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

September 25th 2018 — October 1st 2018

Development, Releases, and Tech

The much anticipated network upgrade (hard fork) to version 0.13.x, which will result in an approximate 80% reduction in fees and transaction size, is happening on the 18th of October. Binaries will be out soon in order to prepare you for the network upgrade. Additionally, you can view information regarding Monero’s past and present network upgrades here.

dEBRUYNE announced that you may incur issues with or using a remote node until the scheduled protocol upgrade. A version mismatch (e.g. client 0.12.x with remote node on 0.13.x) will result in an inability to connect to the remote node. Lightwallets such as MyMonero are not affected by this particular issue.

Monero recently experienced a burning bug. dEBRUYNE posted an article titled: A Post Mortem of The Burning Bug to the official Monero website. The article explained that the “bug basically entails the wallet not providing a warning when it receives a burnt output. Therefore, a determined attacker could burn the funds of an organization’s wallet whilst merely losing network transaction fees. They, however, do not accrue direct monetary gains”. Many Monero users speculated on social media channels as to why an unusually large number of cryptocurrency exchanges had halted Monero deposits and withdrawals. When it was revealed that developers had left users in the dark while mitigating the issue, some users were upset due to the lack of transparency, however r/Monero moderator needmoney90 explained: “Zero-day vulnerability disclosure in a decentralized network is difficult, and the moderators were torn on the best course of action to take with regards to informing the community. For this particular issue, we decided to wait until a release candidate with a patch was out, before revealing the existence of the bug (and how to exploit it). We would like to have a serious discussion with the community about how best to disclose future vulnerabilities like the burn bug, and will be creating a thread for that purpose soon”. A follow up post from u/fort3hlulz then provided more details and links about how the bug was patched and resolved.

There is now a Monero Malware Response website. The Monero Malware Response workgroup offers solutions to issues in which Monero is used by malicious parties to exploit others. Malicious exploits are usually in the form of unwanted in-browser mining, unwanted system mining, or ransomware. The Monero Malware Response website provides comprehensible, friendly, and easy-to-follow advice for removing malware from computers that have been infected with Monero-related malware, and aims to inform people about best security practices and help compromised users. A press release with more information can be found here on the official Monero website.

Moneriote, a Python script to maintain Monero opennodes DNS records, is now part of the Monero Ecosystem Project. It actively scans the Monero network through monerod and manages DNS records, and allows you to start your own remote node aggregator like node.moneroworld.com. The Monero Ecosystem Project is a collection of repositories maintained by members of the monero community. Click here for information regarding Moneriote and the Monero Ecosystem Project.

Kasisto, a Point of Sale payment system to accept Monero, is currently usable in production, even though it is still in development. If you want to find out how you can adopt this in your business, or if you are a developer or marketer and would like to contribute to Kasisto, check it out here, and read a recent update from one of the developers here.

The MyMonero lightwallet applications continue to receive positive developments. MyMonero-core-js now implements create_address, decodeRct, generate_key_derivation, derive_public_key, and many other functions as requested. API documents are also now available. Head over to the MyMonero GitHub for more information.

Whonix, the privacy focused operating system, shared a guide with full instructions of how to install and use Monero with safety. Check it out here.

u/pointandclicky has created a fork of python-bitcoinrpc and adapted it to work with Monero. Check it out here, or read this Reddit post for more information.

Cake Wallet 3.0.6 update was released. It is recommended you update your Cake Wallet application as soon as possible. Additionally, if you would like to be a beta tester of the Cake Wallet application, please reach out to Cake Wallet via the relevant social media channels.

Monerujo wallet developer Andrés published an article explaining how OpenAlias works in the latest Monerujo version. In short, OpenAlias allows users to adopt a handle style username (e.g. ‘johnfoss’) linked to a traditional wallet address. This allows users to send Monero by entering the receiver’s handle style username, instead of a traditional address. Read the short article here.

Exantech, who are currently in the progress of developing a Monero wallet that supports multisig transactions, published a report on how Monero confidential transactions work. Head over to the Exatech subreddit for a sneak peak of their wallet developments.

u/keledoro shared a recent chat log from IRC channel #monero-research-lab in which there was an interesting discussion between Howard Chu, Gregory Maxwell, and Andrew Poelstra regarding the usage of randomJS as a means of combating ASICs.

General News

A Monero community workgroup meeting recently took place in the #monero-community IRC channel. The meeting discussed key events that occurred over the last few weeks, along with what is planned for the near future. Take aways from the meeting included the notion that Exodus wallet may again attempt to integrate Monero, and the official GUI wallet may soon have a pirate language translation added to it. The next community workgroup meeting is scheduled for the 13th of October at 17:00UTC.

