Ecoer Logo
VOTING POWER100.00%
DOWNVOTE POWER100.00%
RESOURCE CREDITS100.00%
REPUTATION PROGRESS49.43%
Net Worth
1.277USD
STEEM
0.000STEEM
SBD
1.143SBD
Own SP
13.185SP

Detailed Balance

STEEM
balance
0.000STEEM
market_balance
0.000STEEM
savings_balance
0.000STEEM
reward_steem_balance
0.000STEEM
STEEM POWER
Own SP
13.185SP
Delegated Out
0.000SP
Delegation In
0.000SP
Effective Power
13.185SP
Reward SP (pending)
0.000SP
SBD
sbd_balance
1.143SBD
sbd_conversions
0.000SBD
sbd_market_balance
0.000SBD
savings_sbd_balance
0.000SBD
reward_sbd_balance
0.000SBD
{
  "balance": "0.000 STEEM",
  "savings_balance": "0.000 STEEM",
  "reward_steem_balance": "0.000 STEEM",
  "vesting_shares": "21471.648640 VESTS",
  "delegated_vesting_shares": "0.000000 VESTS",
  "received_vesting_shares": "0.000000 VESTS",
  "sbd_balance": "1.143 SBD",
  "savings_sbd_balance": "0.000 SBD",
  "reward_sbd_balance": "0.000 SBD",
  "conversions": []
}

Account Info

namesgp
id146986
rank108,264
reputation31576756792
created2017-04-14T15:06:21
recovery_accountsteem
proxyNone
post_count12
comment_count0
lifetime_vote_count0
witnesses_voted_for0
last_post2018-06-19T03:05:45
last_root_post2018-06-19T03:05:45
last_vote_time2018-02-17T18:40:54
proxied_vsf_votes0, 0, 0, 0
can_vote1
voting_power0
delayed_votes0
balance0.000 STEEM
savings_balance0.000 STEEM
sbd_balance1.143 SBD
savings_sbd_balance0.000 SBD
vesting_shares21471.648640 VESTS
delegated_vesting_shares0.000000 VESTS
received_vesting_shares0.000000 VESTS
reward_vesting_balance0.000000 VESTS
vesting_balance0.000 STEEM
vesting_withdraw_rate0.000000 VESTS
next_vesting_withdrawal1969-12-31T23:59:59
withdrawn0
to_withdraw0
withdraw_routes0
savings_withdraw_requests0
last_account_recovery1970-01-01T00:00:00
reset_accountnull
last_owner_update1970-01-01T00:00:00
last_account_update2017-10-26T22:46:15
minedNo
sbd_seconds0
sbd_last_interest_payment1970-01-01T00:00:00
savings_sbd_last_interest_payment1970-01-01T00:00:00
{
  "id": 146986,
  "name": "sgp",
  "owner": {
    "weight_threshold": 1,
    "account_auths": [],
    "key_auths": [
      [
        "STM7PGwSpWDw3Mw7gnqtGLyUn6a7WsAfLhNqnDsohk4jRZQjoPCF8",
        1
      ]
    ]
  },
  "active": {
    "weight_threshold": 1,
    "account_auths": [],
    "key_auths": [
      [
        "STM6cQFDDXMJThnqtvynE7Sq85s9cruJPzuipz6W9pqK11Y7WPxt6",
        1
      ]
    ]
  },
  "posting": {
    "weight_threshold": 1,
    "account_auths": [
      [
        "steemiz.app",
        1
      ]
    ],
    "key_auths": [
      [
        "STM8CLoN1MGs3LvxnvsR84QxZuajiuNzyxt8tA4yKPsDdTLCYAfyU",
        1
      ]
    ]
  },
  "memo_key": "STM82NvPzghKBduDSnkmH55qaCdd78h3ak16xMJfGEHgG2ES52kZt",
  "json_metadata": "{\"profile\":{\"name\":\"SamsungGalaxyPlayer\",\"profile_image\":\"https://i.imgur.com/T4F1eUR.jpg\"}}",
  "posting_json_metadata": "{\"profile\":{\"name\":\"SamsungGalaxyPlayer\",\"profile_image\":\"https://i.imgur.com/T4F1eUR.jpg\"}}",
  "proxy": "",
  "last_owner_update": "1970-01-01T00:00:00",
  "last_account_update": "2017-10-26T22:46:15",
  "created": "2017-04-14T15:06:21",
  "mined": false,
  "recovery_account": "steem",
  "last_account_recovery": "1970-01-01T00:00:00",
  "reset_account": "null",
  "comment_count": 0,
  "lifetime_vote_count": 0,
  "post_count": 12,
  "can_vote": true,
  "voting_manabar": {
    "current_mana": "21471648640",
    "last_update_time": 1588952013
  },
  "downvote_manabar": {
    "current_mana": "5367912160",
    "last_update_time": 1588952013
  },
  "voting_power": 0,
  "balance": "0.000 STEEM",
  "savings_balance": "0.000 STEEM",
  "sbd_balance": "1.143 SBD",
  "sbd_seconds": "0",
  "sbd_seconds_last_update": "2018-01-05T21:19:30",
  "sbd_last_interest_payment": "1970-01-01T00:00:00",
  "savings_sbd_balance": "0.000 SBD",
  "savings_sbd_seconds": "0",
  "savings_sbd_seconds_last_update": "1970-01-01T00:00:00",
  "savings_sbd_last_interest_payment": "1970-01-01T00:00:00",
  "savings_withdraw_requests": 0,
  "reward_sbd_balance": "0.000 SBD",
  "reward_steem_balance": "0.000 STEEM",
  "reward_vesting_balance": "0.000000 VESTS",
  "reward_vesting_steem": "0.000 STEEM",
  "vesting_shares": "21471.648640 VESTS",
  "delegated_vesting_shares": "0.000000 VESTS",
  "received_vesting_shares": "0.000000 VESTS",
  "vesting_withdraw_rate": "0.000000 VESTS",
  "next_vesting_withdrawal": "1969-12-31T23:59:59",
  "withdrawn": 0,
  "to_withdraw": 0,
  "withdraw_routes": 0,
  "curation_rewards": 6,
  "posting_rewards": 2662,
  "proxied_vsf_votes": [
    0,
    0,
    0,
    0
  ],
  "witnesses_voted_for": 0,
  "last_post": "2018-06-19T03:05:45",
  "last_root_post": "2018-06-19T03:05:45",
  "last_vote_time": "2018-02-17T18:40:54",
  "post_bandwidth": 0,
  "pending_claimed_accounts": 0,
  "vesting_balance": "0.000 STEEM",
  "reputation": "31576756792",
  "transfer_history": [],
  "market_history": [],
  "post_history": [],
  "vote_history": [],
  "other_history": [],
  "witness_votes": [],
  "tags_usage": [],
  "guest_bloggers": [],
  "rank": 108264
}

Withdraw Routes

IncomingOutgoing
Empty
Empty
{
  "incoming": [],
  "outgoing": []
}
From Date
To Date
steemdelegated 0.000 SP to @sgp
2020/05/08 15:33:33
delegatorsteem
delegateesgp
vesting shares0.000000 VESTS
Transaction InfoBlock #43200420/Trx e90a5dcc528e42d5fe6e476d2f404442226a033d
View Raw JSON Data
{
  "trx_id": "e90a5dcc528e42d5fe6e476d2f404442226a033d",
  "block": 43200420,
  "trx_in_block": 36,
  "op_in_trx": 0,
  "virtual_op": 0,
  "timestamp": "2020-05-08T15:33:33",
  "op": [
    "delegate_vesting_shares",
    {
      "delegator": "steem",
      "delegatee": "sgp",
      "vesting_shares": "0.000000 VESTS"
    }
  ]
}
2019/04/14 16:47:03
parent authorsgp
parent permlinkhow-i-voted-in-the-2018-q2-zcash-foundation-community-governance-panel-election
authorsteemitboard
permlinksteemitboard-notify-sgp-20190414t164703000z
title
bodyCongratulations @sgp! You received a personal award! <table><tr><td>https://steemitimages.com/70x70/http://steemitboard.com/@sgp/birthday2.png</td><td>Happy Birthday! - You are on the Steem blockchain for 2 years!</td></tr></table> <sub>_You can view [your badges on your Steem Board](https://steemitboard.com/@sgp) and compare to others on the [Steem Ranking](http://steemitboard.com/ranking/index.php?name=sgp)_</sub> ###### [Vote for @Steemitboard as a witness](https://v2.steemconnect.com/sign/account-witness-vote?witness=steemitboard&approve=1) to get one more award and increased upvotes!
json metadata{"image":["https://steemitboard.com/img/notify.png"]}
Transaction InfoBlock #32041780/Trx 4f4121802933ba079419daf869803c692280c189
View Raw JSON Data
{
  "trx_id": "4f4121802933ba079419daf869803c692280c189",
  "block": 32041780,
  "trx_in_block": 12,
  "op_in_trx": 0,
  "virtual_op": 0,
  "timestamp": "2019-04-14T16:47:03",
  "op": [
    "comment",
    {
      "parent_author": "sgp",
      "parent_permlink": "how-i-voted-in-the-2018-q2-zcash-foundation-community-governance-panel-election",
      "author": "steemitboard",
      "permlink": "steemitboard-notify-sgp-20190414t164703000z",
      "title": "",
      "body": "Congratulations @sgp! You received a personal award!\n\n<table><tr><td>https://steemitimages.com/70x70/http://steemitboard.com/@sgp/birthday2.png</td><td>Happy Birthday! - You are on the Steem blockchain for 2 years!</td></tr></table>\n\n<sub>_You can view [your badges on your Steem Board](https://steemitboard.com/@sgp) and compare to others on the [Steem Ranking](http://steemitboard.com/ranking/index.php?name=sgp)_</sub>\n\n\n###### [Vote for @Steemitboard as a witness](https://v2.steemconnect.com/sign/account-witness-vote?witness=steemitboard&approve=1) to get one more award and increased upvotes!",
      "json_metadata": "{\"image\":[\"https://steemitboard.com/img/notify.png\"]}"
    }
  ]
}
2019/03/03 11:36:00
parent authorsgp
parent permlink7yjqso-a-monero-introduction-for-beginners
authorgiovannajasmin
permlinkre-sgp-7yjqso-a-monero-introduction-for-beginners-20190303t113559719z
title
bodyNice introduction... I have written a similar [article](https://www.cryptosteem.com/best-anonymous-cryptocurrency-list/) on the same subject... with a list of the best 7 anonymous cryptocurrency
json metadata{"tags":["monero"],"links":["https://www.cryptosteem.com/best-anonymous-cryptocurrency-list/"],"app":"steemit/0.1"}
Transaction InfoBlock #30828339/Trx 0dddb275b98920b177b2bfafa4087bb75de5ac66
View Raw JSON Data
{
  "trx_id": "0dddb275b98920b177b2bfafa4087bb75de5ac66",
  "block": 30828339,
  "trx_in_block": 14,
  "op_in_trx": 0,
  "virtual_op": 0,
  "timestamp": "2019-03-03T11:36:00",
  "op": [
    "comment",
    {
      "parent_author": "sgp",
      "parent_permlink": "7yjqso-a-monero-introduction-for-beginners",
      "author": "giovannajasmin",
      "permlink": "re-sgp-7yjqso-a-monero-introduction-for-beginners-20190303t113559719z",
      "title": "",
      "body": "Nice introduction... I have written a similar [article](https://www.cryptosteem.com/best-anonymous-cryptocurrency-list/) on the same subject... with a list of the best 7 anonymous cryptocurrency",
      "json_metadata": "{\"tags\":[\"monero\"],\"links\":[\"https://www.cryptosteem.com/best-anonymous-cryptocurrency-list/\"],\"app\":\"steemit/0.1\"}"
    }
  ]
}
2019/03/03 11:24:27
votergiovannajasmin
authorsgp
permlink7yjqso-a-monero-introduction-for-beginners
weight10000 (100.00%)
Transaction InfoBlock #30828109/Trx 5d33df26e7455e6310d0415b5a95d4b1f9eefb84
View Raw JSON Data
{
  "trx_id": "5d33df26e7455e6310d0415b5a95d4b1f9eefb84",
  "block": 30828109,
  "trx_in_block": 23,
  "op_in_trx": 0,
  "virtual_op": 0,
  "timestamp": "2019-03-03T11:24:27",
  "op": [
    "vote",
    {
      "voter": "giovannajasmin",
      "author": "sgp",
      "permlink": "7yjqso-a-monero-introduction-for-beginners",
      "weight": 10000
    }
  ]
}
2018/09/23 08:50:00
parent authorsgp
parent permlink7yjqso-a-monero-introduction-for-beginners
authorelliotyagami
permlinkre-sgp-7yjqso-a-monero-introduction-for-beginners-20180923t085001233z
title
bodyYou may like how I got started with monero https://steemit.com/monero/@elliotyagami/how-i-got-started-with-mining-monero
json metadata{"tags":["monero"],"links":["https://steemit.com/monero/@elliotyagami/how-i-got-started-with-mining-monero"],"app":"steemit/0.1"}
Transaction InfoBlock #26191799/Trx 7367d664e12179db3e31084ac8461806b274d598
View Raw JSON Data
{
  "trx_id": "7367d664e12179db3e31084ac8461806b274d598",
  "block": 26191799,
  "trx_in_block": 22,
  "op_in_trx": 0,
  "virtual_op": 0,
  "timestamp": "2018-09-23T08:50:00",
  "op": [
    "comment",
    {
      "parent_author": "sgp",
      "parent_permlink": "7yjqso-a-monero-introduction-for-beginners",
      "author": "elliotyagami",
      "permlink": "re-sgp-7yjqso-a-monero-introduction-for-beginners-20180923t085001233z",
      "title": "",
      "body": "You may like how I got started with monero \nhttps://steemit.com/monero/@elliotyagami/how-i-got-started-with-mining-monero",
      "json_metadata": "{\"tags\":[\"monero\"],\"links\":[\"https://steemit.com/monero/@elliotyagami/how-i-got-started-with-mining-monero\"],\"app\":\"steemit/0.1\"}"
    }
  ]
}
steemdelegated 1.241 SP to @sgp
2018/09/22 01:40:39
delegatorsteem
delegateesgp
vesting shares2021.144846 VESTS
Transaction InfoBlock #26154455/Trx 2e262ce23a0f50d2fff665ea1825ce052639d375
View Raw JSON Data
{
  "trx_id": "2e262ce23a0f50d2fff665ea1825ce052639d375",
  "block": 26154455,
  "trx_in_block": 6,
  "op_in_trx": 0,
  "virtual_op": 0,
  "timestamp": "2018-09-22T01:40:39",
  "op": [
    "delegate_vesting_shares",
    {
      "delegator": "steem",
      "delegatee": "sgp",
      "vesting_shares": "2021.144846 VESTS"
    }
  ]
}
2018/06/19 03:53:09
votersensation
authorsgp
permlinkhow-i-voted-in-the-2018-q2-zcash-foundation-community-governance-panel-election
weight10000 (100.00%)
Transaction InfoBlock #23448204/Trx cc4a33110a3221ed232cb7b348b64542626d59b2
View Raw JSON Data
{
  "trx_id": "cc4a33110a3221ed232cb7b348b64542626d59b2",
  "block": 23448204,
  "trx_in_block": 54,
  "op_in_trx": 0,
  "virtual_op": 0,
  "timestamp": "2018-06-19T03:53:09",
  "op": [
    "vote",
    {
      "voter": "sensation",
      "author": "sgp",
      "permlink": "how-i-voted-in-the-2018-q2-zcash-foundation-community-governance-panel-election",
      "weight": 10000
    }
  ]
}
2018/06/19 03:43:03
parent author
parent permlinkzcash
authorsgp
permlinkhow-i-voted-in-the-2018-q2-zcash-foundation-community-governance-panel-election
titleHow I Voted in the 2018 Q2 Zcash Foundation Community Governance Panel Election
body@@ -10,20 +10,16 @@ cle -will explain +s my
json metadata{"tags":["zcash","foundation","privacy"],"image":["https://cdn.steemitimages.com/DQmVFC1TdyxDueEfvWMhgK6Q4Db98tVZZ6Ub6dhcxTCYPAe/image.png","https://cdn.steemitimages.com/DQmRw9G4W6qevV5xdk21GjSfEZYjaik18VdQTo19FHHeWDc/image.png"],"links":["https://github.com/ZcashFoundation/ZcashFoundation/blob/master/IncorporationDocs/Zcash%20Foundation%201023.pdf","https://z.cash.foundation/","https://github.com/ZcashFoundation/ZcashFoundation","https://github.com/ZcashFoundation/ZcashFoundation/blob/master/VALUES.md","https://vote.heliosvoting.org/helios/v/lxzEgteq"],"app":"steemit/0.1","format":"markdown"}
Transaction InfoBlock #23448002/Trx 7a0b2c5e0e01bdbe6bc80e23281bcd928bc80b37
View Raw JSON Data
{
  "trx_id": "7a0b2c5e0e01bdbe6bc80e23281bcd928bc80b37",
  "block": 23448002,
