84
votes
What advantages does Monero offer that are not provided by other cryptocurrencies?
It is the only private cryptocurrency in use today which is truly fungible as all transactions are private and created equal.
It satisfies the 3 important properties of electronic cash: decentralized,...
- 19.9k
58
votes
Accepted
How does Monero privacy and security compare to Zcash?
As described by Monero Research Lab academic Shen Noether with regard to the anonymity set:
Monero (although the zcash proponents note that a ring signature is a "smaller" anonymity set, ...
- 1,364
43
votes
Accepted
Why was I2P chosen over Tor for native Monero integration?
There are several advantages where I2P implementation is more suitable over Tor, e.g.
I2P is significantly faster when routing internal traffic, where Tor is optimized for low-bandwidth clients and ...
- 1,563
27
votes
Accepted
What is fungibility and why does it matter?
Fungibility is the property of a good or a commodity whose individual units are capable of mutual substitution. That is, it is the property of essences or goods which are "capable of being substituted ...
- 586
27
votes
Accepted
What is the difference between Monero (XMR) and Verge (XVG)?
Despite both being advertised as privacy-focused cryptocurrencies, they are very different.
Summary
Monero uses ring signatures, RingCT, and stealth addresses to hide information on the blockchain. ...
- 8,744
26
votes
Accepted
Does Monero have any mobile wallets available?
Does Monero have any Android or iOS wallets available?
No Monero iOS or Android wallet currently existed in the Apple App Store or Google Play Store for a long time with the custodial Freewallet ...
- 6,563
25
votes
Accepted
What privacy issues did Monero have and still has?
The Monero Research Lab is a team of voluntary researchers, scientists and academics that did analyse Monero and its predecessor CryptoNote in the past, explaining both past attacks and possible ...
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24
votes
Accepted
What are the primary differences between Monero and Bitcoin?
Privacy
You won't find your standard address on the blockchain. Every single output is its own one time address, there is no choice about it (as opposed to Bitcoin, where address reuse is discouraged,...
- 34.8k
22
votes
What is a stealth address?
Stealth addresses take care of the receiver's privacy, not the sender's.
In cryptocurrency, the ability to spend a certain amount of coins is the same as the knowledge of the private key to the ...
- 3,327
19
votes
Accepted
What privacy or security trade offs are associated with not running your own full node?
Using a third party node has drawbacks in two main categories: privacy, and performance.
When you refresh your wallet, the daemon sends blocks and transactions to your wallet, which then inspects ...
- 34.8k
19
votes
Accepted
What is a stealth address?
This is a complex topic that loses many in forest of cryptographic trees, but the following highlights important points required to understand and follow stealth address concepts.
Stealth address ...
- 1,566
18
votes
How does Monero privacy and security compare to Zcash?
Adding this answer to make it simpler to those who can not understand the top response.
ZCash uses a new cryptography tool called zk-SNARK (don't worry about the name). This is different than the ...
- 8,744
17
votes
Accepted
Number of Monero block explorers and their unique features
An incomplete list of explorers with unique features would include Moneroblocks, ChainRadar, and The Onion Monero Blockchain Explorer, of which the clearnet version can be found here.
Moneroblocks is ...
- 4,566
17
votes
Accepted
How can individuals safeguard themselves and the community against a key reusing fork?
First, there is no stealing possible, so your funds are safe ASSUMING THE MONEROV (OR OTHER KEY REUSING FORK) SOFTWARE IS NOT A TROJAN. If it is not, then the key reuse only affects one of the privacy ...
- 34.8k
16
votes
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Spam attack to gain control of many outputs and undermine privacy
We can get a rough idea of a cost lower bound by doing the following:
This command looks at the tx_outputs database, which lists all the outputs on the blockchain:
mdb_stat -s tx_outputs ~/....
- 34.8k
15
votes
Accepted
How will the temporal output alignment of ring partners (mixins) be addressed?
There are three main ways to fix this.
The first one is to attempt to select outputs which are unrelated, if possible. This only works if you are sending an amount of monero that can be represented ...
- 34.8k
15
votes
Accepted
Can Kovri be blocked in e.g. China?
With Deep Packet Inspection, you can filter/block almost any traffic you want. In the I2P projcet, on which Kovri depends, the devs are aware of blocking possibilities in restricted countries and they ...
- 2,681
15
votes
What is MoneroV, and how is it different than Monero?
MoneroV is a chain split off Monero. It will inherit Monero's history going forward. MoneroV is widely regarded as an attack on the Monero network.
Any initial transactions made on MoneroV will be ...
- 8,744
14
votes
Accepted
What is churning?
Churning means simply sending the entire balance back to yourself. There's a privacy increase because by doing so, you increase the distance of your funds from some source. Each churn serves to fuzz ...
- 19.9k
13
votes
Accepted
What is RingCT and how does it make Monero private?
Yes, that is true, but that is not the only thing. The main privacy enhancing features of Monero are:
Ring signatures: make transactions harder to trace by obscuring the output of the true sender in ...
- 3,327
12
votes
What privacy or security trade offs are associated with not running your own full node?
Remote Nodes
Patches have been made to limit the information leak to a remote node. It does not know what inputs you control, and it does not know what blocks your receiving transactions are from. ...
- 8,744
12
votes
Accepted
Is it safe to share a daemon with a roommate?
You are asking two different things here:
what are the risks in using the same daemon
They're typically small, and mostly either privacy leaks or denial of service.
Obviously, whoever runs the ...
- 34.8k
12
votes
Accepted
What is the difference between Monero (XMR) and Nav Coin (NAV)?
Despite both being advertised as privacy-focused cryptocurrencies, they are very different.
Monero uses ring signatures, RingCT, and stealth addresses to hide information on the blockchain. For every ...
- 8,744
11
votes
What are the primary differences between Monero and Bitcoin?
A few other security related things that weren't mentioned in the other answers. In contrast to Bitcoin's 10 minute block time, Monero has a 2 minute block time.
Additionally, Monero uses a ...
- 1,498
11
votes
Can Monero's privacy features be integrated into (copied) by bitcoin?
The simple answer would be no. The codebases simply aren't in any way similar. Bitcoin devs would need to do a massive rewrite of the code to implement ring sigs with confidential transactions, it ...
- 6,484
10
votes
Accepted
What would be the minimum mixin for full privacy?
It will always be a sliding scale, much like how many confirmations will give me full security? The answer is neither can give you "full" security, but they can make it so that it's enough to thwart ...
- 6,484
10
votes
What advantages does Monero offer that are not provided by other cryptocurrencies?
Advantages of CryptoNote coins
Common to all Bytecoin derived coins
Monero transactions are untraceable and un-linkable by default. Meaning that there is ambiguity of where the monero came from and ...
- 1,187
10
votes
Accepted
How does TumbleBit privacy and security compare with Monero?
Update 2018.02.04 In light of recent of environment changes, this answer needs update, since blockchain scalability cannot be ignored anymore. TumbleBit's mixing technique became completely ...
- 215
10
votes
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Monero mixin 0 versus Zcash "T" address transaction
Monero mixin 0 is still superior to a Zcash "T" transparent transaction due to the fact that Monero uses stealth addresses for every transaction whereas Zcash does not have this feature.
I do not ...
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9
votes
What is fungibility and why does it matter?
Fungibility makes a coin very much like physical cash:
Fungibility is a property of money that makes every unit if this money interchangeable: you can pay someone with a paper note and the receiver ...
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Only top scored, non community-wiki answers of a minimum length are eligible