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

September 18th 2018 — September 24th 2018

Development, Releases, and Tech

A document cryptocurrency enthusiasts may have missed over the past few months due to the ever increasing noise within the cryptospace is: Zero to Monero: A technical guide to a private digital currency for beginners, amateurs, and experts. The document aims to shed light on the basics of elliptic curve cryptography in a digestable manner. Take the time to read it here.

As part of the October Hard Fork (Network Upgrade), discussion of another Proof Of Work change to mitigate any potential centralisation from ASICs (Monero promotes decentralisation via CPU/GPU mining only) has been taking place over on Github here and here. Monero will also adopt a fixed ring size of 11. This means that every transaction will have the same ring size of 11, and will increase privacy by homogenizing transactions so all appear the same.

IOS Cake Wallet version 3.0.1 is out now with an array of new features, including a complete redesign of the wallet and the exchange, subaddress support, new languages, and a bunch of other useful features. The new version can be found here or search for it in the iTunes store. More information regarding the update can be found here.

Android wallet Monerujo verson 1.7.3 has been released. Major changes since the last production version (v1.6.4) include OpenAlias support for sending (incl. QR code). Get Monerujo on Github, Google Play, or at https://f-droid.monerujo.io.

Monerujo can now be used with the Ledger Nano S hardware wallet. Andrés has written a guide on how to use the two together.

In case you missed it, you can also use the Ledger Nano S in conjunction with the official Monero GUI wallet and a remote node as a light weight hardware wallet solution.

Daniel Ternyak announced on Twitter that it is possible to send Monero transactions with the Ledger Nano S in a web browser thanks to the hard working guys at MyCrypto. This still isn’t in working production for the general public as there a few developmental issues which must be overcome first. Head over to Daniel’s initial tweet and the related MyCrypto GitHub page for more information. If you are a developer and this is something you can assist with, please contact Daniel.

u/toldno scraped together a list of github links referring to Monero integration onto the Trezor hardware wallet. Progress is promising, and Trezor appears to be somewhat close to supporting Monero in the near future.

u/patoshii shared XCubicle’s new designs of a Monero paper wallet. New features for this release include larger QR codes, and Shamir Secret Sharing for Paper wallets — the ability to split private key into N of M parts and recombine with N parts on paper. Note that wallet generation appears to only work with the Chrome browser. Link to the paper wallet.

u/BrowserMining announced they now provide a service designed for honest and ethical web browser mining. When used in a transparent manner, web browser based Monero mining can be a legitimate alternative to traditional advertising. u/BrowserMining explained: “We regularly see the news, that one or another site mined Monero cryptocurrency without the knowledge of users. Almost always these articles are represented in a negative context in connection with web-miners, and antiviruses struggle with “CPU theft” of users and resources. As a result, the Internet community has an absolutely negative perception of web-mining”. If you are interested, head over to https://browsermining.io/ for more information.

go, mine it! have opened a new Monero mining pool. A few of the pool features include a PPLNS payout system, low fees, and integrated address support. Head over to go, mine it! or read this post for more information.

Anyone looking to change pools, or trying a smaller pool, can check out the CoinFoundary Monero mining pool. Fees are 0.75% (PPLNS)and minimum payout is 0.1 XMR.

Because of the recent Monerujo update, all the language translations need to be refreshed. If you are bilingual and this is something you can help with, visit here for more information.

General News

There is a Network Upgrade (Hard Fork) Countdown website. Please note the network upgrade will occur on approximately October 18th 2018 - Block 1685555. Please note Monero has regularly scheduled hard forks, which are positive upgrades to the Monero network. The upcoming hard fork will enable bulletproofs (resulting in ~80% reduction in transaction size and fees).

Changelly CEO Ilya Bere recently spoke out regarding KYC/AML and the supposed locking up of specific Monero users’ funds. In the article he explains that they cannot share the trading limits before KYC is needed, “because those who intend to use our service to launder money, for instance, can use that information for their privilege”.

If you want to learn about the origins of Monero, then take a trip down the rabbit hole and read The Strange Birth & History of Monero (4 part series).

Monero Talk had a chat with The Satis Group to discuss how they came up with their $18,000 per coin valuation of Monero.

The monthly Monero Coffee Chat took place on Saturday. The live video meeting featured longtime active members of the Monero community, who answered questions from others with the hopes of making the community more accessible, while also serving as a medium to communicate the latest and upcoming developments. Check it out here.

u/strofenig shared a currency comparison table on r/Monero. This highlights the strengths of Monero, however would potentially be more accurate if it included scaleability, which is considered to be one of Monero’s greatest hurdles and something the Monero Research Lab are hoping to overcome via second layer solutions.

u/strofenig’s currency comparison table

Xeagu shared a report of a recent Berlin Monero Meetup.

There is now a Greek language Monero Telegram group. Join @monerogr, or check out this post for an exhaustive list of Monero Telegram channels.