  "trx_in_block": 24,
  "op_in_trx": 0,
  "virtual_op": 0,
  "timestamp": "2018-06-19T03:43:03",
  "op": [
    "comment",
    {
      "parent_author": "",
      "parent_permlink": "zcash",
      "author": "sgp",
      "permlink": "how-i-voted-in-the-2018-q2-zcash-foundation-community-governance-panel-election",
      "title": "How I Voted in the 2018 Q2 Zcash Foundation Community Governance Panel Election",
      "body": "@@ -10,20 +10,16 @@\n cle \n-will \n explain\n+s\n  my \n",
      "json_metadata": "{\"tags\":[\"zcash\",\"foundation\",\"privacy\"],\"image\":[\"https://cdn.steemitimages.com/DQmVFC1TdyxDueEfvWMhgK6Q4Db98tVZZ6Ub6dhcxTCYPAe/image.png\",\"https://cdn.steemitimages.com/DQmRw9G4W6qevV5xdk21GjSfEZYjaik18VdQTo19FHHeWDc/image.png\"],\"links\":[\"https://github.com/ZcashFoundation/ZcashFoundation/blob/master/IncorporationDocs/Zcash%20Foundation%201023.pdf\",\"https://z.cash.foundation/\",\"https://github.com/ZcashFoundation/ZcashFoundation\",\"https://github.com/ZcashFoundation/ZcashFoundation/blob/master/VALUES.md\",\"https://vote.heliosvoting.org/helios/v/lxzEgteq\"],\"app\":\"steemit/0.1\",\"format\":\"markdown\"}"
    }
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}
2018/06/19 03:24:06
voteryoungogmarqs
authorsgp
permlinkhow-i-voted-in-the-2018-q2-zcash-foundation-community-governance-panel-election
weight2 (0.02%)
Transaction InfoBlock #23447623/Trx 21640a4c8bac8f5800a07bc062739c421bf2f6a1
View Raw JSON Data
{
  "trx_id": "21640a4c8bac8f5800a07bc062739c421bf2f6a1",
  "block": 23447623,
  "trx_in_block": 22,
  "op_in_trx": 0,
  "virtual_op": 0,
  "timestamp": "2018-06-19T03:24:06",
  "op": [
    "vote",
    {
      "voter": "youngogmarqs",
      "author": "sgp",
      "permlink": "how-i-voted-in-the-2018-q2-zcash-foundation-community-governance-panel-election",
      "weight": 2
    }
  ]
}
steemdelegated 5.525 SP to @sgp
2018/06/19 03:19:00
delegatorsteem
delegateesgp
vesting shares8997.919470 VESTS
Transaction InfoBlock #23447521/Trx 87ab00e4317cbd9cb8b7cf40905ead7541fc3ff3
View Raw JSON Data
{
  "trx_id": "87ab00e4317cbd9cb8b7cf40905ead7541fc3ff3",
  "block": 23447521,
  "trx_in_block": 3,
  "op_in_trx": 0,
  "virtual_op": 0,
  "timestamp": "2018-06-19T03:19:00",
  "op": [
    "delegate_vesting_shares",
    {
      "delegator": "steem",
      "delegatee": "sgp",
      "vesting_shares": "8997.919470 VESTS"
    }
  ]
}
2018/06/19 03:05:45
parent author
parent permlinkzcash
authorsgp
permlinkhow-i-voted-in-the-2018-q2-zcash-foundation-community-governance-panel-election
titleHow I Voted in the 2018 Q2 Zcash Foundation Community Governance Panel Election
bodyThis article will explain my reasoning behind my votes in the 2018 Q2 Zcash Foundation Community Governance Panel Election. My votes do not need to be public, but I feel there is value in explaining my opinion. ![Zcash Foundation logo](https://cdn.steemitimages.com/DQmVFC1TdyxDueEfvWMhgK6Q4Db98tVZZ6Ub6dhcxTCYPAe/image.png) --- #### Question #1: Vote for up to three candidates for the Zcash Foundation Board. -> ***Amber Baldet*** Arianna Simpsons Boyma Fahnbullen Howard Loo Ian Miers -> ***Lawson Baker*** -> ***Moe Adham*** Pavel Sokolov Robert Viglione I voted for the highlighted names above. I prioritized individuals who offered expertise that was not especially well-represented on the existing Zcash Foundation board. I also selected individuals who were willing to make true, meaningful steps towards making Zcash more private. Making decisions to promote community growth is relatively simple to get behind. Making a more difficult decision, such as transitioning to z-address only, is much harder. While some of the candidates arguably have more experience with Zcash in the past, the board absolutely already consists of a significant number of members who have a significant history working on Zcash. I believe that the candidates I chose will help bring diversity to the board without compromising on its collective expertise. --- #### Question #2: The Zcash community wishes to preserve ASIC resistance, discouraging the use of ASIC mining equipment in favor of GPU mining equipment. The Zcash Foundation should therefore adopt this as a priority. -> ***Agree*** Disagree This is a difficult question to answer, especially since it does not have any timeline associated with it. However, I believe that ASIC-resistance is a noble short to medium-term goal with the current centralized and manipulated ASIC manufacturing scenario that exists today. I do not necessarily believe that ASIC-resistance is a perfect long-term solution; however, I believe it is the best option for the Zcash Foundation to pursue at this time. ASIC-resistance isn't only about preventing certain groups from getting more money. Mining is a critical component (perhaps *the* most critical component) of network infrastructure. If one group (or a coalition of groups) threatens mining on Zcash, then the security of the chain is threatened. It is absolutely within the scope of the Zcash Foundation to preserve the public infrastructure. --- #### Question #3: The Foundation should commit to a plan for migrating the Zcash protocol to a new proof of work algorithm with a hard-fork planned between September 30, 2020 and December 31, 2020, with the following tasks: 1) Selecting a thermodynamically efficient (not ASIC-resistant!), currently unused proof-of-work algorithm 2) Hosting and building an open hardware specification for the selected PoW algorithm 3) Assembling a consortium of hardware companies to build hardware against this open specification, while encouraging upstream contributions 4) Building an open source, cross-platform, user-friendly, p2pool-esque piece of mining software for use with this hardware 5) Manage the hard fork upgrade process across users, wallets, exchanges. -> ***Agree*** Disagree Now you may be wondering: didn't you just agree to researching an ASIC-resistant algorithm? Why yes I did. However, I think that this other approach is better in the long-term. I appreciate that the team defined a two-year timeline, which I believe is reasonable. Working to create a consortium of hardware companies that have access to a completely open set of hardware and software recommendations sets a high standard for all companies to start with. While I have significant doubts that ASIC manufacturers will push their most beneficial changes upstream, the incremental benefits they will experience have the highest likelihood of having a significant enough advantage to threaten the security of the network. --- #### Question #4: The Foundation should be open to discussing changes to monetary policy and/or supply schedule. -> ***Agree*** Disagree The Zcash Foundation should be able to discuss this in my opinion. Zcash is already structured with significantly more centralized support than some other cryptocurrencies. While I do not advocate for aggressive changes that benefit these groups, I am open to discussions that could benefit the community. Suppose the Zcash Company desired a (rather unlikely) reduction of their block reward to 5%. Will this conversation be off-limits? I don't think it should be. --- #### Question #5: Any significant effort by the Foundation to develop or promote a cryptocurrency shall be directed at either the (1) Zcash blockchain; or (2) chain forks (chain splits) of the Zcash blockchain that approximately carry forward the percentage stakes of Zcash holders immediately before the fork (split) to the money supply in circulation immediately after the fork (split). Agree -> ***Disagree*** The Zcash Foundation explicitly states in its registration documents and its mission that it will support other cryptocurrencies in addition to Zcash. Some of these quotes from the [1023](https://github.com/ZcashFoundation/ZcashFoundation/blob/master/IncorporationDocs/Zcash%20Foundation%201023.pdf), [website](https://z.cash.foundation/), and [GitHub](https://github.com/ZcashFoundation/ZcashFoundation) are below: > The Organization will create and operate a website pertaining to cryptocurrency, the computing networks that power it, and privacy-preserving research and technologies that can be integrated into cryptocurrency software. > The Organization will educate the public regarding cryptocurrency through a variety of potential methods, including dissemination or publication of guides, manuals, videos, online libraries, blogs, and forums, among other possible resources. These materials will be made available for free on the Organization's website. These materials will provide education on a variety of topics, including the basics of cryptocurrency, the role and importance of cryptocurrency in society, future developments in cryptocurrency, and the need for ongoing development. > The Organization may also support, design, conduct and publish research, potentially in collaboration with academics and institutions,... related to cryptocurrency. > Cooperation with other cryptocurrencies. No "coin" is an island unto itself, and the success and acceptance of cryptocurrencies are intertwined. We will strive to collaborate with other cryptocurrencies' communities in areas of mutual interest. > A 501(c)3 non-profit, dedicated to building Internet payment and privacy infrastructure for the public good, primarily serving the users of the Zcash protocol and blockchain. I understand that the Zcash Foundation primarily exists to support Zcash, but its documentation strongly suggests that it these efforts should not be restricted to Zcash. The Zcash Foundation should support other similar projects which could indirectly benefit Zcash. The projects should share some (or even most) of the same values as the Foundation (eg: [anything listed here](https://github.com/ZcashFoundation/ZcashFoundation/blob/master/VALUES.md)). *Disclaimer: I am more actively involved in another cryptocurrency project* --- #### Question #6: The Foundation should prioritize transitioning ownership of the Zcash trademark from the Zcash Company to the Foundation. -> ***Agree*** Disagree I believe that it would be better for the Zcash Foundation to have possession of these trademarks. However, do not take this as me signing off on a blank check to acquire these at any cost. --- #### Question #7: And just for fun: The Foundation should endeavor to establish the official Zcash mascot as one of the following choices. You may pick up to two: -> ***Zeal, a collection of Zebras*** Waterbear Squirrel Axolotl A Talking Horse I think zeal is the appropriate choice here. ![Zebras from Wikipedia](https://cdn.steemitimages.com/DQmRw9G4W6qevV5xdk21GjSfEZYjaik18VdQTo19FHHeWDc/image.png) [My ballot](https://vote.heliosvoting.org/helios/v/lxzEgteq)
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      "author": "sgp",
      "permlink": "how-i-voted-in-the-2018-q2-zcash-foundation-community-governance-panel-election",
      "title": "How I Voted in the 2018 Q2 Zcash Foundation Community Governance Panel Election",
      "body": "This article will explain my reasoning behind my votes in the 2018 Q2 Zcash Foundation Community Governance Panel Election. My votes do not need to be public, but I feel there is value in explaining my opinion.\n\n![Zcash Foundation logo](https://cdn.steemitimages.com/DQmVFC1TdyxDueEfvWMhgK6Q4Db98tVZZ6Ub6dhcxTCYPAe/image.png)\n---\n\n#### Question #1: Vote for up to three candidates for the Zcash Foundation Board.\n-> ***Amber Baldet***\nArianna Simpsons\nBoyma Fahnbullen\nHoward Loo\nIan Miers\n-> ***Lawson Baker***\n-> ***Moe Adham***\nPavel Sokolov\nRobert Viglione\n\nI voted for the highlighted names above. I prioritized individuals who offered expertise that was not especially well-represented on the existing Zcash Foundation board. I also selected individuals who were willing to make true, meaningful steps towards making Zcash more private. Making decisions to promote community growth is relatively simple to get behind. Making a more difficult decision, such as transitioning to z-address only, is much harder.\n\nWhile some of the candidates arguably have more experience with Zcash in the past, the board absolutely already consists of a significant number of members who have a significant history working on Zcash. I believe that the candidates I chose will help bring diversity to the board without compromising on its collective expertise.\n\n---\n\n#### Question #2: The Zcash community wishes to preserve ASIC resistance, discouraging the use of ASIC mining equipment in favor of GPU mining equipment. The Zcash Foundation should therefore adopt this as a priority.\n-> ***Agree***\nDisagree\n\nThis is a difficult question to answer, especially since it does not have any timeline associated with it. However, I believe that ASIC-resistance is a noble short to medium-term goal with the current centralized and manipulated ASIC manufacturing scenario that exists today. I do not necessarily believe that ASIC-resistance is a perfect long-term solution; however, I believe it is the best option for the Zcash Foundation to pursue at this time.\n\nASIC-resistance isn't only about preventing certain groups from getting more money. Mining is a critical component (perhaps *the* most critical component) of network infrastructure. If one group (or a coalition of groups) threatens mining on Zcash, then the security of the chain is threatened. It is absolutely within the scope of the Zcash Foundation to preserve the public infrastructure.