History, values and basic structure of the Monero project and technology.
Monero was launched in April 2014. It was a fair, pre-announced launch of the CryptoNote reference code. There was no premine or instamine, and no portion of the block reward goes to development. See the original Bitcointalk thread.
The founder, thankful_for_today, proposed some controversial changes that the community disagreed with. A fallout ensued, and the Monero Core Team forked the project with the community following this new Core Team. This Core Team has provided oversight since.
Monero has made several large improvements since launch. The blockchain was migrated to a different database structure to provide greater efficiency and flexibility, minimum ring signature sizes were set so that all transactions were private by mandate, and RingCT was implemented to hide the transaction amounts. Nearly all improvements have provided improvements to security or privacy, or they have facilitated use. Monero continues to develop with goals of privacy and security first, ease of use and efficiency second.
Monero is more than just a technology. It's also what the technology stands for.
Users must be able to trust Monero with their transactions, without risk of error or attack. Monero gives the full block reward to the miners, who are the most critical members of the network who provide this security. Transactions are cryptographically secure using the latest and most resilient encryption tools available.
Monero takes privacy seriously. Monero needs to be able to protect users in a court of law and, in extreme cases, from the death penalty. This level of privacy must be completely accessible to all users, whether they are technologically competent or have no idea how Monero works.
Monero is committed to providing the highest degree of decentralization in both network security and code development. Its Proof of Work algorithm prevents specialized mining hardware from dominating the network. Development and research are conducted via global collaboration with utmost transparency.
Basic technical information about Monero. For more details, consult the library or get in touch with the community.
An ASIC-resistant and CPU-friendly POW algorithm created by Monero community members, designed to make the use of mining-specific hardware unfeasible.
A new block is created approximately every 2 minutes. There is no maximum block size, but instead a dynamic block size with a block reward penalty.
Main emission of ~18.132M coins completed May 2022. Tail emission of 0.6 XMR per block ensures permanent mining incentives with <1% inflation.
Unlike Bitcoin, Monero has no hard cap. The tail emission provides ongoing security incentives while inflation trends towards zero over time.
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