Is monero completely different from bitcoin in the sense that wallet creators haven't added monero as into their list of supported coins? Monero has a pretty decent big following, but its not support in many of the multi-coin wallets. What is the reason for this?
asked Jul 21, 2017 at 15:33
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1 Answer
Monero has a completely different code-base than Bitcoin. It was not inherited from Bitcoin, and it was written from scratch (Bytecoin was the first CryptoNote cryptocurrency, and Monero inherited that codebase, not Bitcoin's - it's a fork of Bytecoin)
Thing is, all Bitcoin clones can simply copy what's already been done and maybe do some small tweaks. On the other hand, people working to implement Monero are pioneers. It doesn't mean that it's harder, but just that it requires work whereas for Bitcoin most of the work has already been done and can be re-used.
Also, due to mechanics of CryptoNote coins, any light-wallet implementation requires more resources on the back-end. Where Bitcoin can simply look-up the balance, Monero has to scan the entire blockchain.
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so getting the balance from one of my addresses requires a complete scan of the blockchain and tally up all the coins that were sent to it?– Patoshi パトシ ♦Commented Jul 21, 2017 at 17:48
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In practice - yes, tally up received, subtract what was spent and you get the balance. In some cases it should be possible to cherry-pick only the blocks which you somehow know in advance (like exchange giving you the TXID, or your sender simply telling you where to look) they contain your funds and only scan those. There's no software which lets you do this currently but it could be useful one day. I've only entertained with the idea. Commented Jul 21, 2017 at 17:53