\n\n---\n\n#### Question #3: The Foundation should commit to a plan for migrating the Zcash protocol to a new proof of work algorithm with a hard-fork planned between September 30, 2020 and December 31, 2020, with the following tasks: 1) Selecting a thermodynamically efficient (not ASIC-resistant!), currently unused proof-of-work algorithm 2) Hosting and building an open hardware specification for the selected PoW algorithm 3) Assembling a consortium of hardware companies to build hardware against this open specification, while encouraging upstream contributions 4) Building an open source, cross-platform, user-friendly, p2pool-esque piece of mining software for use with this hardware 5) Manage the hard fork upgrade process across users, wallets, exchanges.\n-> ***Agree***\nDisagree\n\nNow you may be wondering: didn't you just agree to researching an ASIC-resistant algorithm? Why yes I did. However, I think that this other approach is better in the long-term. I appreciate that the team defined a two-year timeline, which I believe is reasonable.\n\nWorking to create a consortium of hardware companies that have access to a completely open set of hardware and software recommendations sets a high standard for all companies to start with. While I have significant doubts that ASIC manufacturers will push their most beneficial changes upstream, the incremental benefits they will experience have the highest likelihood of having a significant enough advantage to threaten the security of the network.\n\n---\n\n#### Question #4: The Foundation should be open to discussing changes to monetary policy and/or supply schedule.\n-> ***Agree***\nDisagree\n\nThe Zcash Foundation should be able to discuss this in my opinion. Zcash is already structured with significantly more centralized support than some other cryptocurrencies. While I do not advocate for aggressive changes that benefit these groups, I am open to discussions that could benefit the community.\n\nSuppose the Zcash Company desired a (rather unlikely) reduction of their block reward to 5%. Will this conversation be off-limits? I don't think it should be.\n\n---\n\n#### Question #5: Any significant effort by the Foundation to develop or promote a cryptocurrency shall be directed at either the (1) Zcash blockchain; or (2) chain forks (chain splits) of the Zcash blockchain that approximately carry forward the percentage stakes of Zcash holders immediately before the fork (split) to the money supply in circulation immediately after the fork (split).\nAgree\n-> ***Disagree***\n\nThe Zcash Foundation explicitly states in its registration documents and its mission that it will support other cryptocurrencies in addition to Zcash. Some of these quotes from the [1023](https://github.com/ZcashFoundation/ZcashFoundation/blob/master/IncorporationDocs/Zcash%20Foundation%201023.pdf), [website](https://z.cash.foundation/), and [GitHub](https://github.com/ZcashFoundation/ZcashFoundation) are below:\n\n> The Organization will create and operate a website pertaining to cryptocurrency, the computing networks that power it, and privacy-preserving research and technologies that can be integrated into cryptocurrency software.\n\n> The Organization will educate the public regarding cryptocurrency through a variety of potential methods, including dissemination or publication of guides, manuals, videos, online libraries, blogs, and forums, among other possible resources. These materials will be made available for free on the Organization's website. These materials will provide education on a variety of topics, including the basics of cryptocurrency, the role and importance of cryptocurrency in society, future developments in cryptocurrency, and the need for ongoing development.\n\n> The Organization may also support, design, conduct and publish research, potentially in collaboration with academics and institutions,... related to cryptocurrency.\n\n> Cooperation with other cryptocurrencies. No \"coin\" is an island unto itself, and the success and acceptance of cryptocurrencies are intertwined. We will strive to collaborate with other cryptocurrencies' communities in areas of mutual interest.\n\n> A 501(c)3 non-profit, dedicated to building Internet payment and privacy infrastructure for the public good, primarily serving the users of the Zcash protocol and blockchain.\n\nI understand that the Zcash Foundation primarily exists to support Zcash, but its documentation strongly suggests that it these efforts should not be restricted to Zcash. The Zcash Foundation should support other similar projects which could indirectly benefit Zcash. The projects should share some (or even most) of the same values as the Foundation (eg: [anything listed here](https://github.com/ZcashFoundation/ZcashFoundation/blob/master/VALUES.md)).\n\n*Disclaimer: I am more actively involved in another cryptocurrency project*\n\n---\n\n#### Question #6: The Foundation should prioritize transitioning ownership of the Zcash trademark from the Zcash Company to the Foundation.\n-> ***Agree***\nDisagree\n\nI believe that it would be better for the Zcash Foundation to have possession of these trademarks. However, do not take this as me signing off on a blank check to acquire these at any cost.\n\n---\n\n#### Question #7: And just for fun: The Foundation should endeavor to establish the official Zcash mascot as one of the following choices. You may pick up to two:\n-> ***Zeal, a collection of Zebras***\nWaterbear\nSquirrel\nAxolotl\nA Talking Horse\n\nI think zeal is the appropriate choice here.\n\n![Zebras from Wikipedia](https://cdn.steemitimages.com/DQmRw9G4W6qevV5xdk21GjSfEZYjaik18VdQTo19FHHeWDc/image.png)\n\n[My ballot](https://vote.heliosvoting.org/helios/v/lxzEgteq)",
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2018/05/25 17:29:03
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2018/05/25 17:14:09
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2018/05/25 10:25:42
parent authorsgp
parent permlink7yjqso-a-monero-introduction-for-beginners
authorfred777bear
permlinkre-sgp-7yjqso-a-monero-introduction-for-beginners-20180525t102528537z
title
bodyJust been looking into Monero. Found your post. Great write up, many thanks, explained a lot. Question: If I have some BTC in a wallet (eg with a publicly known address eg a business). I also have a "savings" bitcoin Wallet which only I know the address of. I want to keep the 'savings' address private. So if I create 2 Monero wallets. Then send from BTC-A => Monero-A =>> Monero-B > BTC-B I think the privacy is maintained. My question is how would that work in a practical sense? What about fees? Is there a better method to achieve that result (keeping my 'savings' address private) Thanks for any info
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      "body": "Just been looking into Monero. Found your post.\nGreat write up, many thanks, explained a lot.\n\nQuestion: If I have some BTC in a wallet (eg with a publicly known address eg a business). \nI also have a \"savings\" bitcoin Wallet which only I know the address of.\nI want to keep the 'savings' address private.\n\nSo if I create 2 Monero wallets. \nThen send from BTC-A => Monero-A  =>> Monero-B > BTC-B\nI think the privacy is maintained.\n\nMy question is how would that work in a practical sense?\nWhat about fees?\n\nIs there a better method to achieve that result (keeping my 'savings' address private)\nThanks for any info",
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2018/05/25 02:27:03
parent authorsgp
parent permlinkmonero-coffee-chat-2017-11-04
authorsteemitboard
permlinksteemitboard-notify-sgp-20180525t022702000z
title
bodyCongratulations @sgp! You have completed some achievement on Steemit and have been rewarded with new badge(s) : <center>[![](https://steemitimages.com/175x175/http://steemitboard.com/@sgp/level.png?201805241956)](http://steemitboard.com/@sgp) **Congratulations @sgp**! You raised your level and are now a **Minnow**!</center> Click on any badge to view your Board of Honor. For more information about SteemitBoard, click [here](https://steemit.com/@steemitboard) If you no longer want to receive notifications, reply to this comment with the word `STOP` > Do you like **SteemitBoard**'s project? **[Vote for its witness](https://v2.steemconnect.com/sign/account-witness-vote?witness=steemitboard&approve=1)** and **get one more award**!
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2018/05/25 00:16:57
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authorsteemitboard
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title
body<center>[![](https://steemitimages.com/175x175/http://steemitboard.com/@sgp/level.png?201805241956)](http://steemitboard.com/@sgp) **Congratulations @sgp**! You raised your level and are now a **Minnow**!</center> > Do you like **SteemitBoard**'s project? **[Vote for its witness](https://v2.steemconnect.com/sign/account-witness-vote?witness=steemitboard&approve=1)** and **get one more award**!
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2018/05/24 18:35:48
votergumierlucas
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steemdelegated 1.249 SP to @sgp
2018/05/19 21:57:12
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steemdelegated 5.556 SP to @sgp
2018/05/18 20:51:30
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2018/04/22 17:04:09
voterecreditz
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2018/04/22 17:02:48
parent authorsgp
parent permlink7yjqso-a-monero-introduction-for-beginners
authorecreditz
permlinkre-sgp-7yjqso-a-monero-introduction-for-beginners-20180422t170246116z
title
bodyThis is one of the best Monero guide that I have ever read. Thanks for the info!
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2018/02/04 06:56:15
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2018/01/21 13:44:21
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2018/01/07 18:05:03
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2018/01/05 21:19:30
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2017/12/29 08:17:06
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2017/12/01 10:03:39
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2017/11/11 23:16:09
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2017/11/05 00:11:51
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sgppublished a new post: monero-coffee-chat-2017-11-04
2017/11/04 23:47:27
parent author
parent permlinkmonero
authorsgp
permlinkmonero-coffee-chat-2017-11-04
titleMonero Coffee Chat - 2017.11.04
body@@ -158,16 +158,22 @@ d Justin + %22sgp%22 Ehrenho @@ -180,13 +180,8 @@ fer -(sgp) .%0A%0AD
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sgppublished a new post: monero-coffee-chat-2017-11-04
2017/11/04 23:46:42
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permlinkmonero-coffee-chat-2017-11-04
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2017/11/04 23:45:45
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sgppublished a new post: monero-coffee-chat-2017-11-04
2017/11/04 23:45:45
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authorsgp
permlinkmonero-coffee-chat-2017-11-04
titleMonero Coffee Chat - 2017.11.04
bodyhttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CoY60a_qhPg This month's second Monero Coffee Chat featured Riccardo "fluffypony" Spagni, Diego "rehrar", and Justin Ehrenhofer (sgp). Discussions included the Monero Meetup Kit, the nature of IP addresses on a P2P network, the Monerujo application redesign, the 0.11.1.0 bugfix release, and what people with no technical knowledge can do to help. Make sure to let us know what we can do better in #monero-community or in [/r/Monero](https://reddit.com/r/MoneroCommunity).
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2017/11/04 11:48:21
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2017/11/02 22:49:57
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2017/10/30 16:06:36
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2017/10/30 03:35:18
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2017/10/30 03:34:36
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2017/10/29 23:42:45
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2017/10/29 16:56:27
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2017/10/29 03:42:12
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2017/10/28 09:37:09
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bodyhttps://getkovri.org/ More info about kovri https://github.com/monero-project/kovri For the devs who want to contribute to the project
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2017/10/28 09:34:24
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2017/10/27 10:15:33
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2017/10/27 09:32:57
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2017/10/27 01:01:42
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2017/10/26 23:10:12
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2017/10/26 23:09:45
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bodyI accidentally posted a few times (Steemit claimed it failed the other times). Can you please join the conversation in the one version I kept? https://steemit.com/monero/@sgp/7yjqso-a-monero-introduction-for-beginners Thanks!
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2017/10/26 23:09:09
parent author
parent permlinkmonero
authorsgp
permlink7yjqso-a-monero-introduction-for-beginners
titleA Monero Introduction for Beginners
body![Picture1.png](https://steemitimages.com/DQmVVHzWjDC1rJqoXzgb9e4VMpjPawMD4nFQgEgcs7wScb5/Picture1.png) Monero is a rather unique cryptocurrency. It doesn't try to do anything unusual, or be Turing-complete like Ethereum. It just tries to be very good at one thing: the private and secure transfer of value. This post will cover the very basics of Monero. It expects the reader to be technology-literate, but not necessarily know anything about how either Bitcoin or Monero work. These will all be discussed on a high level. # Let's Begin with Bitcoin As with most resources, we will actually start by discussing Bitcoin, since it is much simpler to understand. Bitcoin is a decentralized network that is maintained by thousands of computers around the world. In the simplest sense, Bitcoin's network consists of nodes and miners. Nodes maintain a copy of all the transactions that have ever happened. Suppose I sent you 0.1 BTC. The record of my address sending you this Bitcoin would appear in a block. Blocks contain the most recent ~10 minutes of transactions. All these blocks together form a chain, thus named the blockchain. The blockchain forever grows larger with more and more history of transactions happening on the network. Miners aid the network by signing these blocks. The network creates a problem set that takes many attempts to solve it. The faster your computer is, the more attempts it can make each second. Miners compete against each other to solve the next puzzle, and the one who solves it get a reward. Bitcoin stays secure since the next miner to solve this puzzle is unknown. It can be any miner, and so long as no one controls a substantial portion of "hashing" power, then the network can stay secure. No one attacker can manipulate the network to solve a substantial number of blocks in a row. You don't need to trust these miners, since no one entity is large enough to negatively impact the network. Each transaction is given a unique identifying ID, and details regarding the sending address, receiving address, and amount are all visible. Note that most of these details are long strings of randomly-generated numbers and letters. ![Picture2.png](https://steemitimages.com/DQmTDBzweRsgzQidmLo5B7SSJ62pwRTEWkFMHP1RzG49mqZ/Picture2.png) Now let's look closer at this individual transaction. Suppose Bob's wallet contains 4 inputs of 0.1 BTC, 0.5 BTC, 0.75 BTC, and 1 BTC (for a total balance of 2.35 BTC), and he would like to send 0.1 BTC to Alice. You can think of these inputs as dollar bills. It's similar to saying Bob has $180 in his wallet, divided into one each of a $100 bill, $50 bill, $20 bill, and $10 bill. In person, if Bob wanted to give $20 to Alice, he can just hand her the $20 bill. On the blockchain, a similar thing happens with these Bitcoin inputs. *Note: I am showing the transfer of a singe input for the exact amount for simplicity. The transfer is slightly more complex with more inputs and when sending a different amount than a single input, but the general ideas are the same.* ![Picture3.png](https://steemitimages.com/DQmQosTBxxT9tuLWnULxAFLiyiPfK96tJDDmia5pYcukZXK/Picture3.png) ![Picture5.png](https://steemitimages.com/DQmXNsRaudnhgPG1UHdx4p4TFATCk8jdY7AehtytZyykjxt/Picture5.png) You can see how Alice now has control over this output. The information recorded in the blockchain simply states that Bob's address sent this output to Alice's address. # Bitcoin as a Private System Many people may see the randomly-generated addresses and assume that since they are random, Bitcoin is private. They may claim that no one can see who the money belongs to and how it is being used. Unfortunately, this is not the case. Addresses can be trivially liked together. There will be a permanent record of Bob sending money to Alice. Suppose Bob's address is hosted on a popular exchange compliant with local law, and suppose Alice later spends that money on a darknet market. Bob may be questioned about this transfer, since he has an association to how the money is spent in the future. Similarly, suppose the money Alice receives from Bob was obtained from the [WannaCry ransomware attack](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WannaCry_ransomware_attack). Alice may be questioned, even if the transfer between these two people is completely legal. Several companies exist whose entire purpose it is to track the transfer of funds between addresses on transparent blockchains. Below is a web provided by one of these companies, [Elliptic](https://www.elliptic.co/). ![Picture7.png](https://steemitimages.com/DQmQNjYdcACrjd89hHYu8aMFZ5ShRjUn4feHdq9MeH7R5vH/Picture7.png) # Privacy Systems Added to Bitcoin Don't Really Work Developers originally sought to add systems to Bitcoin that certain people can optionally use for privacy. The most commonly used of these is a mixer. Mixing, whether used with a website or [CoinJoin](https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/CoinJoin), works in the following way. Users send their Bitcoin to one of these mixers, who (as the name implies) mixes up whose Bitcoin is whose. They keep a fee, and send each participant a fraction of all the coins. Ideally, this would provide some level of untraceability. The previous source of money is now unclear. No one should know how it was previously spent, or what source of funds is being spent in the future. ![Picture8.png](https://steemitimages.com/DQmTVRzrZZ2htki7bPuEBfp6WZAoFrPhjabYNTNTKHvfZmz/Picture8.png) However, there are several shortcomings of this approach, and I argue that it does not provide a meaningful level of privacy. Since this is an optional service that people need to go out of their way and pay additional fees to use, very few people actually mix their coins. Thus, the anonymity set is relatively small, and the few people who do actually draw attention to themselves. Mixing does not work very well if the majority of money is laundered or used on darknet markets. If the proportion of the total money supply used in mixing services is small, services could even block funds that have been mixed entirely. No knowledgeable person is going to pay extra money to mix new coinbase transactions, that's for sure. Second, there is a level of trust in the system. Remember when I mentioned earlier that you do not need to trust miners on the network? Well, you need to trust these mixing services, even more decentralized ones like with [CoinJoin](https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/CoinJoin) or masternodes. These mixing services can retain a copy of how the funds were mixed without you even knowing. In many cases, this risk is exacerbated by how these mixers are hosted. The hosting providers can keep logs without even the owner knowing. Recently, several researchers published a paper about [BlockSci](https://arxiv.org/pdf/1709.02489.pdf), a new system that can be used for analysis of transparent blockchains. They looked into the risk of the amount of money being used in a mixer being transparent, among other things. They found that for [Dash](https://dash.org) (a cryptocurrency like Bitcoin with a [CoinJoin](https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/CoinJoin)-based mixing service), over half of their test mixed transactions could be traced back with absolute certainty by simply following the transaction amounts. Finally, from a practicality perspective, mixing is inconvenient and can take a long time. If you attempt to mitigate the logging risk by chaining several mixing sessions together, this can take several days. Most people do not have the patience for this. [zk-SNARKs](https://z.cash/technology/zksnarks.html) were more recently introduced, which function similarly to a mixer for coins but with very different underlying technology. I will discuss more about these new systems in a different post. # Introducing Monero Monero takes a different approach. Instead of adding some service on top of a transparent one, Monero uses several privacy technologies at the protocol-level and makes use of these technologies mandatory. I'll explain all of these in further detail so that you can have a working understanding of all of them. ![Picture9.png](https://steemitimages.com/DQmednGBrTpxA8shNvDRsfWCotvnaddLmFZES27gn4tyDBB/Picture9.png) In the simplest sense, Monero hides the sender, amount, transaction broadcast, and receiver with ring signatures, RingCT, Kovri, and stealth addresses, respectively. Let's start by taking a dive into ring signatures. # Ring Signatures and RingCT Just as the US money supply is divided into different dollar bills and coins, the Monero money supply is divided into outputs. These outputs store a certain value of Monero each, and the value they hold can change over time. Suppose that in the picture below, these are all the outputs that exist, and the one you control and can spend is highlighted in red. ![Picture10.png](https://steemitimages.com/DQmVQ6wvmxGHHYHNAyGWG2oNJh3dq4bHVfLPa5JSjMasrX6/Picture10.png) Keep in mind that unlike with Bitcoin, these outputs are NOT linked to addresses. I will speak more about why later. When you create a Monero transaction, you will use a ring signature to hide which input is actually being spent. This is done by making it seem as if all of the chosen inputs are the possible real sender. In the photo, your real input is red, and five selected inputs are blue. These inputs can be controlled by anyone else, and you do not need their permission to add their input to the ring signature. Furthermore, this selection can be done entirely offline with only a copy of the blockchain. Without getting into the cryptography, you will sign all of these inputs such that an outside observer can not determine which is the real one being spent. Obviously, no one knows that yours is highlighted red :) Now hang on, since I'm going to cover a lot of details at once. Once you have selected the other inputs, you need to finish creating the RingCT ring signature. You sign it so it appears in such a way that all these inputs appear to be the real one used. This signature includes several other important elements. ![Picture12.png](https://steemitimages.com/DQmP1knZSSWLPf9vsMazhRvByqjiMZTre72oKFQuFrdcPYU/Picture12.png) The key image is critically important. It's a one-way reference to the real input (the red one). This key image is given to the network as proof that the signature was created appropriately. The network verifies that this image has not been used before (to prevent double spends) and that it isn't a made-up number (to prevent people from spending money they never had). The network can verify this information without knowing which input is the real one. Next is the pedersen commitment. This is very complex, but let's take a very simple look at it. This is used to prevent other people from knowing how much is actually being spent. You can use this commitment to, er, commit to spending a certain value that you have the authority to spend, but other people no longer know what this value is. This pedersen commitment is the critical component of ring confidential transactions, or RingCT. It hides the actual value *a* by adding a random number *x*. The commitment value is calculated for the set of inputs and outputs in the transaction, and it is broadcast to the network. Let me give you a simplified example: Bob is sending Alice 1 XMR. Bob creates the commitment as follows: Real amount (*a*): 1 Random number (*x*): 273 Commitment (given to network): 274 Bob's wallet will give this number (274) to the network. The network will verify the sum of the committed inputs and outputs are both 274. If they are different, the transaction is rejected. Now, everything I explained earlier all comes together to form the RingCT ring signature. This results in an unknown amount of Moneor being spent. The commitment public key is what is used by the network to verify the commitment. So how do outputs get used over time? Let's compare Bitcoin and Monero to find out. ![Picture13.png](https://steemitimages.com/DQmfLMt8TMyNKkguiSuWHzF9HvT8TrLFqSE8ZPmMH4i4tLr/Picture13.png) In the picture above, I have created a theoretical history for the output you control. All of the blocks highlighted red are ones where the output appears. If this was for Bitcoin, you would be able to easily tell that this output was transferred from user A to B to C, etc. However with Monero, this is not so simple. There are three reasons for an output to show up in a block: 1. It is new money and a coinbase transaction 2. It was actually spent 3. It was added as a decoy in a ring signature Since there is no way to differentiate between case #2 and case #3, outside observers have no idea if an output is actually being spent, even though it appears on the blockchain several times. Since every transaction includes multiple decoys, it's more likely than not that the output is not actually spent despite appearing in a certain block. And with that, we have completed the discussion on ring signatures and RingCT! *takes a deep breath* If you want someone else to explain ring signatures and RingCT, see these excellent videos: [Ring signatures video](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zHN_B_H_fCs) [RingCT video](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M3AHp9KgTkQ) # Kovri and Transaction Broadcast There's a lot of misconception about what this means and what the impacts of this attack vectors are. I will create a future post clarifying these in further detail. When you connect to the peer-to-peer network of nodes to broadcast your transaction, you leak some information about yourself. You leak your IP address and metadata (eg: date, time). Monero is working on a project to hide this information called [Kovri](https://getkovri.org). [Kovri](https://getkovri.org) is an anonymizing router. In the future, nodes will connect to each other through both the clearnet and through an anonymous network. There will be ways to run either entirely with clearnet or darknet, though few users should change this setting. [Kovri](https://getkovri.org) will prevent malicious nodes from rejecting transactions from certain IPs or from monitoring what IPs broadcast these transactions. Perhaps most exciting though is that Kovri works with any project that wants to incorporate it, including other cryptocurrencies. It would be relatively trivial for another coin to adopt it. People can use Tor today to mitigate this risk, but they open themselves up to several other risks. To be clear: this does not undermine the other features, and malicious nodes still do not know if the IP addresses they receive are the real ones. It may have been broadcast through a different node first. Given the high false positive rate and significant effort needed for an attacker to collect this data, the attack is already unlikely. ![Picture16.png](https://steemitimages.com/DQmanU2sFUMokEiG9XjfMgFiae9Vwmp63XfWNNettcCAEyr/Picture16.png) # Stealth Addresses Time to discuss how Monero breaks the connection between outputs and the addresses they belong to. When you send money to someone with Bitcoin, you basically give it to them directly. You assign it to their public key (address), and they can use their private key to open it. With Monero, things are a bit more complex. Each wallet has a pair of private keys and public keys. The cryptography is too complex to get in to here, but it basically functions like this: you create a one-time safety deposit box that only the receiver can open. It is never reused. Receivers need to search every single one of these "boxes" to see which they are able to "unlock". They then have control over the ones assigned to them. They can take this money and place it into another "box" for someone else. Suppose you have 10 XMR and want to send 1 XMR to me (thanks!); in this case, you will create two outputs: one for me with 1 XMR , and one for yourself with 9 XMR. You basically send the change back to yourself. ![Picture14.png](https://steemitimages.com/DQme5vrHmBPzFWLNKBDEnP4SGDKQKerEvHZ5SyKupbvCffw/Picture14.png) If you want someone else to explain stealth addresses, see this excellent video: [Stealth addresses](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bWst278J8NA) # Technology Summary As we went over, a Monero transaction has an ambiguous output origin, an unknown amount in a commitment, and an unknown receiver. For every transaction on the network, all of the information stored on the blockchain is obfuscated. ![Picture15.png](https://steemitimages.com/DQmWhbRzL89RsBG6LKMS9tcnFDWx32PqpciBzfijJVNpUcf/Picture15.png) # Some Other Items Monero's primary focus is privacy, though there are still several other aspects that make it interesting. I have highlighted some of these below. **It has an aggressive upgrade schedule**. The community does not shy away from hard forks, having three in 2017 alone. These are necessary to provide the highest level of security and privacy. Monero isn't perfect, though hard forks allow it to get better. RingCT was enabled through a hardfork at the beginning of 2017, for example. **It has a dynamic block size and dynamic fees**. No Bitcoin block size debate. The number of transactions that can fit into a block will slowly increase if the demand is large enough, and it will decrease again if there is not enough demand. The fees will decrease based on transaction volume. **It has always-on privacy**. I