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

October 2nd 2018 — October 8th 2018

Development, Releases, and Technology

dEBRUYNE posted a preliminary information thread regarding the scheduled protocol upgrade occurring on the October 18th. Make sure you read the thread to ensure you are adequately prepared. The protocol upgrade will result in an approximate 80% reduction in fees and transaction size, a Proof of Work tweak to curb the threat of ASICs, and an increase to a fixed ring size of 11 to further increase privacy.

XMR-STAK v2.4.7 : Wasabi Edition v2.1 has been released. This version contains no major updates, but should be downloaded in order to be ready for the upcoming network upgrade. More information can be found here.

u/manicminer5 shared a post in which they discussed the possibility of Monero scaling via pruning nodes. Read it here. This followed on from another post made the day before, in which u/5baserush questioned the possibility of pruning Monero’s blockchain. The ever helpful dEBRUYNE explained that, “most information can be pruned. You basically merely need to keep the full set of one-time public keys (stealth addresses) and the key images”.

u/xmr_kykeon again raised attention to the fact it is not possible for open-source android developers, who rightly choose to publish their applications on f-droid, to get an XMR donation icon presented to users via the f-droid client app on android. It is thought that it will be beneficial if open-source android developers who publish on f-droid can add Monero donations to their apps. If you want to weigh in on the discussion, do so here on GitLab.

u/patoshii published a chrome extension to read Open Alias type links. More information can be found here.

It was rumored the Monero GUI wallet would receive a pirate translation, and this appears to indeed be true. In addition, ErCiccione is seeking translators as all languages of the GUI wallet need to be updated before the next release. If you are bilingual and can lend a hand, contact ErCiccione or visit the relevant GitHub page.

An Empirical Study of the I2P Anonymity Network and its Censorship Resistance received attention on r/Monero. The publication examines the blocking resistance of I2P against a censor that wants to prevent access to I2P using address-based blocking techniques.

A Monero Developers meeting took place on the 7th of October. Read the full summary and logs on the Monerobase website.

General News

Monero’s core team member binaryFate participated in a privacy focused discussion panel at Hackers Congress Paralelní Polis 2018 (HCPP18). MSVB, the leading developer of the Monero exclusive hardware wallet also makes a cameo in the Q&A, providing a short update of his current progress. Watch the video of the discussion below.

binaryFate talking at HCPP18 (he’s the handsome French guy)

Dimi “m2049r” Divak, one of the Monerujo wallet developers, also spoke at HCPP18. Watch his presentation about Monero and the Monerujo wallet below.

Dimi presenting at HCPP18.

BCFocus.com published an informative article detailing the upcoming protocol upgrade (hard fork). Read the article here.

Azat S. wrote a fantastic and informative article titled The Beginner’s Guide to Monero. If there is someone you know who wants to learn more about Monero, this is a great place to send them.

Monero Talk had a busy week, sitting down for separate chats with both Monero Core Team member ArcticMine and Vik from Cake Wallet. Watch either of the interviews below or on the Monero Talk YouTube channel.

ArcticMine chatting with Monero Talk.

Vik from Cake Wallet chatting with Monero Talk.

Ukoe posted on r/Monero calling for feedback regarding his publication Zero to Monero. It appears that if the community expresses a desire for an update to Zero to Monero (parts of the text will become obsolete once Bulletproofs go live), then Ukoe will do so. For more information, or to provide feedback, read this reddit post.

CzechMonero.cz have continued their marketing campaign. They now have a Twitter handle @czechmonero and are also giving away Monero stickers. Check out this post or visit their website for more information.

Monero Outreach posted their September monthly report detailing the promotional endeavors they have been carrying out. Check out all the good things happening over at Monero Outreach website, or feel free to contact them if you would like to join their efforts.

Reuters published an article titled: Era of bank secrecy ends as Swiss start sharing account data. The article explains that Swiss banks have begun automatically sharing client data with tax authorities in dozens of other countries.

DuckDuckGo’s article Three Reasons Why the “Nothing to Hide” Argument is Flawed gained renewed attention on the Monero subreddit. It is a short and worthwhile read for those who question the need for online privacy, concluding that “privacy should be the default”. Tony Sheng also published a thought provoking article discussing why it is likely default privacy is required to protect individual freedoms.

Bloomberg reported that institutional buyers of Bitcoin have been paying a premium of up to 20% to ensure they receive freshly minted coins direct from miners. This highlights one of Monero’s advantages over Bitcoin, as it is impossible for XMR to become tainted due to it’s history being unknown.

Recently spotted: Zcash CEO/founder Zooko wearing a Monero Research Lab t-shirt!

Exchanges and Merchants

CRYPTOhats are now selling hats with the Monero logo. The hats appear to be of high quality, you can pay in XMR, and a portion of profits go towards the Monero Forum Funding System.

If you want to purchase goods using Monero, or have something you would like to sell and receive Monero as payment, don’t forget to checkout the Monero Market subreddit, or join the Monero Market telegram channel.

Django, a high-level Python Web framework, have published a Django app that integrates the Globee Payment API into a Django project. More information can be found here.

You can now buy web-hosting anonymously with Monero. Visit HostCrypto or read this for more information.

Forum Funding and Proposals

There are a number of proposals to improve the Monero ecosystem that require funding. These include: the Monero Ecosystem translation to Brazilian Portuguese and French, ErCiccione: Coordinator of the localization workgroup (translation), and The rehrar tour! (which midipoet is now helping with). If you have any spare Monero sitting in a mobile wallet, feel free to help those that help Monero.

In addition, the Monerujo team also requires funding for the next three months. View their FFS request detailed information. You can even try out OpenAlias and donate by pasting in ffs.monerujo.io where you usually enter the receiver’s address.

Performance

According to Ero23, Monero is in an accumulation phase. Check out his technical analysis on Trading View.

Total Monero in Circulation — 16,471,701 XMR (last week: 16,452,470 XMR)

Monero Total Marketcap — $1,893,868,342 USD (last week: $1,879,154,460 USD)

Monero Coinmarketcap Ranking — 10 (last week: 10)

USD Price — $114 USD (last week: $114 USD)

BTC Price — 0.0173 BTC (last week: 0.0173 BTC)

LocalMonero.co Street Price — $147 USD (last week: $112 USD)

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

Hashrate — 589.9Mh/s (last week: 615.5Mh/s)

Monero Mining Pools Hashrate Distribution —

Memes

Checkmate, Bitcoin (u/urbanster from r/Moonero)

To the f’ moon!!!!!!11111 (u/mskara90 from r/Moonero