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Aeon does not have a mandatory minimum mixin like Monero does. Despite the feature being relatively easy to add, there is no mention of doing so in the current development roadmap.

What advantages are there to not enforcing a mandatory mixin for all transactions? As can be seen by the block explorer, when the minimum mixin choice is left to the user, privacy for some transactions will suffer. Monero statistics showed a very large number of 0 mixin transactions last year (many of which where from exchanges) before a fork began to enforce a minimum.

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Aeon does not have a minimum mixin by design. Transactions with mixin 0 can be very small and inexpensive. This is by design. According to smooth If usage increases there is a built in system to limit growth of <2 mixin transactions, thereby preventing the low mixin generated cascading privacy reduction described by the Monero Research Lab as follows:

In AEON the solution that is already implemented is to limit transactions with a mixin (fake outputs) of less than 2 to a maximum of one per block. Since we have four minute blocks that is only 360 per day (though not every block will necessarily have one so the actual number will be lower). As long as there are a few other transactions per block (with higher mix factors), the chain reaction can't occur and everyone's anonymity is protected. You can see for yourself in a chain explorer that when mix 1 or mix 2 transactions occur, they are always in the very first position (after coinbase). Any other transactions in a block will be higher mix.

Currently Aeon usage is insufficient for the cap on very low mixins described above to have its desired impact. As usage increases, the cap will be more noticeable and a fee market will develop:

Because of how this works, it also means that mix 0 or mix 1 transactions can still be used by people who really want a small cheaper transaction, but they will have to complete with their fee for that one slot in each block. That still should end up being somewhat cheaper, without jeopardizing the anonymity of the chain overall.

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