discussed this earlier, but I really want to emphasize it again. Few other coins that promise privacy can even get 10% of their transactions to use privacy features. With Monero, all of them use it, there is no way to opt out, and thus no transactions look suspicious for using privacy features. **It has view keys to provide transparency**. With most coins claiming to provide privacy, the feature is either on or off for everyone in the world. With Monero, it's always on for everyone except those you allow to see certain transaction information. No matter what, information on the blockchain is obfuscated. However, you can provide a certain key to someone else so they can understand what is happening. **It has a critical community**. Many people misinterpret this as harsh. While some users may be, the overwhelming message of most Monero community members has been to think critically of projects. [Every Sunday, Monero users discuss the top criticisms of the coin in /r/Monero](https://www.reddit.com/r/Monero/comments/76iczg/skepticism_sunday_what_concerns_you_about_monero/). The Monero community has a growth mindset, and is always looking for ways to improve. **It has a world-class research lab**. Several researchers dedicate their time to research projects for Monero. You can learn more about these projects on [the official Monero website](https://getmonero.org/resources/research-lab/). **It was launched fairly**. There was no premine, instantmine, or ICO. There is no governing corporation or developer tax. Monero stands as a truly community-based entity. **It has a more accessible mining algorithm**. Bitcoin can only be mined on specialized equipment. Monero's mining algorithm ([CryptoNight](https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/CryptoNight)) is memory-intensive, and the reward of developing specialized equipment is outweighed by the cost of developing it. You can still mine Monero on a CPU and make *some* money. Most people mine on GPUs. This allows even novice miners to meaningfully contribute to the network. There are arguments for and against this type of mining, but I believe it leads to decentralization. # Conclusion That's about it! Thanks for making it all the way down here! If I piqued your interest, you can use the following links to learn more: [Monero website](https://getmonero.org) [Monero subreddit](https://reddit.com/r/Monero) [Monero trading subreddit](https://reddit.com/r/xmrtrader) [Monero activist subreddit](https://reddit.com/r/MoneroCommunity) [Monero Twitter](https://monero.com/monerocurrency) [Monero Facebook](https://www.facebook.com/monerocurrency/) [Monero Github](https://github.com/monero-project) [Monero StackExchange](https://monero.stackexchange.com) [A list of Monero communication channels](https://getmonero.org/community/hangouts/) [Monero.how](https://monero.how), a community-run site # About the Author Justin Ehrenhofer is a junior at the University of Minnesota studying finance and management information systems. He is the co-president of a university cryptocurrency club called [Crypto@UMN](http://cryptoumn.com), with one of the largest active memberships in the world. [Crypto@UMN](http://cryptoumn.com) has three major focuses: education, advocacy, and community. His passion has been fostering these in the Monero community. He studied abroad in Spring and Summer 2017 in Vienna, Austria. During his time in Europe, he traveled extensively, pairing his travels with discussions about Monero. You can see many of these presentations [here](https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLBwW3kFqHdFg72DeOcNQ552W607ATQURq). You can see more about his talks [here](https://forum.getmonero.org/6/ideas/88081/justin-s-local-meetup-talks-proposal-3). He moderates the biweekly Monero community meetings, and he has started a new monthly Monero Coffee Chat initiative. [Justin's Reddit](https://reddit.com/u/SamsungGalaxyPlayer) [Justin's Twitter](https://twitter.com/JEhrenhofer)
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Transaction InfoBlock #16680623/Trx 56c6fa01d9934efce2a6529a520e632bc4293c9e
View Raw JSON Data
{
  "trx_id": "56c6fa01d9934efce2a6529a520e632bc4293c9e",
  "block": 16680623,
  "trx_in_block": 1,
  "op_in_trx": 0,
  "virtual_op": 0,
  "timestamp": "2017-10-26T23:09:09",
  "op": [
    "comment",
    {
      "parent_author": "",
      "parent_permlink": "monero",
      "author": "sgp",
      "permlink": "7yjqso-a-monero-introduction-for-beginners",
      "title": "A Monero Introduction for Beginners",
      "body": "![Picture1.png](https://steemitimages.com/DQmVVHzWjDC1rJqoXzgb9e4VMpjPawMD4nFQgEgcs7wScb5/Picture1.png)\n\nMonero is a rather unique cryptocurrency. It doesn't try to do anything unusual, or be Turing-complete like Ethereum. It just tries to be very good at one thing: the private and secure transfer of value.\n\nThis post will cover the very basics of Monero. It expects the reader to be technology-literate, but not necessarily know anything about how either Bitcoin or Monero work. These will all be discussed on a high level.\n\n\n# Let's Begin with Bitcoin\n\nAs with most resources, we will actually start by discussing Bitcoin, since it is much simpler to understand. Bitcoin is a decentralized network that is maintained by thousands of computers around the world. In the simplest sense, Bitcoin's network consists of nodes and miners.\n\nNodes maintain a copy of all the transactions that have ever happened. Suppose I sent you 0.1 BTC. The record of my address sending you this Bitcoin would appear in a block. Blocks contain the most recent ~10 minutes of transactions. All these blocks together form a chain, thus named the blockchain. The blockchain forever grows larger with more and more history of transactions happening on the network.\n\nMiners aid the network by signing these blocks. The network creates a problem set that takes many attempts to solve it. The faster your computer is, the more attempts it can make each second. Miners compete against each other to solve the next puzzle, and the one who solves it get a reward. Bitcoin stays secure since the next miner to solve this puzzle is unknown. It can be any miner, and so long as no one controls a substantial portion of \"hashing\" power, then the network can stay secure. No one attacker can manipulate the network to solve a substantial number of blocks in a row. You don't need to trust these miners, since no one entity is large enough to negatively impact the network.\n\nEach transaction is given a unique identifying ID, and details regarding the sending address, receiving address, and amount are all visible. Note that most of these details are long strings of randomly-generated numbers and letters.\n\n![Picture2.png](https://steemitimages.com/DQmTDBzweRsgzQidmLo5B7SSJ62pwRTEWkFMHP1RzG49mqZ/Picture2.png)\n\nNow let's look closer at this individual transaction. Suppose Bob's wallet contains 4 inputs of 0.1 BTC, 0.5 BTC, 0.75 BTC, and 1 BTC (for a total balance of 2.35 BTC), and he would like to send 0.1 BTC to Alice. You can think of these inputs as dollar bills. It's similar to saying Bob has $180 in his wallet, divided into one each of a $100 bill, $50 bill, $20 bill, and $10 bill.\n\nIn person, if Bob wanted to give $20 to Alice, he can just hand her the $20 bill. On the blockchain, a similar thing happens with these Bitcoin inputs.\n\n*Note: I am showing the transfer of a singe input for the exact amount for simplicity. The transfer is slightly more complex with more inputs and when sending a different amount than a single input, but the general ideas are the same.*\n\n![Picture3.png](https://steemitimages.com/DQmQosTBxxT9tuLWnULxAFLiyiPfK96tJDDmia5pYcukZXK/Picture3.png)\n\n![Picture5.png](https://steemitimages.com/DQmXNsRaudnhgPG1UHdx4p4TFATCk8jdY7AehtytZyykjxt/Picture5.png)\n\nYou can see how Alice now has control over this output. The information recorded in the blockchain simply states that Bob's address sent this output to Alice's address.\n\n# Bitcoin as a Private System\n\nMany people may see the randomly-generated addresses and assume that since they are random, Bitcoin is private. They may claim that no one can see who the money belongs to and how it is being used. Unfortunately, this is not the case.\n\nAddresses can be trivially liked together. There will be a permanent record of Bob sending money to Alice. Suppose Bob's address is hosted on a popular exchange compliant with local law, and suppose Alice later spends that money on a darknet market. Bob may be questioned about this transfer, since he has an association to how the money is spent in the future.\n\nSimilarly, suppose the money Alice receives from Bob was obtained from the [WannaCry ransomware attack](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WannaCry_ransomware_attack). Alice may be questioned, even if the transfer between these two people is completely legal.\n\nSeveral companies exist whose entire purpose it is to track the transfer of funds between addresses on transparent blockchains. Below is a web provided by one of these companies, [Elliptic](https://www.elliptic.co/).\n\n![Picture7.png](https://steemitimages.com/DQmQNjYdcACrjd89hHYu8aMFZ5ShRjUn4feHdq9MeH7R5vH/Picture7.png)\n\n# Privacy Systems Added to Bitcoin Don't Really Work\n\nDevelopers originally sought to add systems to Bitcoin that certain people can optionally use for privacy. The most commonly used of these is a mixer.\n\nMixing, whether used with a website or [CoinJoin](https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/CoinJoin), works in the following way. Users send their Bitcoin to one of these mixers, who (as the name implies) mixes up whose Bitcoin is whose. They keep a fee, and send each participant a fraction of all the coins.\n\nIdeally, this would provide some level of untraceability. The previous source of money is now unclear. No one should know how it was previously spent, or what source of funds is being spent in the future.\n\n![Picture8.png](https://steemitimages.com/DQmTVRzrZZ2htki7bPuEBfp6WZAoFrPhjabYNTNTKHvfZmz/Picture8.png)\n\nHowever, there are several shortcomings of this approach, and I argue that it does not provide a meaningful level of privacy.\n\nSince this is an optional service that people need to go out of their way and pay additional fees to use, very few people actually mix their coins. Thus, the anonymity set is relatively small, and the few people who do actually draw attention to themselves. Mixing does not work very well if the majority of money is laundered or used on darknet markets. If the proportion of the total money supply used in mixing services is small, services could even block funds that have been mixed entirely. No knowledgeable person is going to pay extra money to mix new coinbase transactions, that's for sure.\n\nSecond, there is a level of trust in the system. Remember when I mentioned earlier that you do not need to trust miners on the network? Well, you need to trust these mixing services, even more decentralized ones like with [CoinJoin](https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/CoinJoin) or masternodes. These mixing services can retain a copy of how the funds were mixed without you even knowing. In many cases, this risk is exacerbated by how these mixers are hosted. The hosting providers can keep logs without even the owner knowing.\n\nRecently, several researchers published a paper about [BlockSci](https://arxiv.org/pdf/1709.02489.pdf), a new system that can be used for analysis of transparent blockchains. They looked into the risk of the amount of money being used in a mixer being transparent, among other things. They found that for [Dash](https://dash.org) (a cryptocurrency like Bitcoin with a [CoinJoin](https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/CoinJoin)-based mixing service), over half of their test mixed transactions could be traced back with absolute certainty by simply following the transaction amounts.\n\nFinally, from a practicality perspective, mixing is inconvenient and can take a long time. If you attempt to mitigate the logging risk by chaining several mixing sessions together, this can take several days. Most people do not have the patience for this.\n\n[zk-SNARKs](https://z.cash/technology/zksnarks.html) were more recently introduced, which function similarly to a mixer for coins but with very different underlying technology. I will discuss more about these new systems in a different post.\n\n# Introducing Monero\n\nMonero takes a different approach. Instead of adding some service on top of a transparent one, Monero uses several privacy technologies at the protocol-level and makes use of these technologies mandatory. I'll explain all of these in further detail so that you can have a working understanding of all of them.\n\n![Picture9.png](https://steemitimages.com/DQmednGBrTpxA8shNvDRsfWCotvnaddLmFZES27gn4tyDBB/Picture9.png)\n\nIn the simplest sense, Monero hides the sender, amount, transaction broadcast, and receiver with ring signatures, RingCT, Kovri, and stealth addresses, respectively. \n\nLet's start by taking a dive into ring signatures.\n\n# Ring Signatures and RingCT\n\nJust as the US money supply is divided into different dollar bills and coins, the Monero money supply is divided into outputs. These outputs store a certain value of Monero each, and the value they hold can change over time. Suppose that in the picture below, these are all the outputs that exist, and the one you control and can spend is highlighted in red.\n\n![Picture10.png](https://steemitimages.com/DQmVQ6wvmxGHHYHNAyGWG2oNJh3dq4bHVfLPa5JSjMasrX6/Picture10.png)\n\nKeep in mind that unlike with Bitcoin, these outputs are NOT linked to addresses. I will speak more about why later.\n\nWhen you create a Monero transaction, you will use a ring signature to hide which input is actually being spent. This is done by making it seem as if all of the chosen inputs are the possible real sender. In the photo, your real input is red, and five selected inputs are blue. These inputs can be controlled by anyone else, and you do not need their permission to add their input to the ring signature. Furthermore, this selection can be done entirely offline with only a copy of the blockchain. Without getting into the cryptography, you will sign all of these inputs such that an outside observer can not determine which is the real one being spent. Obviously, no one knows that yours is highlighted red :)\n\nNow hang on, since I'm going to cover a lot of details at once. Once you have selected the other inputs, you need to finish creating the RingCT ring signature.\n\nYou sign it so it appears in such a way that all these inputs appear to be the real one used. This signature includes several other important elements.\n\n![Picture12.png](https://steemitimages.com/DQmP1knZSSWLPf9vsMazhRvByqjiMZTre72oKFQuFrdcPYU/Picture12.png)\n\nThe key image is critically important. It's a one-way reference to the real input (the red one). This key image is given to the network as proof that the signature was created appropriately. The network verifies that this image has not been used before (to prevent double spends) and that it isn't a made-up number (to prevent people from spending money they never had). The network can verify this information without knowing which input is the real one.\n\nNext is the pedersen commitment. This is very complex, but let's take a very simple look at it. This is used to prevent other people from knowing how much is actually being spent. You can use this commitment to, er, commit to spending a certain value that you have the authority to spend, but other people no longer know what this value is.\n\nThis pedersen commitment is the critical component of ring confidential transactions, or RingCT. It hides the actual value *a* by adding a random number *x*. The commitment value is calculated for the set of inputs and outputs in the transaction, and it is broadcast to the network. Let me give you a simplified example:\n\nBob is sending Alice 1 XMR. Bob creates the commitment as follows:\n\nReal amount (*a*): 1 \nRandom number (*x*): 273\nCommitment (given to network): 274\n\nBob's wallet will give this number (274) to the network. The network will verify the sum of the committed inputs and outputs are both 274. If they are different, the transaction is rejected.\n\nNow, everything I explained earlier all comes together to form the RingCT ring signature. This results in an unknown amount of Moneor being spent. The commitment public key is what is used by the network to verify the commitment.\n\nSo how do outputs get used over time? Let's compare Bitcoin and Monero to find out.\n\n![Picture13.png](https://steemitimages.com/DQmfLMt8TMyNKkguiSuWHzF9HvT8TrLFqSE8ZPmMH4i4tLr/Picture13.png)\n\nIn the picture above, I have created a theoretical history for the output you control. All of the blocks highlighted red are ones where the output appears. If this was for Bitcoin, you would be able to easily tell that this output was transferred from user A to B to C, etc. However with Monero, this is not so simple.\n\nThere are three reasons for an output to show up in a block:\n1. It is new money and a coinbase transaction\n2. It was actually spent\n3. It was added as a decoy in a ring signature\n\nSince there is no way to differentiate between case #2 and case #3, outside observers have no idea if an output is actually being spent, even though it appears on the blockchain several times. Since every transaction includes multiple decoys, it's more likely than not that the output is not actually spent despite appearing in a certain block.