The Monero Moon is a curated weekly newsletter regarding all things Monero.

November 13th 2018 — November 20th 2018

Development, Releases, and Technology

After creating a Reddit post discussing the possibility of making Monero’s software releases better in order to protect against Watering Hole attacks, The Charlatan has submitted a proposal for funding the development of Reproducible Builds. Reproducible Builds (aka “Deterministic Builds”) are a set of software development practices that create an independently-verifiable path from source code to the binary code used by computers.

Howard Chu is continuing to bring speed improvements to Monero. See the tweet below:

xmr-stak 2.6.0 has been released with pre-compiled Linux and Windows binaries to simplify the usage for beginners, and up to 10% increased cryptonight_heavy hashrate for AMD OpenCL. Find the new release on Github here.

TiedToAStar shared a tool in which you can export transactions from your Monero wallet in CSV format. Check out the tool here.

There is now a Step-by-step guide for the GUI wallet translated in French thanks to ErCiccione. Links to the guides can be found here.

tuevco has made a Monero mining library which can be integrated in android projects. Check out this post for more information.

Check out Github here for a highly detailed insight of other Monero developments taking place behind the scenes.

General News

Monero Talk recently sat down with the creators of Monerujo for a lengthy chat about the mission of their open source Monero wallet project.

Monero Talk with the Monerujo Team

The monthly Monero Coffee Chat took place last weekend. It featured a number of Monero wallet developers and contributors. Watch it below.

Monero Coffee Chat

The Monero Outreach Workgroup shared their Know Your Exchange Safety information sheet and Guerrilla Marketing Toolkit. Be sure to check out the marketing toolkit if you would like to help Monero grow.

The Monero Outreach Workgroup are also continuing their hard work translating Monero information sheets and documents into different languages such as Spanish. Take the time to read Caja de Herramientas para Marketing de Guerrilla, Conoce la Seguridad de Intercambio, or join the Spanish speaking Telegram group #monero-es.

Beware of fake Monero pages on Facebook claiming to give away free XMR.

midipoet posted a report detailing his attendance and the fantastic talk he gave at the CryptoFinance conference. Be sure to watch the YouTube video of his talk, and forward it to your friends who are yet to understand the strengths and benefits of Monero.

midipoet’s talk at the CryptoFinance conference.

Justin streamed a live video in which he evaluated cryptocurrency privacy technologies and implementations. Watch it below.

Riccardo “Fluffypony” Spagni discussed the implementation of Bulletproofs and future scaling capabilities of Monero in the latest episode of Magical Crypto Friends. Start watching from 8:00.

Riccardo Spagni discussing Monero and Bulletproofs.

owner_cz is writing a diploma thesis focused on usable security within Monero, and would like to know your habits regarding your use and mining of Monero. While this is somewhat contradictory to Monero’s core ideologies, you are still invited to participate in the survey.

It was reported that The Bail Bloc initiative has started using Monero raised through charitable browser based miners to help people get out of U.S Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) pretrial incarceration.

McAfee Labs researchers have discovered new Russian malware, dubbed WebCobra, which harnesses victims’ computing power to mine for Monero. The chart below shows how the prevalence of miner malware follows changes in the price of Monero cryptocurrency. Read the full article over on the McAfee Antivirus website.

The Church of Monero have a new logo. The logo was met with mixed opinions, with most community members criticizing it when it was shared on the Monero subreddit. Check out their recent weekly report here.

The Church of Monero’s new logo.

AcTiVillain created a cool figurine a Monero logo on one of the shoulders.

AcTiVillain’s Monero themed figurine.

Learn about how rich people are sparing no expense to keep their lives private and secure.

Exchanges and Merchants

Poloniex has added USDC/XMR pairings to its exchange.

If you need to anonymously get your hands on Monero, LocalMonero.co is one of your best options. They are run by respectable community members, have Tor and I2P sites, and all trades are protected by escrow. Check out their FAQ page for all the relevant information.

The SEC came out with their Statement on Digital Asset Securities Issuance and Trading. The statement covers many different aspects of cryptocurrency, however explains that “an entity that meets the definition of an exchange must register with the Commission as a national securities exchange”, regardless if it is decentralized or not.

Coinpayments will soon switch from payment IDs to integrated addresses for Monero payments as a part of a major platform update. Take the time to urge your favourite exchange to adopt integrated addresses as unencrypted payment IDs are bad for privacy.

Monero contributors Justin and Diego launched an online merchandise store called CypherMarket. It primarily sells merchandise related to open source projects such as Monero, and 50% of profits are donated to open source projects. They are currently seeking artists to help design new products. If you have the skills to help out, reach out to them.

Pascal Boyart is selling Dripcoin Blocks Serie: Monero Logo, a unique original artwork that has been created by using a dripping and pointillism technique.

Dripcoin Blocks Serie: Monero Logo by Pascal Boyart

Forum Funding and Proposals

There are currently two proposals to improve the Monero ecosystem that require funding.

The Charlatan has submitted a proposal for funding the development of Reproducible Builds.

Additionally, jasonhcwong, inspired by raspiblitz of Bitcoin lightning network, is working on the monerbox project to bring a zero-configuration, plug-and-play Monero full node to users. His proposal for funding can be found here.

Performance

The entire cryptocurrency market has taken a big hit over the past week with Bitcoin finally breaking out downwards from its descending triangle, waving goodbye to the stable $6000USD range, and dragging Monero down with it to near 30% drop in USD terms.

For some relief, head over to TradingView to check out speculators’ bullish XMRBTC and XMRUSD chart predictions.

‘This is you right now’ (Credit: RoyalMayonnaise — https://www.reddit.com/r/moonero/comments/7gh3x5/this_is_you_right_now/)

Total Monero in Circulation — 16,583,949 XMR (last week: 16,563,881 XMR)

Monero Total Marketcap — $1,121,585,561 USD (last week: $1,775,342,265 USD)

Monero Coinmarketcap Ranking — 10 (last week: 9)

USD Price — $67 USD (last week: $107 USD)

BTC Price — 0.0149 BTC (last week: 0.0165 BTC)

LocalMonero.co Street Price — $76 USD (last week: $102 USD)

Average Transaction Fee — $0.005 USD (last week: $0.006 USD)

Hashrate — 479.6Mh/s (last week:451.5Mh/s)

Monero Mining Pools Hashrate Distribution —

Memes