Layer 1 blockchain
Monero ticker XMR
Summary
RandomX proof of work with a two-minute block target and a dynamic block size. Privacy is mandatory for transfers: there is no transparent transaction type to send by mistake. Ring signatures obscure the real spent output among 16 ring members (15 decoys) rather than hiding it outright, key images let nodes reject double spends without revealing which ring member was spent, RingCT hides amounts, and one-time destination keys keep the recipient's published address off the chain. 23451011
Design
- System
- Layer 1 blockchain
- Settlement family
- Its own design
- Scarce resource
- Work (proof of work)
- State model
- Other
- Finality
- Probabilistic
- Who makes blocks
- Miners propose blocks by RandomX proof of work, solo or through pools including the decentralized P2Pool.
- Fork choice
- Nodes follow the valid chain with the greatest cumulative difficulty (total work) and reorganize when an alternative chain overtakes it. The node software rejects alternative chains that fork below its latest checkpoint; DNS checkpoints published by MoneroPulse operators only log a warning unless the node operator turns on enforcement. Small reorganizations still occur; the operator guide recommends at least ten confirmations before shipping valuable goods, which is policy, not finality.
Qualifications
- State model · Partial. Output-based, but not a transparent UTXO set: one-time output keys, ring members and key images hide which outputs belong to or are spent by whom. Not an account model either.
- Block explorer visibility · Partial. Explorers show blocks, fees, structure and key images, but not sender, recipient addresses, RingCT amounts or any address balance; a zero amount field is a placeholder, not zero XMR.
- Settlement family · Partial. Monero's node software is monerod, with RandomX proof of work and mandatory private transfers built from ring signatures, key images, RingCT and one-time destination keys, so its settlement family is recorded as other.
Tradeoffs
- Emphasizes
- Decentralization and Security
- Gives up
- Base-layer throughput and simple auditability: two-minute blocks, private transactions that carry extra cryptographic data, and wallets that must scan the chain to find their own outputs.Privacy is a separate design goal, not a trilemma corner. It is not perfect anonymity: network metadata, remote-node trust and wallet behavior can still leak information.
- Full node at home
- Practical at home 23Monero docs list about 250 GiB for a full node and about 100 GiB pruned (as of 2026-01-20). Pruning saves about two-thirds of disk space and still relays new transactions and blocks, but a pruned node gives less help to new nodes that are syncing.
- Throughput claims
- No classified figure recorded
Scaling layers
- PayMo (academic payment channel design) · Payment channels, research 22
Research design that claims to work with current Monero without a fork. It replaces the missing scripts and timelocks with verifiable timed ring signatures that stay hidden for a set time, and channel transactions look like ordinary Monero transactions. No deployed software, audit or production use was found; its performance figures are lab results and are not carried here. - MoNet (academic payment channel network) · Payment channels, research 23
Research design with a proof-of-concept implementation that claims to work with current Monero without a fork, using consecutive adaptor signatures in place of scripts. No deployment, audit or production use was found; its throughput comparison is a lab result and is not carried here.
Capabilities
| Capability | How it is provided | Notes and sources |
|---|---|---|
| Account abstraction | Structured assessment pending | Not yet assessed for any chain. |
| Atomic swaps | Independent softwareLimited scope | Independent software, limited: eigenwallet (formerly UnstoppableSwap) runs XMR-BTC atomic swaps; no first-party implementation is cited. Because Monero has no scripting, the protocol puts both timelocks on Bitcoin and uses adaptor signatures so that redeeming the Bitcoin reveals the Monero key. Limits: it swaps only with Bitcoin, and if a swap stalls, a cancel transaction becomes valid after about 4 hours and opens a refund window of about 24 hours; the taker's app must run in that window, or the maker can take the Bitcoin with a punish transaction. 6141516 |
| Authenticated data publication | Unknown | Not yet assessed under this row's current definition. |
| Light clients | Unknown | Not yet assessed under the current definitions; light use relies on remote nodes, whose operators see caller metadata and can return stale or dishonest data, which is not light verification. The earlier review did not verify that no light-verification client exists. 34 |
| Native staking or delegation | Structured assessment pending | Not yet assessed for any chain. |
| On-chain governance | Structured assessment pending | Not yet assessed for any chain. |
| Parallel execution | Structured assessment pending | Not yet assessed for any chain. |
| Payment or state channels | Unknown | The earlier note said absence was not verified, so the rule that absence needs a source makes this unknown. Earlier finding: no deployed channel layer was found. Two academic payment channel designs, PayMo and MoNet, claim to work with current Monero without a fork; they are listed as research-stage scaling options and neither is known to be in production use. 2223 |
| Programmable spending | None found Earlier definition | Monero has no scripting language or contract state. Spend-related features are limited to wallet-level M-of-N multisig, which is marked experimental, needs participants to exchange coordination data and looks like an ordinary transaction on chain (the docs warn that bugs or a malicious member can lock or steal funds), and custom transaction unlock times, which nodes already refuse to relay and which the planned FCMP++ upgrade deprecates. 151718 |
| Protocol-verified messaging | Structured assessment pending | Not yet assessed for any chain. |
| Reversible transfers or recovery | Unknown | Not yet assessed under this row's current definition. |
| Rollups | Unknown | No source was cited for absence, so the rule that absence needs a source makes this unknown. Earlier finding: no rollup anchored to Monero was found in reviewed sources; absence was not exhaustively verified. |
| Shielded transfers | Structured assessment pending | Not yet assessed for any chain. |
| Signed partial offers | Unknown | Not yet assessed under this row's current definition. |
Reading these values
- How this feature is provided
- Built into the protocol, core-team software or independent software says where a feature lives and who can change it. These are implementation layers, not quality: core-team software is not closer to the protocol than independent software.
- Structured assessment pending
- The shared review has not assessed this feature for any chain yet (Account abstraction, Native staking or delegation, On-chain governance, Parallel execution, Protocol-verified messaging and Shielded transfers). That does not mean it is absent, and a chain’s profile may already describe it.
- Unknown
- The review has not established this for this chain under the current definition; the note beside it says why. Unknown is not absent and not a low score. A feature reads “Not present” only when a source shows it is absent.
- Earlier definition
- Payment or state channels, Programmable spending and Rollups keep the earlier definition until the next fact-check. There, “Native” does not separate the protocol from core-team software, “Ecosystem software” does not say who publishes it, and “Partial” does not say which layer.
- Reading across rows
- The list of capabilities is incomplete. Do not read these rows as a chain leading or lagging overall.
Ecosystem & custody
| Product type | Status | Notes and sources |
|---|---|---|
| Automated market makers | UnknownTHORChain (announced beta), Serai (pre-mainnet) | Monero has no contract layer, so any automated market maker for native XMR runs on another network. THORChain announced Monero pools as an openly labelled beta; its own posts through 2026-07-30 describe the launch as upcoming, and a live XMR pool could not be confirmed from a THORChain primary source as of 2026-09-27. Serai, a cross-chain exchange with automated market makers that includes XMR, has not launched its mainnet. Risk: Cross-chain pools hold native XMR in a vault controlled by the other network's validators; THORChain plans a dedicated vault signed by its active validators with threshold signatures, calls Monero its most complex chain integration and advises starting with small amounts. 192021 |
| Issuer-native stablecoins | Unknown | No source was cited for absence, so the rule that absence needs a source makes this unknown. Earlier finding: Monero exposes no native token registry, so no native stablecoin exists in reviewed sources. |
| Algorithmic stablecoins | Unknown | No source was cited for absence, so the rule that absence needs a source makes this unknown. Earlier finding: none identified in reviewed sources; absence was not exhaustively verified. |
| Bridges | Unknown | No bridge or wrapped XMR was verified. NEAR Intents' list of bridged chains and THORChain's list of supported UTXO chains did not include Monero at review; THORChain's Monero pools were announced (see the automated market maker entry) but not confirmed live from a THORChain source. Wrapped XMR tokens on other chains were not searched. Atomic swaps are described separately in this profile and are not wrapped-asset bridges. 202425 |
| Block explorers | Established in the ecosystemxmrchain.net | Shows blocks, transactions, key images and output keys; by design it cannot show who paid whom, RingCT amounts or address balances. 47 |
| Hardware wallets | Established in the ecosystemLedger, Trezor | See the Ledger and Trezor custody details: both vendors support XMR only through community wallets, not their own wallet apps. 89 |
Hardware-wallet custody
| Device maker | Status | What users can and cannot do |
|---|---|---|
| Ledger | Through an intermediaryMonero GUI Wallet or Monero CLI walletSame as native: No | Can: Keep the private spend key on the Ledger device and approve each transaction's fee, amount and destination on the device, using the Monero GUI Wallet or Monero CLI wallet Cannot: Manage XMR in Ledger Wallet (formerly Ledger Live) Cannot: Get fast wallet scanning without exporting the private view key to the computer; if that computer is compromised, an attacker could learn the key and see incoming payments. Declining keeps it on the device, but scanning is much slower.Signing happens on the device, but the account is run from community wallet software rather than the vendor app, and the privacy of incoming payments depends on whether the view key is exported. 81213 |
| Trezor | Through an intermediaryMonero CLI/GUI, Cake or FeatherSame as native: No | Can: Use XMR on Trezor Safe 3, Safe 5 and Safe 7 paired with a supported third-party wallet Cannot: Manage XMR in Trezor Suite 9 |
Public data
Your AI can request these lookups through the connection. The website itself runs no lookups. Networks: mainnet, stagenet, testnet.
| Lookup | Status | What it covers and its limits |
|---|---|---|
| Address or account | Not applicable on this network | A public Monero address is not a transparent account and cannot expose holdings or complete activity. |
| Tokens and assets | Not applicable on this network | Monero L1 has no public token/NFT inventory and its public addresses do not expose XMR holdings. |
| NFTs | Not available yet | Not implemented in this build |
| Transactions | Available | One mainnet transaction hash from one fixed restricted node; selected public status, block, structure and fee evidence only. |
Sourced developments
Developments: Review overdue Reviewed Sep 26, 2026; next review was due Oct 6, 2026, 07:35 UTC.
Publication date · newest first
-
Monero GUI v0.18.5.2 released
The official GUI wallet release fixed wallet generation during first use, warned when adjusting KDF rounds, fixed precision loss in large payment requests and created wallets in memory in the setup wizard. It is an ecosystem-project wallet release, not a consensus change.
- Stage:Stable release
- Activation:Not claimed
Source: Monero community — Monero GUI 0.18.5.2 'Fluorine Fermi' released (external site)
-
Monero v0.18.5.1 released
The recommended core software point release contains bug fixes, restricted-mode privacy filtering, wallet hardening against malicious remote nodes and RandomX v1.2.2. This is software-release evidence, not evidence of a new consensus-rule activation.
- Stage:Stable release
- Activation:Not claimed
Sources: Monero community — Monero 0.18.5.1 'Fluorine Fermi' released (external site) · The Monero Project contributors — Monero v0.18.5.1 release (external site)
-
Monero v0.18.5.0 released
The recommended reference-client release added SOCKS v5 support to the daemon and wallet, removed daemon UPnP support, restricted sensitive ZMQ and wallet-RPC methods, and included bug fixes. This is client-release evidence, not a consensus activation claim.
- Stage:Stable release
- Activation:Not claimed
Sources: Monero community — Monero 0.18.5.0 'Fluorine Fermi' released (external site) · The Monero Project contributors — Monero v0.18.5.0 release (external site)
-
Custom transaction unlock time deprecation announced
The project announced that custom transaction unlock time was planned for consensus deprecation with a future FCMP++ fork; the post said no fork date was set. A relay rule already prevented those transactions from entering ordinary node mempools, but that operational rule is not proof that the planned consensus deprecation had activated.
- Stage:Proposal
- Activation:Not activated
Source: Monero community — Deprecating Monero's Custom Transaction Unlock Time (external site)
-
Monero v0.18.4.6 released
The reference-client bugfix release fixed daemon peer-list filtering, P2P connection issues and a trusted-multisig key-exchange failure. It is software-release evidence and does not establish a new consensus-rule activation.
- Stage:Stable release
- Activation:Not claimed
Sources: Monero community — Monero 0.18.4.6 'Fluorine Fermi' released (external site) · The Monero Project contributors — Monero v0.18.4.6 release (external site)
Publication date unknown
-
FCMP++ milestone remains implementation work
The FCMP++ hard-fork milestone was open, 71% complete, had no due date, and included draft or in-progress integration items when reviewed. This is implementation-progress evidence, not stable-release or mainnet-activation evidence.
- Stage:Implementation
- Activation:Not activated
Source: The Monero Project contributors — FCMP++ hard-fork milestone (external site)
-
Research Lab discussed FCMP++ and wallet dependencies
The August 19 Research Lab meeting recorded ongoing FCMP++/Carrot work, audit planning and wallet dependencies. Meeting discussion establishes current technical work, not merged code, release readiness or activation.
- Stage:Research
- Activation:Not activated
Source: Monero Research Lab participants — Monero Research Lab meeting, 19 August 2026 (external site)
Topics your AI can explain
Your AI can explain these topics for Monero through the connection, with sources.
Known gaps
What this profile's review did not establish:
- No throughput figure is listed; no primary-source rate was classified.
- No deployed payment channel or rollup layer was found; only the research-stage PayMo and MoNet designs were identified, and absence of other projects was not exhaustively verified.
- Wrapped XMR tokens on other chains were not searched; only NEAR Intents' and THORChain's supported-chain lists were checked for bridges.
- THORChain's Monero pools could not be confirmed live on mainnet from a THORChain primary source as of 2026-09-27: its own posts through 2026-07-30 describe an upcoming beta, while secondary press reports an August 2026 rollout. The automated market maker row stays unknown until a primary source confirms a live pool.
- Home-node RAM and bandwidth figures were not found in reviewed Monero docs.
- Ledger support articles (including any Feather Wallet path) could not be fetched. The GUI path comes from Ledger's coin page; the CLI path and view-key export behavior come from Ledger's app guide and a Monero Project guide, both written for 2018-era wallet versions.
- Whether Trezor's Monero integration exports the private view key to the host wallet was not verified.
- FCMP++ remains an open milestone and is not active (the latest releases reviewed are the 0.18.5 series from July 2026); when it activates, update the ring-size wording, the unlock-time note and the rest of this profile.
Sources
Oldest dated source check: Source checked Sep 27, 2026 Next check due Oct 27, 2026.
- Monero Documentation (external site)
- Monero technical specifications (external site)
- monerod reference (external site)
- monerod daemon RPC documentation (external site)
- Monero P2Pool (external site)
- eigenwallet core (external site)
- xmrchain.net Monero explorer (external site)
- Monero wallet for desktop and mobile (external site)
- Monero (XMR) on Trezor (external site)
- FAQ (external site)
- monerod blockchain.cpp (alternative-chain and reorganization logic) (external site)
- Monero application for Ledger devices: user guide (external site)
- How to use a Ledger wallet on Monero CLI (external site)
- Atomic Swap protocol explained (external site)
- Monero-Bitcoin Atomic Swap (external site)
- Bitcoin-Monero Cross-chain Atomic Swap (external site)
- Multisignature (external site)
- Deprecating Monero's Custom Transaction Unlock Time (external site)
- $XMR Is Coming: Monero on THORChain in 1-2 Months (external site)
- Monero Gets a Soft Launch as THORChain's v3.20 Enters Testing and ADR31 Passes (external site)
- Serai Documentation (external site)
- PayMo: Payment Channels For Monero (external site)
- MoNet: A Fast Payment Channel Network for Scriptless Cryptocurrency Monero (external site)
- Bridging overview (external site)
- UTXO chain clients (external site)
Report an error
Found something wrong or out of date? Reporting is free, and every chain goes through the same process. Published corrections appear in the public log.
Funding disclosure
Funding disclosures appear here when an upkeep arrangement exists, in the form “Upkeep funded by [name]; verdicts unaffected.” The funder ledger has not been published yet. Neutrality & funding