\n\nAnd with that, we have completed the discussion on ring signatures and RingCT! *takes a deep breath*\n\nIf you want someone else to explain ring signatures and RingCT, see these excellent videos:\n\n[Ring signatures video](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zHN_B_H_fCs)\n[RingCT video](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M3AHp9KgTkQ)\n\n# Kovri and Transaction Broadcast\n\nThere's a lot of misconception about what this means and what the impacts of this attack vectors are. I will create a future post clarifying these in further detail.\n\nWhen you connect to the peer-to-peer network of nodes to broadcast your transaction, you leak some information about yourself. You leak your IP address and metadata (eg: date, time). Monero is working on a project to hide this information called [Kovri](https://getkovri.org).\n\n[Kovri](https://getkovri.org) is an anonymizing router. In the future, nodes will connect to each other through both the clearnet and through an anonymous network. There will be ways to run either entirely with clearnet or darknet, though few users should change this setting.\n\n[Kovri](https://getkovri.org) will prevent malicious nodes from rejecting transactions from certain IPs or from monitoring what IPs broadcast these transactions. Perhaps most exciting though is that Kovri works with any project that wants to incorporate it, including other cryptocurrencies. It would be relatively trivial for another coin to adopt it.\n\nPeople can use Tor today to mitigate this risk, but they open themselves up to several other risks.\n\nTo be clear: this does not undermine the other features, and malicious nodes still do not know if the IP addresses they receive are the real ones. It may have been broadcast through a different node first. Given the high false positive rate and significant effort needed for an attacker to collect this data, the attack is already unlikely.\n\n![Picture16.png](https://steemitimages.com/DQmanU2sFUMokEiG9XjfMgFiae9Vwmp63XfWNNettcCAEyr/Picture16.png)\n\n# Stealth Addresses\n\nTime to discuss how Monero breaks the connection between outputs and the addresses they belong to.\n\nWhen you send money to someone with Bitcoin, you basically give it to them directly. You assign it to their public key (address), and they can use their private key to open it.\n\nWith Monero, things are a bit more complex. Each wallet has a pair of private keys and public keys. The cryptography is too complex to get in to here, but it basically functions like this: you create a one-time safety deposit box that only the receiver can open. It is never reused.\n\nReceivers need to search every single one of these \"boxes\" to see which they are able to \"unlock\". They then have control over the ones assigned to them. They can take this money and place it into another \"box\" for someone else.\n\nSuppose you have 10 XMR and want to send 1 XMR to me (thanks!); in this case, you will create two outputs: one for me with 1 XMR , and one for yourself with 9 XMR. You basically send the change back to yourself.\n\n![Picture14.png](https://steemitimages.com/DQme5vrHmBPzFWLNKBDEnP4SGDKQKerEvHZ5SyKupbvCffw/Picture14.png)\n\nIf you want someone else to explain stealth addresses, see this excellent video:\n\n[Stealth addresses](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bWst278J8NA)\n\n# Technology Summary\n\nAs we went over, a Monero transaction has an ambiguous output origin, an unknown amount in a commitment, and an unknown receiver. For every transaction on the network, all of the information stored on the blockchain is obfuscated.\n\n![Picture15.png](https://steemitimages.com/DQmWhbRzL89RsBG6LKMS9tcnFDWx32PqpciBzfijJVNpUcf/Picture15.png)\n\n# Some Other Items\n\nMonero's primary focus is privacy, though there are still several other aspects that make it interesting. I have highlighted some of these below.\n\n**It has an aggressive upgrade schedule**. The community does not shy away from hard forks, having three in 2017 alone. These are necessary to provide the highest level of security and privacy. Monero isn't perfect, though hard forks allow it to get better. RingCT was enabled through a hardfork at the beginning of 2017, for example.\n\n**It has a dynamic block size and dynamic fees**. No Bitcoin block size debate. The number of transactions that can fit into a block will slowly increase if the demand is large enough, and it will decrease again if there is not enough demand. The fees will decrease based on transaction volume.\n\n**It has always-on privacy**. I discussed this earlier, but I really want to emphasize it again. Few other coins that promise privacy can even get 10% of their transactions to use privacy features. With Monero, all of them use it, there is no way to opt out, and thus no transactions look suspicious for using privacy features.\n\n**It has view keys to provide transparency**. With most coins claiming to provide privacy, the feature is either on or off for everyone in the world. With Monero, it's always on for everyone except those you allow to see certain transaction information. No matter what, information on the blockchain is obfuscated. However, you can provide a certain key to someone else so they can understand what is happening.\n\n**It has a critical community**. Many people misinterpret this as harsh. While some users may be, the overwhelming message of most Monero community members has been to think critically of projects. [Every Sunday, Monero users discuss the top criticisms of the coin in /r/Monero](https://www.reddit.com/r/Monero/comments/76iczg/skepticism_sunday_what_concerns_you_about_monero/). The Monero community has a growth mindset, and is always looking for ways to improve.\n\n**It has a world-class research lab**. Several researchers dedicate their time to research projects for Monero. You can learn more about these projects on [the official Monero website](https://getmonero.org/resources/research-lab/).\n\n**It was launched fairly**. There was no premine, instantmine, or ICO. There is no governing corporation or developer tax. Monero stands as a truly community-based entity.\n\n**It has a more accessible mining algorithm**. Bitcoin can only be mined on specialized equipment. Monero's mining algorithm ([CryptoNight](https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/CryptoNight)) is memory-intensive, and the reward of developing specialized equipment is outweighed by the cost of developing it. You can still mine Monero on a CPU and make *some* money. Most people mine on GPUs. This allows even novice miners to meaningfully contribute to the network. There are arguments for and against this type of mining, but I believe it leads to decentralization.\n\n# Conclusion\n\nThat's about it! Thanks for making it all the way down here! If I piqued your interest, you can use the following links to learn more:\n\n[Monero website](https://getmonero.org)\n[Monero subreddit](https://reddit.com/r/Monero)\n[Monero trading subreddit](https://reddit.com/r/xmrtrader)\n[Monero activist subreddit](https://reddit.com/r/MoneroCommunity)\n[Monero Twitter](https://monero.com/monerocurrency)\n[Monero Facebook](https://www.facebook.com/monerocurrency/)\n[Monero Github](https://github.com/monero-project)\n[Monero StackExchange](https://monero.stackexchange.com)\n[A list of Monero communication channels](https://getmonero.org/community/hangouts/)\n[Monero.how](https://monero.how), a community-run site\n\n# About the Author\n\nJustin Ehrenhofer is a junior at the University of Minnesota studying finance and management information systems. He is the co-president of a university cryptocurrency club called [Crypto@UMN](http://cryptoumn.com), with one of the largest active memberships in the world.\n\n[Crypto@UMN](http://cryptoumn.com) has three major focuses: education, advocacy, and community. His passion has been fostering these in the Monero community.\n\nHe studied abroad in Spring and Summer 2017 in Vienna, Austria. During his time in Europe, he traveled extensively, pairing his travels with discussions about Monero. You can see many of these presentations [here](https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLBwW3kFqHdFg72DeOcNQ552W607ATQURq). You can see more about his talks [here](https://forum.getmonero.org/6/ideas/88081/justin-s-local-meetup-talks-proposal-3).\n\nHe moderates the biweekly Monero community meetings, and he has started a new monthly Monero Coffee Chat initiative.\n\n[Justin's Reddit](https://reddit.com/u/SamsungGalaxyPlayer)\n[Justin's Twitter](https://twitter.com/JEhrenhofer)",
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2017/10/26 23:08:12
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2017/10/26 22:50:15
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2017/10/26 22:49:57
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permlink7yjqso-a-monero-introduction-for-beginners
titleA Monero Introduction for Beginners
body![Picture1.png](https://steemitimages.com/DQmVVHzWjDC1rJqoXzgb9e4VMpjPawMD4nFQgEgcs7wScb5/Picture1.png) Monero is a rather unique cryptocurrency. It doesn't try to do anything unusual, or be Turing-complete like Ethereum. It just tries to be very good at one thing: the private and secure transfer of value. This post will cover the very basics of Monero. It expects the reader to be technology-literate, but not necessarily know anything about how either Bitcoin or Monero work. These will all be discussed on a high level. # Let's Begin with Bitcoin As with most resources, we will actually start by discussing Bitcoin, since it is much simpler to understand. Bitcoin is a decentralized network that is maintained by thousands of computers around the world. In the simplest sense, Bitcoin's network consists of nodes and miners. Nodes maintain a copy of all the transactions that have ever happened. Suppose I sent you 0.1 BTC. The record of my address sending you this Bitcoin would appear in a block. Blocks contain the most recent ~10 minutes of transactions. All these blocks together form a chain, thus named the blockchain. The blockchain forever grows larger with more and more history of transactions happening on the network. Miners aid the network by signing these blocks. The network creates a problem set that takes many attempts to solve it. The faster your computer is, the more attempts it can make each second. Miners compete against each other to solve the next puzzle, and the one who solves it get a reward. Bitcoin stays secure since the next miner to solve this puzzle is unknown. It can be any miner, and so long as no one controls a substantial portion of "hashing" power, then the network can stay secure. No one attacker can manipulate the network to solve a substantial number of blocks in a row. You don't need to trust these miners, since no one entity is large enough to negatively impact the network. Each transaction is given a unique identifying ID, and details regarding the sending address, receiving address, and amount are all visible. Note that most of these details are long strings of randomly-generated numbers and letters. ![Picture2.png](https://steemitimages.com/DQmTDBzweRsgzQidmLo5B7SSJ62pwRTEWkFMHP1RzG49mqZ/Picture2.png) Now let's look closer at this individual transaction. Suppose Bob's wallet contains 4 inputs of 0.1 BTC, 0.5 BTC, 0.75 BTC, and 1 BTC (for a total balance of 2.35 BTC), and he would like to send 0.1 BTC to Alice. You can think of these inputs as dollar bills. It's similar to saying Bob has $180 in his wallet, divided into one each of a $100 bill, $50 bill, $20 bill, and $10 bill. In person, if Bob wanted to give $20 to Alice, he can just hand her the $20 bill. On the blockchain, a similar thing happens with these Bitcoin inputs. *Note: I am showing the transfer of a singe input for the exact amount for simplicity. The transfer is slightly more complex with more inputs and when sending a different amount than a single input, but the general ideas are the same.* ![Picture3.png](https://steemitimages.com/DQmQosTBxxT9tuLWnULxAFLiyiPfK96tJDDmia5pYcukZXK/Picture3.png) ![Picture5.png](https://steemitimages.com/DQmXNsRaudnhgPG1UHdx4p4TFATCk8jdY7AehtytZyykjxt/Picture5.png) You can see how Alice now has control over this output. The information recorded in the blockchain simply states that Bob's address sent this output to Alice's address. # Bitcoin as a Private System Many people may see the randomly-generated addresses and assume that since they are random, Bitcoin is private. They may claim that no one can see who the money belongs to and how it is being used. Unfortunately, this is not the case. Addresses can be trivially liked together. There will be a permanent record of Bob sending money to Alice. Suppose Bob's address is hosted on a popular exchange compliant with local law, and suppose Alice later spends that money on a darknet market. Bob may be questioned about this transfer, since he has an association to how the money is spent in the future. Similarly, suppose the money Alice receives from Bob was obtained from the [WannaCry ransomware attack](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WannaCry_ransomware_attack). Alice may be questioned, even if the transfer between these two people is completely legal. Several companies exist whose entire purpose it is to track the transfer of funds between addresses on transparent blockchains. Below is a web provided by one of these companies, [Elliptic](https://www.elliptic.co/). ![Picture7.png](https://steemitimages.com/DQmQNjYdcACrjd89hHYu8aMFZ5ShRjUn4feHdq9MeH7R5vH/Picture7.png) # Privacy Systems Added to Bitcoin Don't Really Work Developers originally sought to add systems to Bitcoin that certain people can optionally use for privacy. The most commonly used of these is a mixer. Mixing, whether used with a website or [CoinJoin](https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/CoinJoin), works in the following way. Users send their Bitcoin to one of these mixers, who (as the name implies) mixes up whose Bitcoin is whose. They keep a fee, and send each participant a fraction of all the coins. Ideally, this would provide some level of untraceability. The previous source of money is now unclear. No one should know how it was previously spent, or what source of funds is being spent in the future. ![Picture8.png](https://steemitimages.com/DQmTVRzrZZ2htki7bPuEBfp6WZAoFrPhjabYNTNTKHvfZmz/Picture8.png) However, there are several shortcomings of this approach, and I argue that it does not provide a meaningful level of privacy. Since this is an optional service that people need to go out of their way and pay additional fees to use, very few people actually mix their coins. Thus, the anonymity set is relatively small, and the few people who do actually draw attention to themselves. Mixing does not work very well if the majority of money is laundered or used on darknet markets. If the proportion of the total money supply used in mixing services is small, services could even block funds that have been mixed entirely. No knowledgeable person is going to pay extra money to mix new coinbase transactions, that's for sure. Second, there is a level of trust in the system. Remember when I mentioned earlier that you do not need to trust miners on the network? Well, you need to trust these mixing services, even more decentralized ones like with [CoinJoin](https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/CoinJoin) or masternodes. These mixing services can retain a copy of how the funds were mixed without you even knowing. In many cases, this risk is exacerbated by how these mixers are hosted. The hosting providers can keep logs without even the owner knowing. Recently, several researchers published a paper about [BlockSci](https://arxiv.org/pdf/1709.02489.pdf), a new system that can be used for analysis of transparent blockchains. They looked into the risk of the amount of money being used in a mixer being transparent, among other things. They found that for [Dash](https://dash.org) (a cryptocurrency like Bitcoin with a [CoinJoin](https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/CoinJoin)-based mixing service), over half of their test mixed transactions could be traced back with absolute certainty by simply following the transaction amounts. Finally, from a practicality perspective, mixing is inconvenient and can take a long time. If you attempt to mitigate the logging risk by chaining several mixing sessions together, this can take several days. Most people do not have the patience for this. [zk-SNARKs](https://z.cash/technology/zksnarks.html) were more recently introduced, which function similarly to a mixer for coins but with very different underlying technology. I will discuss more about these new systems in a different post. # Introducing Monero Monero takes a different approach. Instead of adding some service on top of a transparent one, Monero uses several privacy technologies at the protocol-level and makes use of these technologies mandatory. I'll explain all of these in further detail so that you can have a working understanding of all of them. ![Picture9.png](https://steemitimages.com/DQmednGBrTpxA8shNvDRsfWCotvnaddLmFZES27gn4tyDBB/Picture9.png) In the simplest sense, Monero hides the sender, amount, transaction broadcast, and receiver with ring signatures, RingCT, Kovri, and stealth addresses, respectively. Let's start by taking a dive into ring signatures. # Ring Signatures and RingCT Just as the US money supply is divided into different dollar bills and coins, the Monero money supply is divided into outputs. These outputs store a certain value of Monero each, and the value they hold can change over time. Suppose that in the picture below, these are all the outputs that exist, and the one you control and can spend is highlighted in red. ![Picture10.png](https://steemitimages.com/DQmVQ6wvmxGHHYHNAyGWG2oNJh3dq4bHVfLPa5JSjMasrX6/Picture10.png) Keep in mind that unlike with Bitcoin, these outputs are NOT linked to addresses. I will speak more about why later. When you create a Monero transaction, you will use a ring signature to hide which input is actually being spent. This is done by making it seem as if all of the chosen inputs are the possible real sender. In the photo, your real input is red, and five selected inputs are blue. These inputs can be controlled by anyone else, and you do not need their permission to add their input to the ring signature. Furthermore, this selection can be done entirely offline with only a copy of the blockchain. Without getting into the cryptography, you will sign all of these inputs such that an outside observer can not determine which is the real one being spent. Obviously, no one knows that yours is highlighted red :) Now hang on, since I'm going to cover a lot of details at once. Once you have selected the other inputs, you need to finish creating the RingCT ring signature. You sign it so it appears in such a way that all these inputs appear to be the real one used. This signature includes several other important elements. ![Picture12.png](https://steemitimages.com/DQmP1knZSSWLPf9vsMazhRvByqjiMZTre72oKFQuFrdcPYU/Picture12.png) The key image is critically important. It's a one-way reference to the real input (the red one). This key image is given to the network as proof that the signature was created appropriately. The network verifies that this image has not been used before (to prevent double spends) and that it isn't a made-up number (to prevent people from spending money they never had). The network can verify this information without knowing which input is the real one. Next is the pedersen commitment. This is very complex, but let's take a very simple look at it. This is used to prevent other people from knowing how much is actually being spent. You can use this commitment to, er, commit to spending a certain value that you have the authority to spend, but other people no longer know what this value is. This pedersen commitment is the critical component of ring confidential transactions, or RingCT. It hides the actual value *a* by adding a random number *x*. The commitment value is calculated for the set of inputs and outputs in the transaction, and it is broadcast to the network. Let me give you a simplified example: Bob is sending Alice 1 XMR. Bob creates the commitment as follows: Real amount (*a*): 1 Random number (*x*): 273 Commitment (given to network): 274 Bob's wallet will give this number (274) to the network. The network will verify the sum of the committed inputs and outputs are both 274. If they are different, the transaction is rejected. Now, everything I explained earlier all comes together to form the RingCT ring signature. This results in an unknown amount of Moneor being spent. The commitment public key is what is used by the network to verify the commitment. So how do outputs get used over time? Let's compare Bitcoin and Monero to find out. ![Picture13.png](https://steemitimages.com/DQmfLMt8TMyNKkguiSuWHzF9HvT8TrLFqSE8ZPmMH4i4tLr/Picture13.png) In the picture above, I have created a theoretical history for the output you control. All of the blocks highlighted red are ones where the output appears. If this was for Bitcoin, you would be able to easily tell that this output was transferred from user A to B to C, etc. However with Monero, this is not so simple. There are three reasons for an output to show up in a block: 1. It is new money and a coinbase transaction 2. It was actually spent 3. It was added as a decoy in a ring signature Since there is no way to differentiate between case #2 and case #3, outside observers have no idea if an output is actually being spent, even though it appears on the blockchain several times. Since every transaction includes multiple decoys, it's more likely than not that the output is not actually spent despite appearing in a certain block. And with that, we have completed the discussion on ring signatures and RingCT! *takes a deep breath* If you want someone else to explain ring signatures and RingCT, see these excellent videos: [Ring signatures video](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zHN_B_H_fCs) [RingCT video](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M3AHp9KgTkQ) # Kovri and Transaction Broadcast There's a lot of misconception about what this means and what the impacts of this attack vectors are. I will create a future post clarifying these in further detail. When you connect to the peer-to-peer network of nodes to broadcast your transaction, you leak some information about yourself. You leak your IP address and metadata (eg: date, time). Monero is working on a project to hide this information called [Kovri](https://getkovri.org). [Kovri](https://getkovri.org) is an anonymizing router. In the future, nodes will connect to each other through both the clearnet and through an anonymous network. There will be ways to run either entirely with clearnet or darknet, though few users should change this setting. [Kovri](https://getkovri.org) will prevent malicious nodes from rejecting transactions from certain IPs or from monitoring what IPs broadcast these transactions. Perhaps most exciting though is that Kovri works with any project that wants to incorporate it, including other cryptocurrencies. It would be relatively trivial for another coin to adopt it. People can use Tor today to mitigate this risk, but they open themselves up to several other risks. To be clear: this does not undermine the other features, and malicious nodes still do not know if the IP addresses they receive are the real ones. It may have been broadcast through a different node first. Given the high false positive rate and significant effort needed for an attacker to collect this data, the attack is already unlikely. ![Picture16.png](https://steemitimages.com/DQmanU2sFUMokEiG9XjfMgFiae9Vwmp63XfWNNettcCAEyr/Picture16.png) # Stealth Addresses Time to discuss how Monero breaks the connection between outputs and the addresses they belong to. When you send money to someone with Bitcoin, you basically give it to them directly. You assign it to their public key (address), and they can use their private key to open it. With Monero, things are a bit more complex. Each wallet has a pair of private keys and public keys. The cryptography is too complex to get in to here, but it basically functions like this: you create a one-time safety deposit box that only the receiver can open. It is never reused. Receivers need to search every single one of these "boxes" to see which they are able to "unlock". They then have control over the ones assigned to them. They can take this money and place it into another "box" for someone else. Suppose you have 10 XMR and want to send 1 XMR to me (thanks!); in this case, you will create two outputs: one for me with 1 XMR , and one for yourself with 9 XMR. You basically send the change back to yourself. ![Picture14.png](https://steemitimages.com/DQme5vrHmBPzFWLNKBDEnP4SGDKQKerEvHZ5SyKupbvCffw/Picture14.png) If you want someone else to explain stealth addresses, see this excellent video: [Stealth addresses](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bWst278J8NA) # Technology Summary As we went over, a Monero transaction has an ambiguous output origin, an unknown amount in a commitment, and an unknown receiver. For every transaction on the network, all of the information stored on the blockchain is obfuscated. ![Picture15.png](https://steemitimages.com/DQmWhbRzL89RsBG6LKMS9tcnFDWx32PqpciBzfijJVNpUcf/Picture15.png) # Some Other Items Monero's primary focus is privacy, though there are still several other aspects that make it interesting. I have highlighted some of these below. **It has an aggressive upgrade schedule**. The community does not shy away from hard forks, having three in 2017 alone. These are necessary to provide the highest level of security and privacy. Monero isn't perfect, though hard forks allow it to get better. RingCT was enabled through a hardfork at the beginning of 2017, for example. **It has a dynamic block size and dynamic fees**. No Bitcoin block size debate. The number of transactions that can fit into a block will slowly increase if the demand is large enough, and it will decrease again if there is not enough demand. The fees will decrease based on transaction volume. **It has always-on privacy**. I discussed this earlier, but I really want to emphasize it again. Few other coins that promise privacy can even get 10% of their transactions to use privacy features. With Monero, all of them use it, there is no way to opt out, and thus no transactions look suspicious for using privacy features. **It has view keys to provide transparency**. With most coins claiming to provide privacy, the feature is either on or off for everyone in the world. With Monero, it's always on for everyone except those you allow to see certain transaction information. No matter what, information on the blockchain is obfuscated. However, you can provide a certain key to someone else so they can understand what is happening. **It has a critical community**. Many people misinterpret this as harsh. While some users may be, the overwhelming message of most Monero community members has been to think critically of projects. [Every Sunday, Monero users discuss the top criticisms of the coin in /r/Monero](https://www.reddit.com/r/Monero/comments/76iczg/skepticism_sunday_what_concerns_you_about_monero/). The Monero community has a growth mindset, and is always looking for ways to improve. **It has a world-class research lab**. Several researchers dedicate their time to research projects for Monero. You can learn more about these projects on [the official Monero website](https://getmonero.org/resources/research-lab/). **It was launched fairly**. There was no premine, instantmine, or ICO. There is no governing corporation or developer tax. Monero stands as a truly community-based entity. **It has a more accessible mining algorithm**. Bitcoin can only be mined on specialized equipment. Monero's mining algorithm ([CryptoNight](https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/CryptoNight)) is memory-intensive, and the reward of developing specialized equipment is outweighed by the cost of developing it. You can still mine Monero on a CPU and make *some* money. Most people mine on GPUs. This allows even novice miners to meaningfully contribute to the network. There are arguments for and against this type of mining, but I believe it leads to decentralization. # Conclusion That's about it! Thanks for making it all the way down here! If I piqued your interest, you can use the following links to learn more: [Monero website](https://getmonero.org) [Monero subreddit](https://reddit.com/r/Monero) [Monero trading subreddit](https://reddit.com/r/xmrtrader) [Monero activist subreddit](https://reddit.com/r/MoneroCommunity) [Monero Twitter](https://monero.com/monerocurrency) [Monero Facebook](https://www.facebook.com/monerocurrency/) [Monero Github](https://github.com/monero-project) [Monero StackExchange](https://monero.stackexchange.com) [A list of Monero communication channels](https://getmonero.org/community/hangouts/) [Monero.how](https://monero.how), a community-run site # About the Author Justin Ehrenhofer is a junior at the University of Minnesota studying finance and management information systems. He is the co-president of a university cryptocurrency club called [Crypto@UMN](http://cryptoumn.com), with one of the largest active memberships in the world. [Crypto@UMN](http://cryptoumn.com) has three major focuses: education, advocacy, and community. His passion has been fostering these in the Monero community. He studied abroad in Spring and Summer 2017 in Vienna, Austria. During his time in Europe, he traveled extensively, pairing his travels with discussions about Monero. You can see many of these presentations [here](https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLBwW3kFqHdFg72DeOcNQ552W607ATQURq). You can see more about his talks [here](https://forum.getmonero.org/6/ideas/88081/justin-s-local-meetup-talks-proposal-3). He moderates the biweekly Monero community meetings, and he has started a new monthly Monero Coffee Chat initiative. [Justin's Reddit](https://reddit.com/u/SamsungGalaxyPlayer) [Justin's Twitter](https://twitter.com/JEhrenhofer)
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Transaction InfoBlock #16680239/Trx e18c7fe2d13549e2966e61bb62bf169867538167
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      "parent_author": "",
      "parent_permlink": "monero",
      "author": "sgp",
      "permlink": "7yjqso-a-monero-introduction-for-beginners",
      "title": "A Monero Introduction for Beginners",
      "body": "![Picture1.png](https://steemitimages.com/DQmVVHzWjDC1rJqoXzgb9e4VMpjPawMD4nFQgEgcs7wScb5/Picture1.png)\n\nMonero is a rather unique cryptocurrency. It doesn't try to do anything unusual, or be Turing-complete like Ethereum. It just tries to be very good at one thing: the private and secure transfer of value.\n\nThis post will cover the very basics of Monero. It expects the reader to be technology-literate, but not necessarily know anything about how either Bitcoin or Monero work. These will all be discussed on a high level.\n\n\n# Let's Begin with Bitcoin\n\nAs with most resources, we will actually start by discussing Bitcoin, since it is much simpler to understand. Bitcoin is a decentralized network that is maintained by thousands of computers around the world. In the simplest sense, Bitcoin's network consists of nodes and miners.\n\nNodes maintain a copy of all the transactions that have ever happened. Suppose I sent you 0.1 BTC. The record of my address sending you this Bitcoin would appear in a block. Blocks contain the most recent ~10 minutes of transactions. All these blocks together form a chain, thus named the blockchain. The blockchain forever grows larger with more and more history of transactions happening on the network.\n\nMiners aid the network by signing these blocks. The network creates a problem set that takes many attempts to solve it. The faster your computer is, the more attempts it can make each second. Miners compete against each other to solve the next puzzle, and the one who solves it get a reward. Bitcoin stays secure since the next miner to solve this puzzle is unknown. It can be any miner, and so long as no one controls a substantial portion of \"hashing\" power, then the network can stay secure. No one attacker can manipulate the network to solve a substantial number of blocks in a row. You don't need to trust these miners, since no one entity is large enough to negatively impact the network.\n\nEach transaction is given a unique identifying ID, and details regarding the sending address, receiving address, and amount are all visible. Note that most of these details are long strings of randomly-generated numbers and letters.\n\n![Picture2.png](https://steemitimages.com/DQmTDBzweRsgzQidmLo5B7SSJ62pwRTEWkFMHP1RzG49mqZ/Picture2.png)\n\nNow let's look closer at this individual transaction. Suppose Bob's wallet contains 4 inputs of 0.1 BTC, 0.5 BTC, 0.75 BTC, and 1 BTC (for a total balance of 2.35 BTC), and he would like to send 0.1 BTC to Alice. You can think of these inputs as dollar bills. It's similar to saying Bob has $180 in his wallet, divided into one each of a $100 bill, $50 bill, $20 bill, and $10 bill.\n\nIn person, if Bob wanted to give $20 to Alice, he can just hand her the $20 bill. On the blockchain, a similar thing happens with these Bitcoin inputs.\n\n*Note: I am showing the transfer of a singe input for the exact amount for simplicity. The transfer is slightly more complex with more inputs and when sending a different amount than a single input, but the general ideas are the same.*\n\n![Picture3.png](https://steemitimages.com/DQmQosTBxxT9tuLWnULxAFLiyiPfK96tJDDmia5pYcukZXK/Picture3.png)\n\n![Picture5.png](https://steemitimages.com/DQmXNsRaudnhgPG1UHdx4p4TFATCk8jdY7AehtytZyykjxt/Picture5.png)\n\nYou can see how Alice now has control over this output. The information recorded in the blockchain simply states that Bob's address sent this output to Alice's address.\n\n# Bitcoin as a Private System\n\nMany people may see the randomly-generated addresses and assume that since they are random, Bitcoin is private. They may claim that no one can see who the money belongs to and how it is being used. Unfortunately, this is not the case.\n\nAddresses can be trivially liked together. There will be a permanent record of Bob sending money to Alice. Suppose Bob's address is hosted on a popular exchange compliant with local law, and suppose Alice later spends that money on a darknet market. Bob may be questioned about this transfer, since he has an association to how the money is spent in the future.\n\nSimilarly, suppose the money Alice receives from Bob was obtained from the [WannaCry ransomware attack](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WannaCry_ransomware_attack). Alice may be questioned, even if the transfer between these two people is completely legal.