Thursday the 27th of September appears to be a popular date for hosting Monero Meetups. A London Monero Meetup is taking place on Thursday 27th September at Launch22 (near King’s Cross). So far ~25 people are registered to attend, so if you’re in the London area make sure you head on down to learn about or support Monero. Check out the Meetup page for more information.

The Monero Munich Meetup is also happening on the 27th of September. If you’re in Munich, forget Oktoberfest, attend the Monero meetup instead. More info can be found here.

The third meet up on the 27th of September is the Monero NYC meetup hosted by xCubicle. Special guests include the Cake Wallet IOS Monero Wallet App founder, Monero contributor Diego “rehrar” Salazar, and the Monero Talk podcast hosts. More info can be found here.

BTCNN.com recently reported that hundreds of high traffic government websites in India are infected with Coinhive — a web browser based cryptocurrency miner that allows a host website to re-appropriate a visitors CPU power to mine Monero. In relation to this, a recent Bloomberg article stated that according to new research, hackers are illegally generating Monero, Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies by exploiting a software flaw that was leaked from the U.S. government. The author explained that according to a recent Cyber Threat Alliance report, “detected cases of illicit cryptocurrency mining — the digital equivalent of minting money — have surged 459 percent in 2018 compared to last year” with no sign of slowing down. Read the full Bloomberg article here.

The United Nations Internation Children Emergency Fund (UNICEF) France division has started accepting donations in Monero.

Monero Outreach has designed a brief survey in order to learn more about where people are at in terms of awareness of the features of Monero and crypto in general. They state the survey is aimed more at non-Monero users, and does not require personal identification information. More information about the survey with a link to it can be found here.

The somewhat tongue-in-cheek Church of Monero received some controversial media coverage this week. Please bear in mind the Church of Monero is limited to a tiny number of Monero users, and not a representation of the greater Monero community. If you are interested in attending the Church of Monero to see what it is all about, join the telegram group @ChurchOfMonero.

Pascal Boyart has shared an image and video of a Monero canvas ready to be exhibited at an international cryptocurrency themed art show called Bitcoin Art Revolution. The exhibition is in Paris and commences on the 28th of September.

Pascal Boyart’s Monero themed art work

Exchanges and Merchants

Withdrawals and deposits have recently been disabled for apparent maintenance at a number of exchanges including Bittrex, Poloniex, Cryptopia, and XMR.to. At the time of writing, Monero developers are yet to provide a possible reason for this, however a Cryptopia status message states “24-SEP-2018 — XMR Wallet placed in maintenance at the request of the Coin Developer”. This is a reminder that you should avoid leaving your Monero on third party exchanges due to external risk factors.

You can now bet on the Monero blockchain. u/Mochi101 explained on Reddit they have “opened a new betting web site that uses Monero as the currency for game-play. This is an on-chain game so the only deposit you make is your bet. Basically you pick up to 8 digits which you bet will be the last digit of the block after your bet has been included in the blockchain”. Head over to Monero.win to get involved in the action.

Global currency wallet and exchange Abra added Monero to its platform a few months ago, however is receiving renewed attention via recent news articles.

Forum Funding and Proposals

MoneroMooo, a highly prominent and long time Monero developer, is seeking funding for his next three months of coding. He expects to be working on things like pruning, RPC payment, blackball improvements, and any protocol improvements the Monero Research Lab (MRL) come up with. Contribute to his FFS here.

There are a number of other proposals to improve the Monero ecosystem that have been moved to Funding Required this week. Monero Ecosystem translation to Brazilian Portuguese, ErCiccione: Coordinator of the localization workgroup (translation), and The rehrar tour! all seek funding.

u/M5M400 invited everyone to set up a mining rig or two pointed to supportXMR’s donation address to help fund the MRL. All balances mined to the address until the next Network Upgrade (~Oct. 18th) were to be donated in equal parts to the two MRL FFS requests. u/M5M400 even promised to add 20% to the final donation amount from their own funds. Read this post for more detailed information.

In order to support the MRL, phishead auctioned off a set of badges from the 26th Annual DEF CON from the Monero/BCOS (Blockchain and Cryptocurrency Open Security) village hosted in Las Vegas this year. Head here to check out the auction.

Performance

Total Monero in Circulation — 16,432,967 XMR

Monero Total Marketcap — $1,914,570,831 USD (last week: $1,902,375,278 USD)

Monero Coinmarketcap Ranking — 10 (last week: 9)

USD Price — $116 USD (last week: $115 USD)

BTC Price — 0.0178 BTC (last week: 0.0179 BTC)

LocalMonero.co Street Price — $119 USD (last week: $138 USD)

Average Transaction Fee — $0.23 USD (last week: $0.22 USD)

Hashrate — 564.9Mh/s (last week: 589.7Mh/s)

Monero Mining Pools Hashrate Distribution —

Memes

u/Swatieson from r/Moonero

u/johnfoss68 from r/Moonero

u/xm-arghhh-pirate from r/Moonero

A video of homeless guy with cool t-shirt shared on r/Moonero by u/tuxforce1: