Please stay on topic: this post is only for comments discussing the uncertainties, shortcomings, and concerns some may have about Monero.

NOT the positive aspects of it.

Discussion can relate to the technology itself or economics.

Talk about community and price is not wanted, but some discussion about it maybe allowed if it relates well.

Be as respectful and nice as possible. This discussion has potential to be more emotionally charged as it may bring up issues that are extremely upsetting: many people are not only financially but emotionally invested in the ideas and tools around Monero.

It's better to keep it calm then to stir the pot, so don't talk down to people, insult them for spelling/grammar, personal insults, etc. This should only be calm rational discussion about the technical and economic aspects of Monero.

"Do unto others 20% better than you'd expect them to do unto you to correct subjective error." - Linus Pauling

How it works:

Post your concerns about Monero in reply to this main post.

If you can address these concerns, or add further details to them - reply to that comment. This will make it easily sortable

Upvote the comments that are the most valid criticisms of it that have few or no real honest solutions/answers to them.

The comment that mentions the biggest problems of Monero should have the most karma.

As a community, as developers, we need to know about them. Even if they make us feel bad, we got to upvote them.

https://youtu.be/vKA4w2O61Xo

To learn more about the idea behind Monero Skepticism Sunday, check out the first post about it:

https://np.reddit.com/r/Monero/comments/75w7wt/can_we_make_skepticism_sunday_a_part_of_the/

To those unfamiliar - OrangeFren.com is a search engine for no-KYC, no sign-up, instant exchanges. We also list gift cards providers and some on/off ramps. We also operate Intercambio.app if you'd rather conduct the trade with a proxy.

For the past half a year we've been crunching the numbers for search volume for each currency on OrangeFren.com

Each and every month Monero has been taking the lead. Here's the latest numbers for January 2025:

Stats for January 2025

All the numbers:

As you can see the numbers are pretty stable. 30-40% for Monero, ~25% for Bitcoin.

Before anyone says this is just, because we only market ourselves to Monero folk - that's not true. We operate a Bitcoin Lightning Network node. We sell channels from it to help Bitcoiners connect to the rest of LN. And we even regularly advertise on Lightning (basically you can send a pretty long text with every payment on LN so we send 1 sat to every LN user and the memo is a text ad).

Despite this LN only gets 4% of our search volume in January. That's the highest ever and still only a TENTH of Monero's volume 🫠

not up to date rn. do we expect it to go live this year?

This is the weekly Monero market thread. This thread will be posted every Friday and is meant to help accelerate the adoption of Monero. Due to r/moneromarket having only a fraction of the subscribers of r/Monero, we have decided to create this thread to encourage more individuals to use Monero for product exchanges. Until the market matures, we recommend that the Monero community post their products both in this thread and on r/moneromarket (to ensure growth of that subreddit).

Selling items for Monero will boost your (and Monero's) reputation as a legitimate form of exchange of goods. This is necessary for the growth of Monero, our community, and privacy as a whole.

Instructions

When you post your product or job listing here, please make sure to:

• Give a description of the item.
• Link to a photo of the item (if it's physical).
• Provide logistics information (such as, location and/or shipping availability).
• Optionally, provide an additional (private) form of communication outside of Reddit (e.g. Bitmessage, u/protonmail, u/tutanota, GPG key).
• Post the price in XMR terms.

Spamming will not be tolerated. Please make sure that listings are legitimate and do not break rule 2."

Finally, credits to cdotsubo for starting the concept!

Will I be able to use a debit card and just send USD? If I have to buy USDT or something through a CEX then I'd rather just have privacy and go through Haveno. It's pretty obvious where my money is going if my bank just sees me repeatedly buying USDT only for it to seemingly disappear.

Hello everyone, not long ago I made this post here about opening up a hotel soon. Well, now it's open and we're more than happy to host you and accept XMR as a payment. Hotel is located in Georgia's part of The Greater Caucasus mountain range.

It's a small family-run hotel with 9 rooms total, but for now only 4 of them are being rented out. It's a 3-story building with a quite large fenced yard. Construction started early 2022 and finished in December 2024. There's free parking in the fenced yard.

Of course, being able to pay with Monero can't be the only reason someone would want to visit someplace, fortunately we've got some attractions around here, you can check them out here: https://www.agrekazbegi.com/kazbegi-attractions.html

If you want to check prices, go to https://www.agrekazbegi.com/ to choose a room and dates, then click "Book Now".

I think anyone that decides to visit us based on this post would in large part be coming for the opportunity to pay for goods and services in Monero so I feel a bit more responsible for ensuring that such guests fully enjoy their stay without much worry about anything else, for this reason I'm offering a package that includes dinner & tours to attractions around here. Which attractions you'd visit depends on your preferred length of stay, it takes 3 days to visit all of them:
Day 1: Gergeti Trinity Church, Dariali Monastery Complex & Gveleti Waterfall
Day 2: Juta
Day 3: Truso Gorge (this is the one that takes most time, you have to cross rivers on a car)

So you'd enjoy your breakfast in the morning, then go visit those attractions, come back, enjoy your dinner and have a lovely evening. I'll also give you some Georgian snacks to enjoy while on the trip (see Churchkhela & Gozinaki) :-)

Needless to say, it's up to you which one you choose, you can just pay for the accommodation (which includes breakfast) and manage visiting attractions on your own. Also, if you do choose to visit those attractions, you can choose any combination of them, it's not necessary to visit all of them, although it's highly recommended.

If you want to book some nights, just send me a message on here with dates that you wish to book. We are offering 15% discount on accommodation for anyone who pays in Monero. There's absolutely no KYC, I'll just give you a QR code that you're supposed to present at check-in, that's all you need to get your keys and room, although I'd like to know my guest's name to have something to address them by in person, it's not a requirement either. We also provide guests with breakfast buffet which is included in the price. I take 10% of the whole price (10% of the accommodation) beforehand as sort of a deposit, which is fully refundable if you cancel while there's 7 days or more left before the check-in date - then, you pay remaining 90% at check-in, based on whatever USD/XMR exchange rate will be at the time of check-in. Here we speak fluent English, Russian & Georgian. Let me know if you have any additional questions, I'm new to this and might have missed some information.

Hey Monero community,

I’ve been using P2P platforms to buy and sell XMR, but I’m increasingly worried about the risks involved. Recently, I had a situation where a buyer attempted to reverse a bank transfer after the trade was completed. It seems like they may have been scammed themselves and then tried to recover their money, which put me in a risky position.

This made me realize how easily my bank account could get flagged or even frozen if something like this happens again. For those of you who use P2P methods to on/off-ramp Monero, how do you protect yourself from fraud, chargebacks, or receiving illicit funds? Are there specific precautions you take?

Would appreciate any advice or strategies to minimize these risks. Thanks!

Hey everyone

I started gaining interesst in monero. I really like the concept of it.
As I looked more into it I found out you can still kinda track monero by trading it over malicious nodes. So it's best to run your own node. I also found out that you should trade new monero first in to a "throw away" wallet before transfering it into your main wallet.

Now I have some questions:

Whats the difference between a prune node and a full node and do I need a full node to be safe?

Can I have my throw away wallet on the same node or is the security aspect of having a second wallet obsolete through that?

I hope I don't get bashed here for asking some beginner questions :)

Thanks

With purchasing xmr, the buyer and seller make a deposit as a way to help ensure fair play between the two.

Let’s say buyer sends cash through the mail and make a deposit. Video tapes himself doing so to have proof just in case.

Seller receives cash but claims they never did. Arbitrator sides with the buyer because of the video proof of packing and delivering to post. Buyer receives his deposit back and the deposit that was the sellers. Now here’s the question if let’s say he was buying $1000 xmr and the deposit were both set in 25% meaning there are a total of $500 dollars in deposits. Would the buyer just be out of his $1000 he sent or would he get back both deposits and the coins he was trying to gain from the start?

How will it affect the block time and the miners? Would it take longer to confirm a transaction and miners will have a harder difficulty to mine?

Hi, on 18th January I used trocador to exchange my BTC worth $2300+ at the time to USDT. The first platform suggested on trocador for the exchange was easybit.com . After transferring the BTC to the address required, I was notified that the transaction was halted. After days of reaching out to their support and email, I was required to send multiple proofs of the source and wallet ownership which I assisted completely. However after completing what they required, easybit told me that they will take more time and that there is a chance the fund will never be refunded back to me. I have never dealt with such cases before, can anyone tell me what I can do to get my fund back? Or is it gone forever? It has now been 12 days since the transaction was halted.

Update: I have gotten the refund after 14 days, big thumbs up to trocador support team for helping me with the refund.

I'm new to this world and I don't know much about it but I've heard monero is the most secured crypto currency and I value my privacy, and I was surprised when I knew Bitcoin isn't private and everyone can see what you're doing with your money because of the blockchain unlike monero, however some people say other people can track you if you're not using you're own node and I don't know how to do that!

For example Let's say I want to receive X amount of xmr on my cake wallet, can the sender or the person who created the node I'm using knows my IP address the moment I receive the money or they know it when I try to spend it ? And if so how can I avoid that ? And is there anyway to avoid running my own node because I've heard it takes a lot of storage and I don't have that and if there's no other way what's the best way to run your own node on Android

Is there a way to cleanup (delete) old / unused subaddresses in the wallet?

In the same wallet, I have multiple accounts with multiple subaddresses. However once I add a new subaddress, even if it is unused, there is no way for me to delete it.

They do not bother, and they are not a problem, but it does look ugly / unclean to me, since I have no use for those subaddresses.

Is there a way to delete them?

Hello. I want to make payment on Subscribestar, but unfortunately I live in a sanctioned country and there is only card payment available by Author. I know that crypto payment is not allowed for some reason, so I guess prepaid cards are my best option. There are many card providers, I would like to use Monero directly, so Cakepay is probably my best option, maybe?

I would like to ask for help or suggestions, maybe someone has used prepaid cards to make purchase on Subscribestar? I have some questions:

• Subscribestar requires state and ZIP code input upon US card option selected. Do US prepaid cards have this info, or I'll need to fake it?

• Will Subscribestar actually accept my virtual card from Cakepay?

• While ordering a Cakepay card, there is a warning considering VPN/Tor users may be blocked from acquiring the card. Is it there just for a show, or my money will really go to nothing if I make a Monero transaction to Cakepay while making that order from Tor?

• Could Subscribestar request KYC on my payment?

• Do I need to order card on amount more than purchase itself to cover transaction fees? IDK if there will be ones, but probably I'll had to give around 1% upon transaction?

Sorry if it's offtop, idk popular places to ask such things.

I'm new to this world and I don't know much about it but I've heard monero is the most secured crypto currency and I value my privacy, and I was surprised when I knew Bitcoin isn't private and everyone can see what you're doing with your money because of the blockchain unlike monero, however some people say other people can track you if you're not using you're own node and I don't know how to do that!

For example Let's say I want to receive X amount of xmr on my cake wallet, can the sender or the person who created the node I'm using knows my IP address the moment I receive the money or they know it when I try to spend it ? And if so how can I avoid that ? And is there anyway to avoid running my own node because I've heard it takes a lot of storage and I don't have that and if there's no other way what's the best way to run your own node on Android

• The party generating the proof of funds (Alice) has the wallet keys but does not have a copy of the Monero blockchain.

• The party verifying said proof (Bob) does not have the wallet keys but does have a copy of the Monero blockchain.

• Alice and Bob can communicate to any degree necessary, can sign messages for each other and whatnot, but Alice can never give Bob her spend key.

• Alice shouldn’t be trusted not to lie in her communications — so whatever she says should be provable by Bob using the blockchain.

Note that view keys let you see the partial balance, but that’s not good enough. I need to make Bob know Alice’s current spendable wallet balance, with cooperation from Alice, but without blindly trusting her.

Is all that even possible in Monero given its architecture?

Cuprate, the upcoming Rust-written monero node have achieved full verification sync in 20 hours. An official development update is coming soon.

The machine that achieved this have shutdown multiple time, so we had to cut a third graph that was rendered completely broken because of the timestamp. The date is also wrong because hardcoded in the python script.

What's fast-sync and full verification sync

When you are booting up monerod to sync the blockchain from scratch, your node is doing what's called a fast-sync. monerod will download a range of block and will compare its downloaded result to a list of hashes embedded in its binary. This list is updated at every release and is easily reproducible by everyone. By doing so, monerod avoid the overhead of independently verifying the entire blockchain from genesis, which is a long and fastidious process. This stop once you hit the last range of blocks covered by the hash list (basically around the latest release date). If you ever wondered why monero is always much slower at syncing the top of the chain, that's why.

A full verification sync (--fast-block-sync 0 argument in monerod) however, is doing the exact opposite, it is independently verifying and validating every blocks and transactions from scratch, no hash list involved.

Cuprate syncing performance

This syncing method take multiple days or even a whole week for monerod to complete. Early results from cuprated have shown a 40% syncing time improvements in this method on a VPS. Later on, multiple bare-metal try have shown a full verification sync to be achievable in under 48 hours. With the same level of optimization, a threadripper machine of 64 cores have been able to achieve syncing in 27 hours.

