I wanted to write a short article about the distinct characteristics of Monero, some of which are absolutely necessities in any future currency looking to gaining serious user adoption. Together, these separate Monero quite distinctly from the rest of the crypto field.This is certainly nothing new to the Monero seniors here, but it might contain some new perspectives, and also give an overview to the newer cryptofolk why Monero is quite unique -1. Transactions are private by defaultThe sender, receiver and amount are all hidden in Monero. This is by default, as opposed to some other private cryptocurrencies, such as Zcash, where you can optionally make private transactions. As a result, most transactions in Zcash are transparent, which makes the actual anonymity set small.In Bitcoin there is no real anonymity, because everything occurs in a transparent blockchain – the sender, receiver and amount are all public information. This has created a market for blockchain analysis, where companies keep track of the of transactions and make profit from this information. Furthermore, because the full history of sent and received Bitcoins and other transparent cryptocurrencies can be analyzed, the newly minted coins are generally more valuable than others. This phenomenon is called ‘taint’, and it exists only in transparent blockchains.Besides speculative holding, no real-world use will emerge in any blockchain that is transparent. No company is prepared to publicly devolve how much, when and to which suppliers they send funds. Or vice versa, no company wants its competitors to know how many customers have paid them in the last quarter. Similarly, no sensible, privacy-valuing person should be willing to share his or her personal consuming habits with the whole world, forever.2. Community-driven – no company, no CEOMost understand cryptocurrencies are decentralized because different stakeholders all over the world participate in the process of mining, verifying and relying information from one stakeholder to another. It is practically impossible to stop this type of well distributed global network from operating.The network topology, however, is only one part of the decentralization. If everything is controlled by a single entity, it creates a single point of failure. As an example, if everything is funded, developed and coordinated by a single company or a few companies, which funds can be seized, executives jailed and operations stopped, how secure is this cryptocurrency in the end? In Monero, there is no company, no CEO, no office. Everything is coordinated by members of the community, globally.3. Emission is dis-inflationary and it reduces constantlyMonero’s emission, i.e. generation of new coins, reduces every block (2 minutes). In Bitcoin, the emission is reduced every four years. This causes sudden shocks to the Bitcoin ecosystem, because miners’ rewards are halved. Such a dramatic decrease will inevitably lead to some miners abandoning their mining activities. Because proof-of-work (POW) cryptocurrencies such as Bitcoin and Monero rely on miners to secure the network, any significant decrease in mining is detrimental to the network’s security. On the other hand, the smoother emission in Monero makes mining activities more stable, which improves the security and trust of the whole system.Another future-proofing factor in Monero is the tail emission, where the block reward will no longer decrease from 0.6 XMR after mid 2022. Minimum block reward incentives miners to continue mining even if the transaction fees do not cover all economic needs of the competing miners.Comparing this to FIAT currencies, which are inflating 2-6 % each year, Monero’s inflation is asymptotically approaching 0 %. Even though new coins are generated by every block, the amount created per given time period remains constant after mid 2022. Contrast this to the FIAT systems, where the amount of new currency created is always increasing. Due to the compounding effect even moderate inflation in FIAT currencies causes considerable losses to all savers in medium and long term.4. Block size is dynamic – it scales with number of transactionsMonero’s block size has no cap, which means the amount of transactions that can fit to the block is not limited. To prevent transaction spamming, preventive mechanisms have been built in the protocol.Cryptocurrencies which implement a hard cap on the block size are susceptible to surging transactions fees. This occurs when there are simply too many transactions trying to make it into the block. Such a phenomenon occurred in Bitcoin during the peak of the last bull-run in January 2018, when the average transaction fees rose above $20.5. Fair supply – no premine or developer taxSupply mechanism and distribution are two elemental factors, which affect how capable the cryptocurrency is as a store of value (SOV). If a large majority of the future supply is held by a small group of people, it undermines the trust that the cryptocurrency keeps its value long term. If only a few stakeholders can massively increase the supply side of the market, the downward price risk becomes high. The more distributed the supply, the more stakeholders it takes to influence it.Two practical implementations that undermine SOV in cryptocurrencies are premine and developer tax. In premine, the founders create a large initial amount of funds for themselves (or for their organization). Premining is an issue in some POW currencies and in all proof-of-stake (POS) cryptocurrencies, because their coin generation is not done by work. Developer tax is implemented in some POW currencies, where a portion of the block reward goes to the founders.6. Crowdfunding and voluntarism as driving forcesSince the launch of Monero in 2014, all progression has been made by its rich and versatile community. Active members consist of several PhD researchers, developers, UX designers, translators and many other professionals of varying backgrounds. Much of the work has been made possible using crowdfunding, donors being individuals, investors and companies. Some members have participated even pro-bono, which further emphasizes the community’s trust in the project. The fact that the work is enabled by crowfunding and voluntarism is truly a strength, because it is difficult to stop ideology and people who want to be part of such force. This is in stark contrast to company-driven projects, which are much more susceptible to government oversight and control.7. Mining is more sustainableMonero’s mining algorithm, Random X, specifically targets general purpose CPUs and it is unsuitable to be mined with application-specific integrated circuits (ASICS). This greatly improves mining decentralization, because mining is feasible on data centers and personal computers. In Bitcoin and many other POW cryptocurrencies mining is only feasible with expensive ASICS, manufactured by just a few companies.ASIC mined cryptocurrencies are problematic because there are very few companies specializing in mining equipment. Bitcoin’s largest ASIC manufacturer, Bitmain, has had overly much power in the ecosystem. They have stalled Bitcoin’s adoption, caused division among the community and even been one of the principal culprits for the past Bitcoin forks.Another problem with ASIC manufacturers is their economic advantage over the rest of the mining field. ASIC manufacturers typically utilize their next generation products themselves and start selling them to the consumer market after their mining profits have reduced sufficiently due to the increasing competition. This makes normal miners second tier stakeholders in the ecosystem and it is a cause of further mining centralization.8. Proven track recordMonero community has been working actively since its inception in 2014. Majority of the work has focused on research and development, with little efforts put to marketing. Unlike some other projects, especially those forked from Bitcoin, Monero project has an extensive technical skillset in its community and it has been one of the leading projects when it comes to both innovation and execution.One of the Monero’s focus points is applied cryptographic research. Monero has implemented several advancements into the core protocol efficiently and with assurance. All major changes to the Monero protocol have been audited by some of the world’s leading companies specializing in cryptographic analysis, funded by the Monero community.
Submitted January 19, 2020 at 01:40AM
No comments:
Post a Comment