Cryptocurrency

What is Monero?

Also known as: XMR
Definition

Monero is a cryptocurrency that hides sender, receiver and amount at the protocol level using ring signatures, stealth addresses and RingCT. Unlike Bitcoin there is no public balance or transaction graph to analyse, which makes it the default recommendation for privacy-motivated purchases.

Why Monero matters

Unlike Bitcoin there is no public balance or transaction graph to analyse, which makes it the default recommendation for privacy-motivated purchases.

Monero in practice

On a server, Monero matters when you accept XMR for what you sell. You run a wallet daemon, watch for incoming transfers, and confirm them on-chain before provisioning. You pay attention to the sync height: acting on a transaction before enough confirmations means you eat the chargeback risk. You also handle the daemon's resource use, and you price in the privacy your customer bought. Getting it wrong means you ship goods on a transaction that never finalises, and you carry the loss.

What people get wrong about Monero

The common error is treating Monero as a faster or more anonymous Bitcoin rather than a privacy tool with its own economics. People expect a public ledger to audit, or they assume hidden balances mean free anonymous transfers. Correction: it is a proof-of-work coin whose value is its unlinkability, and you still wait for confirmations because the chain reorganises like any other.

Monero — common questions

How do I accept Monero on my server?

Run a Monero daemon and wallet, then generate a subaddress for each payment. Watch the daemon for the transaction, wait for a few confirmations to avoid reorg risk, then mark the order paid. OnionVPS's root access lets you install and run the daemon, and your IP is masked at no cost.

What are the risks of Monero payments?

The main risk is accepting a payment and then a chain reorganisation or double-spend leaves you short. You mitigate this by waiting for a handful of confirmations before acting. The daemon also needs disk and memory, and a misconfigured wallet can lose keys, so keep backups.

More from cryptocurrency

Ring signature
A ring signature proves that one member of a group signed a message without revealing which one.
Stealth address
A stealth address is a one-time destination address generated for each payment so that transactions to the same recipient cannot be linked.
RingCT
RingCT conceals transaction amounts on the Monero blockchain while still allowing the network to verify that inputs equal outputs.
Stablecoin
A stablecoin is a token pegged to a fiat currency, typically the US dollar, and backed by reserves held by an issuer.
TRC-20
TRC-20 is the token standard on the TRON blockchain, most commonly used for USDT.
Confirmation
A confirmation is a block added to the chain after the block containing a transaction, each making reversal exponentially harder.
Atomic swap
An atomic swap exchanges two cryptocurrencies directly between wallets, with cryptography guaranteeing that either both sides complete or neither does.