Dr Sarang Noether posted his monthly research report, discussing his progress as a member of the Monero Research Lab. Read it here.

You can listen to rehrar’s Discover Blockchains presentation in Houston here.

In a recent Breaker interview, arguably cryptocurrency’s most colorful character, John McAfee, participated in a somewhat candid interview regarding his views on politics and cryptocurrency. In the interview, McAfee discusses the importance of permissionless currencies, and mentions Monero and its privacy features in a positive manner.

MinedForChange (M4C), a website which allows anyone to mine the Monero cryptocurrency for charity, was unveiled as part of the Effective Altruism movement. M4C is an example of how cryptocurrency can be utilized to bring social good to the world.

RIAT (Institute for Future Cryptoeconomics) is planning to host a Monero Meetup in Prague on the 6th of October during Hackers Congress Paralelní Polis 2018. More information can be found here.

The Monero Outreach Group are inviting Monero users to visit the Monero Outreach website. Monero Outreach are a team of creators, writers, technicians, translators, and visionaries. Their goal is to bring Monero to the masses and safeguard it’s ability to preserve the fundamental human right to privacy for all, for generations to come. If you would like to contribute, check out their Taiga Monero Outreach Instance or the Monero Outreach Repo.

Riccardo “Fluffypony” Spagni was interviewed by Vlad Costea from Crypto Insider to discuss a variety of topics, including Monero. You can read the transcript, or listen to a recording of the interview here.

In November, Riccardo “Fluffypony” Spagni will speak at the Monero sponsored cryptocurrency conference Provenance Summit Seoul 2018. Visit the website to purchase tickets or obtain further information.

Bitcoin Magazine published an article discussing Monero’s Malware Response Group and the patching of the burning bug. Read it here.

AMBCrypto published Why Monero [XMR] and Bitcoin [BTC] are two sides of the cypherpunk coin. The article discusses Monero’s place in the crypto-world in relation to Bitcoin, and concludes with the somewhat poignant quote: “Monero remains as cypherpunks’ last bastion”.

The Church of Monero shared their Week 5 report. Members of the Church of Monero participate in a weekly activity of transacting XMR amongst one another. Find the report here.

XMR.ru shared their September report. XMR.ru is a group of Monero enthusiasts from Ukraine and Russia that typically promote Monero through the translation of articles into their mother-tongue.

The cryptocurrency themed art show Bitcoin Art Revolution is still on exhibition in Paris until the 5th of October. The exhibition features Monero themed works from artist Pascal Boyart.

The mystery of the somewhat viral video featuring a homeless man wearing a Monero t-shirt laughing maniacally at a businessman before jumping in a Lamborghini and driving off has been solved. It appears to have been a part of a marketing campaign for financial services company Rise Wealth Technologies. u/SmokinCache shared a follow up promotional video featuring the same Monero t-shirt wearing homeless man on the Monero subreddit.

Longhash, a crypto and blockchain media and analysis site, recently launched its own Bitcoin Tracker. This is a reminder that Bitcoin blockchain analysis is becoming big business, as regulators, authorities, and exchanges attempt to trace and taint specific Bitcoins, highlighting the lack of Bitcoin’s fungibility.

Exchanges and Merchants

Monero is coming to BTCPayServer — an open source and self-hosted Bitcoin payment processor. BTCPayServer have begun development to integrate Monero as a payment option. If you think you could help with development, reach out to them on Slack, or check out this Reddit post for information.

Open Bazaar is looking to integrate Monero into its system.

u/antimatter5 shared on r/Monero that Bitcoin to Monero were the most popular trades on ShapeShift as of the 27th of September.

Betcoin.ag now accepts Monero deposits. Check them out if you would like to use Monero to fund your sports betting or casino games.

The Magic Gathering Online Exchange shop offers a 33% discount for purchases made with Monero.

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, ErCiccione: Coordinator of the localization workgroup (translation), and The rehrar tour!. If you have any spare Monero sitting in a mobile wallet, feel free to help those that help Monero.

Performance

Total Monero in Circulation — 16,452,470 XMR (last week: 16,432,967 XMR)

Monero Total Marketcap — $1,879,154,460 USD (last week: $1,914,570,831 USD)

Monero Coinmarketcap Ranking — 10 (last week: 10)

USD Price — $114 USD (last week: $116 USD)

BTC Price — 0.0173 BTC (last week: 0.0178 BTC)

LocalMonero.co Street Price — $112 USD (last week: $119 USD)

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

Hashrate — 615.5Mh/s (last week: 564.9Mh/s)

Monero Mining Pools Hashrate Distribution —

Memes

u/xm-arghhh-pirate from r/Moonero

u/RoyalMayonnaise from r/Moonero