\n\nSeveral companies exist whose entire purpose it is to track the transfer of funds between addresses on transparent blockchains. Below is a web provided by one of these companies, [Elliptic](https://www.elliptic.co/).\n\n![Picture7.png](https://steemitimages.com/DQmQNjYdcACrjd89hHYu8aMFZ5ShRjUn4feHdq9MeH7R5vH/Picture7.png)\n\n# Privacy Systems Added to Bitcoin Don't Really Work\n\nDevelopers originally sought to add systems to Bitcoin that certain people can optionally use for privacy. The most commonly used of these is a mixer.\n\nMixing, whether used with a website or [CoinJoin](https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/CoinJoin), works in the following way. Users send their Bitcoin to one of these mixers, who (as the name implies) mixes up whose Bitcoin is whose. They keep a fee, and send each participant a fraction of all the coins.\n\nIdeally, this would provide some level of untraceability. The previous source of money is now unclear. No one should know how it was previously spent, or what source of funds is being spent in the future.\n\n![Picture8.png](https://steemitimages.com/DQmTVRzrZZ2htki7bPuEBfp6WZAoFrPhjabYNTNTKHvfZmz/Picture8.png)\n\nHowever, there are several shortcomings of this approach, and I argue that it does not provide a meaningful level of privacy.\n\nSince this is an optional service that people need to go out of their way and pay additional fees to use, very few people actually mix their coins. Thus, the anonymity set is relatively small, and the few people who do actually draw attention to themselves. Mixing does not work very well if the majority of money is laundered or used on darknet markets. If the proportion of the total money supply used in mixing services is small, services could even block funds that have been mixed entirely. No knowledgeable person is going to pay extra money to mix new coinbase transactions, that's for sure.\n\nSecond, there is a level of trust in the system. Remember when I mentioned earlier that you do not need to trust miners on the network? Well, you need to trust these mixing services, even more decentralized ones like with [CoinJoin](https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/CoinJoin) or masternodes. These mixing services can retain a copy of how the funds were mixed without you even knowing. In many cases, this risk is exacerbated by how these mixers are hosted. The hosting providers can keep logs without even the owner knowing.\n\nRecently, several researchers published a paper about [BlockSci](https://arxiv.org/pdf/1709.02489.pdf), a new system that can be used for analysis of transparent blockchains. They looked into the risk of the amount of money being used in a mixer being transparent, among other things. They found that for [Dash](https://dash.org) (a cryptocurrency like Bitcoin with a [CoinJoin](https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/CoinJoin)-based mixing service), over half of their test mixed transactions could be traced back with absolute certainty by simply following the transaction amounts.\n\nFinally, from a practicality perspective, mixing is inconvenient and can take a long time. If you attempt to mitigate the logging risk by chaining several mixing sessions together, this can take several days. Most people do not have the patience for this.\n\n[zk-SNARKs](https://z.cash/technology/zksnarks.html) were more recently introduced, which function similarly to a mixer for coins but with very different underlying technology. I will discuss more about these new systems in a different post.\n\n# Introducing Monero\n\nMonero takes a different approach. Instead of adding some service on top of a transparent one, Monero uses several privacy technologies at the protocol-level and makes use of these technologies mandatory. I'll explain all of these in further detail so that you can have a working understanding of all of them.\n\n![Picture9.png](https://steemitimages.com/DQmednGBrTpxA8shNvDRsfWCotvnaddLmFZES27gn4tyDBB/Picture9.png)\n\nIn the simplest sense, Monero hides the sender, amount, transaction broadcast, and receiver with ring signatures, RingCT, Kovri, and stealth addresses, respectively. \n\nLet's start by taking a dive into ring signatures.\n\n# Ring Signatures and RingCT\n\nJust as the US money supply is divided into different dollar bills and coins, the Monero money supply is divided into outputs. These outputs store a certain value of Monero each, and the value they hold can change over time. Suppose that in the picture below, these are all the outputs that exist, and the one you control and can spend is highlighted in red.\n\n![Picture10.png](https://steemitimages.com/DQmVQ6wvmxGHHYHNAyGWG2oNJh3dq4bHVfLPa5JSjMasrX6/Picture10.png)\n\nKeep in mind that unlike with Bitcoin, these outputs are NOT linked to addresses. I will speak more about why later.\n\nWhen you create a Monero transaction, you will use a ring signature to hide which input is actually being spent. This is done by making it seem as if all of the chosen inputs are the possible real sender. In the photo, your real input is red, and five selected inputs are blue. These inputs can be controlled by anyone else, and you do not need their permission to add their input to the ring signature. Furthermore, this selection can be done entirely offline with only a copy of the blockchain. Without getting into the cryptography, you will sign all of these inputs such that an outside observer can not determine which is the real one being spent. Obviously, no one knows that yours is highlighted red :)\n\nNow hang on, since I'm going to cover a lot of details at once. Once you have selected the other inputs, you need to finish creating the RingCT ring signature.\n\nYou sign it so it appears in such a way that all these inputs appear to be the real one used. This signature includes several other important elements.\n\n![Picture12.png](https://steemitimages.com/DQmP1knZSSWLPf9vsMazhRvByqjiMZTre72oKFQuFrdcPYU/Picture12.png)\n\nThe key image is critically important. It's a one-way reference to the real input (the red one). This key image is given to the network as proof that the signature was created appropriately. The network verifies that this image has not been used before (to prevent double spends) and that it isn't a made-up number (to prevent people from spending money they never had). The network can verify this information without knowing which input is the real one.\n\nNext is the pedersen commitment. This is very complex, but let's take a very simple look at it. This is used to prevent other people from knowing how much is actually being spent. You can use this commitment to, er, commit to spending a certain value that you have the authority to spend, but other people no longer know what this value is.\n\nThis pedersen commitment is the critical component of ring confidential transactions, or RingCT. It hides the actual value *a* by adding a random number *x*. The commitment value is calculated for the set of inputs and outputs in the transaction, and it is broadcast to the network. Let me give you a simplified example:\n\nBob is sending Alice 1 XMR. Bob creates the commitment as follows:\n\nReal amount (*a*): 1 \nRandom number (*x*): 273\nCommitment (given to network): 274\n\nBob's wallet will give this number (274) to the network. The network will verify the sum of the committed inputs and outputs are both 274. If they are different, the transaction is rejected.\n\nNow, everything I explained earlier all comes together to form the RingCT ring signature. This results in an unknown amount of Moneor being spent. The commitment public key is what is used by the network to verify the commitment.\n\nSo how do outputs get used over time? Let's compare Bitcoin and Monero to find out.\n\n![Picture13.png](https://steemitimages.com/DQmfLMt8TMyNKkguiSuWHzF9HvT8TrLFqSE8ZPmMH4i4tLr/Picture13.png)\n\nIn the picture above, I have created a theoretical history for the output you control. All of the blocks highlighted red are ones where the output appears. If this was for Bitcoin, you would be able to easily tell that this output was transferred from user A to B to C, etc. However with Monero, this is not so simple.\n\nThere are three reasons for an output to show up in a block:\n1. It is new money and a coinbase transaction\n2. It was actually spent\n3. It was added as a decoy in a ring signature\n\nSince there is no way to differentiate between case #2 and case #3, outside observers have no idea if an output is actually being spent, even though it appears on the blockchain several times. Since every transaction includes multiple decoys, it's more likely than not that the output is not actually spent despite appearing in a certain block.\n\nAnd with that, we have completed the discussion on ring signatures and RingCT! *takes a deep breath*\n\nIf you want someone else to explain ring signatures and RingCT, see these excellent videos:\n\n[Ring signatures video](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zHN_B_H_fCs)\n[RingCT video](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M3AHp9KgTkQ)\n\n# Kovri and Transaction Broadcast\n\nThere's a lot of misconception about what this means and what the impacts of this attack vectors are. I will create a future post clarifying these in further detail.\n\nWhen you connect to the peer-to-peer network of nodes to broadcast your transaction, you leak some information about yourself. You leak your IP address and metadata (eg: date, time). Monero is working on a project to hide this information called [Kovri](https://getkovri.org).\n\n[Kovri](https://getkovri.org) is an anonymizing router. In the future, nodes will connect to each other through both the clearnet and through an anonymous network. There will be ways to run either entirely with clearnet or darknet, though few users should change this setting.\n\n[Kovri](https://getkovri.org) will prevent malicious nodes from rejecting transactions from certain IPs or from monitoring what IPs broadcast these transactions. Perhaps most exciting though is that Kovri works with any project that wants to incorporate it, including other cryptocurrencies. It would be relatively trivial for another coin to adopt it.\n\nPeople can use Tor today to mitigate this risk, but they open themselves up to several other risks.\n\nTo be clear: this does not undermine the other features, and malicious nodes still do not know if the IP addresses they receive are the real ones. It may have been broadcast through a different node first. Given the high false positive rate and significant effort needed for an attacker to collect this data, the attack is already unlikely.\n\n![Picture16.png](https://steemitimages.com/DQmanU2sFUMokEiG9XjfMgFiae9Vwmp63XfWNNettcCAEyr/Picture16.png)\n\n# Stealth Addresses\n\nTime to discuss how Monero breaks the connection between outputs and the addresses they belong to.\n\nWhen you send money to someone with Bitcoin, you basically give it to them directly. You assign it to their public key (address), and they can use their private key to open it.\n\nWith Monero, things are a bit more complex. Each wallet has a pair of private keys and public keys. The cryptography is too complex to get in to here, but it basically functions like this: you create a one-time safety deposit box that only the receiver can open. It is never reused.\n\nReceivers need to search every single one of these \"boxes\" to see which they are able to \"unlock\". They then have control over the ones assigned to them. They can take this money and place it into another \"box\" for someone else.\n\nSuppose you have 10 XMR and want to send 1 XMR to me (thanks!); in this case, you will create two outputs: one for me with 1 XMR , and one for yourself with 9 XMR. You basically send the change back to yourself.\n\n![Picture14.png](https://steemitimages.com/DQme5vrHmBPzFWLNKBDEnP4SGDKQKerEvHZ5SyKupbvCffw/Picture14.png)\n\nIf you want someone else to explain stealth addresses, see this excellent video:\n\n[Stealth addresses](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bWst278J8NA)\n\n# Technology Summary\n\nAs we went over, a Monero transaction has an ambiguous output origin, an unknown amount in a commitment, and an unknown receiver. For every transaction on the network, all of the information stored on the blockchain is obfuscated.\n\n![Picture15.png](https://steemitimages.com/DQmWhbRzL89RsBG6LKMS9tcnFDWx32PqpciBzfijJVNpUcf/Picture15.png)\n\n# Some Other Items\n\nMonero's primary focus is privacy, though there are still several other aspects that make it interesting. I have highlighted some of these below.\n\n**It has an aggressive upgrade schedule**. The community does not shy away from hard forks, having three in 2017 alone. These are necessary to provide the highest level of security and privacy. Monero isn't perfect, though hard forks allow it to get better. RingCT was enabled through a hardfork at the beginning of 2017, for example.\n\n**It has a dynamic block size and dynamic fees**. No Bitcoin block size debate. The number of transactions that can fit into a block will slowly increase if the demand is large enough, and it will decrease again if there is not enough demand. The fees will decrease based on transaction volume.\n\n**It has always-on privacy**. I discussed this earlier, but I really want to emphasize it again. Few other coins that promise privacy can even get 10% of their transactions to use privacy features. With Monero, all of them use it, there is no way to opt out, and thus no transactions look suspicious for using privacy features.\n\n**It has view keys to provide transparency**. With most coins claiming to provide privacy, the feature is either on or off for everyone in the world. With Monero, it's always on for everyone except those you allow to see certain transaction information. No matter what, information on the blockchain is obfuscated. However, you can provide a certain key to someone else so they can understand what is happening.\n\n**It has a critical community**. Many people misinterpret this as harsh. While some users may be, the overwhelming message of most Monero community members has been to think critically of projects. [Every Sunday, Monero users discuss the top criticisms of the coin in /r/Monero](https://www.reddit.com/r/Monero/comments/76iczg/skepticism_sunday_what_concerns_you_about_monero/). The Monero community has a growth mindset, and is always looking for ways to improve.\n\n**It has a world-class research lab**. Several researchers dedicate their time to research projects for Monero. You can learn more about these projects on [the official Monero website](https://getmonero.org/resources/research-lab/).\n\n**It was launched fairly**. There was no premine, instantmine, or ICO. There is no governing corporation or developer tax. Monero stands as a truly community-based entity.\n\n**It has a more accessible mining algorithm**. Bitcoin can only be mined on specialized equipment. Monero's mining algorithm ([CryptoNight](https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/CryptoNight)) is memory-intensive, and the reward of developing specialized equipment is outweighed by the cost of developing it. You can still mine Monero on a CPU and make *some* money. Most people mine on GPUs. This allows even novice miners to meaningfully contribute to the network. There are arguments for and against this type of mining, but I believe it leads to decentralization.\n\n# Conclusion\n\nThat's about it! Thanks for making it all the way down here! If I piqued your interest, you can use the following links to learn more:\n\n[Monero website](https://getmonero.org)\n[Monero subreddit](https://reddit.com/r/Monero)\n[Monero trading subreddit](https://reddit.com/r/xmrtrader)\n[Monero activist subreddit](https://reddit.com/r/MoneroCommunity)\n[Monero Twitter](https://monero.com/monerocurrency)\n[Monero Facebook](https://www.facebook.com/monerocurrency/)\n[Monero Github](https://github.com/monero-project)\n[Monero StackExchange](https://monero.stackexchange.com)\n[A list of Monero communication channels](https://getmonero.org/community/hangouts/)\n[Monero.how](https://monero.how), a community-run site\n\n# About the Author\n\nJustin Ehrenhofer is a junior at the University of Minnesota studying finance and management information systems. He is the co-president of a university cryptocurrency club called [Crypto@UMN](http://cryptoumn.com), with one of the largest active memberships in the world.\n\n[Crypto@UMN](http://cryptoumn.com) has three major focuses: education, advocacy, and community. His passion has been fostering these in the Monero community.\n\nHe studied abroad in Spring and Summer 2017 in Vienna, Austria. During his time in Europe, he traveled extensively, pairing his travels with discussions about Monero. You can see many of these presentations [here](https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLBwW3kFqHdFg72DeOcNQ552W607ATQURq). You can see more about his talks [here](https://forum.getmonero.org/6/ideas/88081/justin-s-local-meetup-talks-proposal-3).\n\nHe moderates the biweekly Monero community meetings, and he has started a new monthly Monero Coffee Chat initiative.\n\n[Justin's Reddit](https://reddit.com/u/SamsungGalaxyPlayer)\n[Justin's Twitter](https://twitter.com/JEhrenhofer)",
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Account Metadata

POSTING JSON METADATA
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Auth Keys

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App Permissions
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No active witness votes.
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