeChain staking is technically not possible.
Learn how to exchange cryptocurrency with the lowest fees or zero fees as well as how to find the best crypto exchange rates and choose the safest cryptocurrency exchange provider.