Monero Is Undergoing a Major Network Upgrade Today, XMR Up 2.5%
- The Monero team will conduct the upgrade using a hard fork.
- The privacy protocol has been planning this upgrade for some months.
Popular privacy-focused crypto protocol, Monero, is planning a significant upgrade on Saturday, August 13. Previously known as BitMonero, the protocol is an open-source project which became functional eight years ago. Its native token (XMR) is a private, secure, and untrackable digital currency, making it impossible to track financial transactions.
The Monero team will conduct the upgrade using a hard fork. A hard fork is a permanent change to a blockchain that is irreversible. The blockchain splits into various parts of the nodes that don’t accept the change.
Features of the Monero Upgrade and the Use Case
The august 13 upgrade will introduce new features into the Monero protocol. The top changes include:
· Each transaction will have a greater number of signers for a ring signature. After the upgrade, this number will be 16 instead of 11.
· The upgrade is expected to improve the overall performance of the bulletproofs algorithm by up to 7 percent.
· Bulletproofs+ enhances speeds up transaction processing and reduces transaction size.
· Introduction of the view tags feature. This feature will improve wallet syncing by 30 to 40 percent.
· Fee modification will cause a reduction in fee volatility and enhance the general security of the network.
· Addition of essential security patches and improvement on multi-signature functionality.
The Monero outreach (the protocol’s community site) states that residents of areas with depressed economies or oppressive leadership benefit mainly from XMR or any other similar cryptocurrency. One of the executives of the human rights foundation, Alex Gladstein, said investigative journalists and activists are using Monero, Bitcoin, and other digital currencies as financial tools to aid their work.
A 2018 article by Gladstein stated that Bitcoin helps residents in nations such as Zimbabwe to escape hyperinflation. He added that Monero’s privacy-enhancing features are a “countering force” against censorship by oppressive rulership in countries such as North Korea, Venezuela, and Iran.
As is always the case, there has been some illegal use of Monero’s privacy feature. Earlier in the year, a blockchain security firm, Chainalysis, released a report saying XMR is the most common digital currency used by cryptojackers. Cryptojacker is a type of malware that steals computing resources from unsuspicious users.
Then, the cryptojackers exploit these resources to mine XMR. The report also claimed that cryptojackers mined 5 percent of all the XMR in circulation. Hence, cryptojacker is the most popular type of crypto-malware.
Side Notes
Moenro offers its users top-level security and privacy through innovative cryptography. Some of the top features of the protocol are ring signatures, stealth addresses, zero-knowledge proofs (aka bulletproofs), dandelion++, wallets, and exchanges. Ring signatures make it impossible to track the source of a Monero transaction. Stealth addresses exemplify the protocol’s unlinkability.
A Monero user can receive funds in multiple addresses despite publishing one address only. The protocol ensures no link between the user’s published address and other addresses involved in the transaction. Only the parties involved in the transaction know the receiver’s address.
Meanwhile, XMR is trading around $166, having gained approximately 2.5 percent in the past 24 hours. The asset has a market capitalization of approximately $3 billion with its 24 hour volume at around $101 million.
Rebecca is a Senior Staff Writer at BitcoinWisdom, working hard to bring you the latest breaking news in the cryptocurrency market. In the words of Elon Musk “Buy stock in several companies that make products & services that *you* believe in. Only sell if you think their products & services are trending worse. Don’t panic when the market does. This will serve you well in the long-term.”