Up to today, improvements have been made on the database, permitting a consumer level machine to fully verify and sync the blockchain in 20 hours.

For consulting early results, see this github issue: https://github.com/Cuprate/cuprate/issues/195 . For being aware of the current state of Cuprate, join #cuprate on IRC libera.chat or #cuprate:monero.social on Matrix.

Given the success of the previous MAAMs (see here), let's keep this rolling.

The principle is simple: ask anything you'd like to know about Monero, especially the dumb questions that you've been keeping for you every other days, may the community clarify it all!

Finally, credits to binaryFate for starting the concept!

“the argument that encryption enables criminal activities overlooks its broader societal benefits. Encryption protects sensitive data such as financial transactions, medical records, and intellectual property. Weakening encryption would expose individuals and organizations to increased risks of cyberattacks and identity theft, creating a host of new security challenges.”

I think this sums up the issue nicely.

Please stay on topic: this post is only for comments discussing the uncertainties, shortcomings, and concerns some may have about Monero.

NOT the positive aspects of it.

Discussion can relate to the technology itself or economics.

Talk about community and price is not wanted, but some discussion about it maybe allowed if it relates well.

Be as respectful and nice as possible. This discussion has potential to be more emotionally charged as it may bring up issues that are extremely upsetting: many people are not only financially but emotionally invested in the ideas and tools around Monero.

It's better to keep it calm then to stir the pot, so don't talk down to people, insult them for spelling/grammar, personal insults, etc. This should only be calm rational discussion about the technical and economic aspects of Monero.

"Do unto others 20% better than you'd expect them to do unto you to correct subjective error." - Linus Pauling

How it works:

Post your concerns about Monero in reply to this main post.

If you can address these concerns, or add further details to them - reply to that comment. This will make it easily sortable

Upvote the comments that are the most valid criticisms of it that have few or no real honest solutions/answers to them.

The comment that mentions the biggest problems of Monero should have the most karma.

As a community, as developers, we need to know about them. Even if they make us feel bad, we got to upvote them.

https://youtu.be/vKA4w2O61Xo

To learn more about the idea behind Monero Skepticism Sunday, check out the first post about it:

https://np.reddit.com/r/Monero/comments/75w7wt/can_we_make_skepticism_sunday_a_part_of_the/

https://www.blockhead.co/2025/01/23/tornado-cash-sanctions-reversed-in-landmark-ruling/

For Bitcoin Cash in relation to Monero, is Bitcoin Cash less complicated for microtransactions in some ways, or are they both about equally complex to use in development when comparing Monero and Bitcoin Cash? Both have low transaction fees

Managing the three environments with testing, log files sent to Kibana, OAuth, docker containers.

Using nextjs btw.

The complexity never ends.

Can anyone give me tips? I want it to be maintainable and not have heart attack during production.

Containers, GitHub workflow.

It’s just so much. The security. Managing all the SSL certs. For the three stages to send those log files over https to Kibana.

It’s a whole system now. But I want it to be a reliable one

In this era of increased stealing of ownership, banning accounts, and stripping away things you already paid for-turning them into subscriptions instead.

• How can we support our right to ownership using Monero, specifically by supporting piracy?

• Is there a way for donations or support? What are the most famous groups or accounts on

Matrix and Twitter (X)?

These companies have gone out of their way, and they need to be humbled. They're making a ton of money and sunsetting things out of this world. OMG, where are the old days of pirates, hackers, independent developers, and anonymous groups! I really miss those days...😞

Hey everyone,

I recently created a live XMR Price Widget using my minimal programming experience as I learn Python. I wanted to serve the community with something that may be useful.

Im also in the process of building a dual AMD EPYC 7551 XMRig x Gupax Miner build to support the network. The build has a custom fab open chassis (the fab series has just been completed and im now filming building the custom hard line cooling loop), custom hard line water cooling, and two external metrics monitors. The build is on my YouTube channel: CRZYCYBR

https://github.com/justanotherneo/XMR-Live-Price-Widget

Hello everyone, there has been a new Monero churning tool that was recently released. They claim it's the proper way to churn Monero to enhance privacy. Mitigating all the past issues of `sweep_all` and/or self-sending common pitfalls etc

Here's the link and their writeup:
https://github.com/antichainalysis/xmr-churner

https://github.com/antichainalysis/xmr-churner/blob/main/writeup.md

What do you guys think?

I think there was talk about somebody stealing the donations intended for monero development. What was the conclusion and who is currently actually developing monero?