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

November 8th 2018 — November 12th 2018

Development, Releases, and Technology

Monero’s blockchain has passed 1,700,000 blocks. The recently implemented Bulletproofs help reduce blockchain bloat and enable a more time efficient synchronization of Monero’s blockchain going forward. You can see on MoneroBlocks.info that the growth of the Monero blockchain has slowed considerably — from approximately 2GB per month to under 300MB per month.

The I2P monerod Hidden Service paper has been updated. A copy of the paper can be found here.

Don’t forget that if you are a new user of Monero’s official GUI wallet and require a guide, you can find one here or in the wallet file itself. So far the guides are available in English, Spanish, and Italian.

u/diiscotheque is requesting feedback regarding a potential new User Interface (UI) for a Monero GUI wallet. The UI looks very neat. Provide feedback and find extra information, along with an animation of the new UI in action.

A new UI for a Monero GUI wallet.

Monero contributor Fireice_UK posted a tweet highlighting a privacy issue with Monero’s payment IDs. Check out his tweet thread, and the separate discussion addressing this issue by key Monero contributors .

Kovri.io is now available in Arabic. Kovri development is still taking place and are currently in the process of building new infrastructure independent from Monero.

It was revealed in an article by Henry de Valence that it is possible to implement Bulletproofs in an even faster and efficient manner than what is currently used in Monero.

FindMyMonero announced they are a new service to help users recover their funds if they have an incomplete (12 word) seed phrase from MyMonero.com. They charge a 10% fee. This service is new, so it is recommended you use it with caution.

DROPIL recently made a post announcing support for Monero. Move your funds as soon as possible if you used them, as it appears they send your private key in plain text to their servers. It is recommended you use this offline wallet generator instead.

Peter Ryan, a research analyst from CoinDesk, shared the following tweet highlighting Monero’s active development:

Rockstar Developer hinted they may assist BTCPayServer with Monero intergration. Check out this tweet.

There is a new version of BootMiner, the USB and CD bootable live Monero mining system. This version will use the latest xmr-stak release. More information can be found here.

Jameson Lopp tweeted that he has added Coinhive to his website:

General News

Watch pwrcycle’s Shellcon 2018 presentation How the hell does Monero work?

pwrcycle’s presentation.

Dr Sarang Noether from the Monero Research Lab ran a workshop at the BOBmeetupCHI on Thursday. Watch the recording of the workshop here.

Sarang’s Dive into Monero workshop talk.

Watch Sarang’s other privacy focused presentation from the BOBmeetupCHI here. Skip to the 2:15 mark on this one.

Sarang’s presentation on Privacy technology in blockchain applications

An Australian University Professor who was cited in Monero’s whitepaper for his work on ring signatures has been recognized for his efforts by the Australian Computer Society.

Aaron van Wirdum, the technical editor at Bitcoin Magazine, recently featured on Monero Talk to discuss his recent series on privacy coins.

Monero Talk chatting with Van Wirdum.

TheFuzzStone shared their XMR.RU October report. Check it out to see all the articles translated into Russian.

If you missed the DEF CON 26 BCOS/Monero Village Talks, you can watch them here.

Monero Defcon talk playlist

Listen to an audio clip from World Crypto Con in which Monero contributor Diego Salazar discusses Monero.

The Monero Outreach team put together a marketing toolkit for the various type of Monero community members to help get the word out. Check it out!

If you are planning on hosting a Monero meetup, you can use Justin’s Monero presentation documents here on Github.

The Church of Monero continues to grow and Xeagu shared the Monero Mass Week 11 Report. If you want to participate join the Telegram group @churchofmonero. Mass is on every Sunday 18:00 UTC. If you’re still scratching your head, check out this post or this post to find out what it’s all about.

Deadicated shared a Monero regulatory compliance infographic:

The beauty of $XMR: View Key allows transparency optionally & on-demand, rendering much of the punditry about a future Monero ban or harsh regulations hindering future progress quite weak.

There is now a Monero Fan Fiction subreddit.

In New Hampshire USA, they altered the constitution to include the Right to Privacy. “Article 2-b. Right to Privacy. An individual’s right to live free from governmental intrusion in private or personal information is natural, essential, and inherent.”

u/barrybonds1994 shared the below image:

Once you notice it…

Finally, u/nielsnelson2’s wife kindly made him a Monero sweater:

u/nielsnelson2’s Monero sweater.

Exchanges and Merchants

Over the past week there have been numerous reports of users experiencing issues with the MyMonero webwallet. One user even claimed to have lost over 5000 XMR. While it is not possible to prove the legitimacy of such claims, it is highly recommended you avoid using webwallets for storing large amounts of Monero.

Additionally, be wary of Monero OTC scams that ask you to send a large amount of Monero before sending you BTC.

u/Pebx announced that he convinced a German Bitcoiner to accept XMR as a means of payment. Everyone should also reach out to their local merchants in order to help promote Monero adoption.

There are now advertising banners of all sizes for Monero to use on your website. Check them out here.

Decentral Gear sell Monero merchandise and accept XMR as payment.

There has been speculation that Bity is developing cryptocurrency ATMs that allow you to buy and sell Monero.

You can now buy Monero jerseys from Satoshi Shirts. Check out this post for more information.

Forum Funding and Proposals

There is currently one proposal to improve the Monero ecosystem that requires funding.

Monero Outreach have also made a proposal to continue funding their efforts.

Additionally, u/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

Total Monero in Circulation — 16,563,881 XMR (last week: 16,550,315 XMR)

Monero Total Marketcap — $1,775,342,265 USD (last week: $1,871,008,353 USD)

Monero Coinmarketcap Ranking — 9 (last week: 9)

USD Price — $107 USD (last week: $113 USD)

BTC Price — 0.0165 BTC (last week: 0.0172 BTC)

LocalMonero.co Street Price — $102 USD (last week: $116 USD)

Average Transaction Fee — $0.006 USD (last week: $0.007 USD)

Hashrate — 451.5Mh/s (last week:498.5Mh/s)

Monero Mining Pools Hashrate Distribution —

Memes

u/pagirios’ friend adopted a Monero cat: