Latest additions

Run Your Own Node Over Tor (Most Private)

in Using Monero in Practice

The gold-standard setup: run your own local node, route its peer traffic over Tor, and point your wallet at localhost — the most private way to use Monero.

Chain-Analysis Claims vs Reality

in How Monero Is Attacked — and Defends

A sober look at Chainalysis and CipherTrace claims, statistical probability vs certainty, and why user OPSEC is usually the real deanonymizer rather than broken cryptography.

Network-Level De-anonymization

in How Monero Is Attacked — and Defends

Linking a transaction to an IP via the node you broadcast to, spy remote nodes, Dandelion++ propagation, and Tor/I2P as the defense — often the weakest link.

Timing & Transaction-Graph Analysis

in How Monero Is Attacked — and Defends

Temporal heuristics, the guess-the-newest guess, merge and change-output heuristics, amount leaks in the transparent era, and the residual statistical risk that remains.

Decoy Selection, Flooding & Poisoned Outputs (EAE)

in How Monero Is Attacked — and Defends

How poor decoy distributions make the real input an outlier, the EAE known-spent flooding attack, and how gamma-based decoy selection and larger rings mitigate.

The Pre-RingCT Traceability Lessons

in How Monero Is Attacked — and Defends

Historical weaknesses when rings were optional or small — zero-decoy cascade deanonymization and transparent amounts — and how mandatory RingCT and enforced decoys fixed them.

The Privacy Adversary Model

in How Monero Is Attacked — and Defends

Who attacks Monero privacy — chain observers, analysis firms, spy nodes, global network observers, KYC exchanges — and their goals, split into on-chain and network-layer adversarie…

How Monero Is Attacked — and Defends

The adversary's perspective on Monero privacy, and the defenses for each attack: the threat model, the pre-RingCT traceability lessons, decoy-flooding and poisoned-output (EAE) att…

Monero, Exchanges & Compliance

in Monero, Records & the Regulatory Landscape

Why some exchanges list Monero and others don't, KYC vs no-KYC venues, and how view keys can enable voluntary transparency where a party chooses it.

How Regulators View Privacy Coins

in Monero, Records & the Regulatory Landscape

A neutral, descriptive overview of the international landscape: delistings in some places, general concepts like the travel rule and frameworks such as MiCA — approaches differ and…

Keeping Your Own Records

in Monero, Records & the Regulatory Landscape

General concepts of personal record-keeping and cost basis at a high level only — with the reminder that what matters legally depends entirely on your country.

Proving Payments with View Keys & Proofs

in Monero, Records & the Regulatory Landscape

How a private view key exposes incoming transactions read-only, and how payment proofs let you prove a specific payment for records or disputes.

Privacy with Selective Transparency

in Monero, Records & the Regulatory Landscape

How Monero is private by default yet the owner can choose to reveal specific information — privacy is not the same as being unable to prove anything.

Monero, Records & the Regulatory Landscape

An educational, international overview — not tax or legal advice. How Monero combines privacy with owner-controlled transparency (view keys and payment proofs), the idea of keeping…

Avoiding Common Mistakes

in Troubleshooting & Common Mistakes

A consolidated checklist: verify the address, test small, back up first, set the restore height, keep a refund address, and beware scams.

Swap & Exchange Problems

in Troubleshooting & Common Mistakes

Sending below the minimum, missing refund addresses, floating-rate surprises, stuck deposits and 'surprise KYC' — and how to resolve them.

I Sent to the Wrong Address or Amount

in Troubleshooting & Common Mistakes

Why Monero is irreversible, wrong-address cases, exchange deposits and payment IDs, and using payment proofs — with honest expectations.

Locked vs Unlocked Balance

in Troubleshooting & Common Mistakes

The 10-block unlock on received outputs, balance vs unlocked balance, change outputs, and the longer lock on mined coins.

I Restored My Wallet but the Balance Is Zero

in Troubleshooting & Common Mistakes

The classic restore-height mistake that skips your funds, how to rescan from an earlier height, and confirming your primary address.

My Wallet Won't Sync

in Troubleshooting & Common Mistakes

How syncing works, remote node vs your own node, common connection and 'daemon busy' issues, and how to fix a slow or stalled sync.

My Transaction Is Pending or Stuck

in Troubleshooting & Common Mistakes

What 'pending' really means, the mempool, block time and the 10-block lock, fees and priority, and why a broadcast Monero tx isn't 'lost'.

Troubleshooting & Common Mistakes

The problems people actually hit — a pending transaction, a wallet that won't sync, a zero balance after restoring, locked funds, sending to the wrong place, and swap issues — plus…

Spending Monero Privately & Safely

in Spending Monero in the Real World

Preserving privacy when you spend — address reuse, checkout and shipping leaks, payment proofs for disputes, and avoiding scams.

Everyday Spending: VPNs, Hosting, Travel & Subscriptions

in Spending Monero in the Real World

Categories where XMR is well supported, handling recurring payments, and keeping a separate spending wallet.

Paying Bitcoin (or Other) Merchants with Monero

in Spending Monero in the Real World

Using instant or atomic swaps to convert XMR at the moment of payment so you can pay a merchant that doesn't accept Monero.

Gift Cards & Prepaid Cards with Monero

in Spending Monero in the Real World

Buying retailer gift cards and prepaid/debit cards with XMR to spend almost anywhere — with the fee, KYC and privacy trade-offs.

Finding Places That Accept Monero

in Spending Monero in the Real World

Using directories like Monerica and community lists, vetting a merchant, and the categories of goods and services commonly available for XMR.

Ways to Spend Monero

in Spending Monero in the Real World

The three main paths: pay XMR-accepting merchants directly, buy gift/prepaid cards, or swap to another coin to pay non-XMR merchants.

Spending Monero in the Real World

How to actually use your Monero day to day: paying merchants that accept XMR, finding places to spend, gift cards and prepaid cards, swapping to pay Bitcoin-only merchants, everyda…

Refunds, Records & Day-to-Day Operations

in Accepting Monero as a Business

Handling refunds without chargebacks, reconciliation and record-keeping, payment proofs for disputes, and operational security.

Converting Monero & Managing Cash Flow

in Accepting Monero as a Business

Turning XMR into fiat or other assets via exchanges or no-KYC swaps, treasury strategy, payout timing and hot/cold separation.

Accepting Monero in an Online Store

in Accepting Monero as a Business

The payment-processor pattern: BTCPay, a fresh subaddress per invoice, a watch-only wallet, e-commerce plugins and confirmation handling.

Point of Sale & In-Person Payments

in Accepting Monero as a Business

A fresh subaddress and QR per sale, confirmations vs zero-conf risk, the 10-block lock, receipts, and POS apps and appliances.

Pricing in Monero & Handling Volatility

in Accepting Monero as a Business

Pricing in fiat and converting at checkout vs pricing in XMR, live rate feeds and quote windows, and strategies to manage volatility.

Why a Business Would Accept Monero

in Accepting Monero as a Business

Irreversible settlement, low predictable fees, no intermediary freezes, global reach and customer privacy — plus the honest trade-offs.

Accepting Monero as a Business

The merchant's side of the circular economy: why a business would accept XMR, how to price and handle volatility, in-person and online payment setups, converting and managing cash …

Same Tools, Different Trade-offs

in The Math of Monero: Cryptography Across Blockchains

Bitcoin, Ethereum, Zcash and Monero side by side: the shared foundation, the Zcash-vs-Monero assumption trade-off, why mandatory privacy matters, and the FCMP++ roadmap.

Monero's Math II: Hiding Amounts

in The Math of Monero: Cryptography Across Blockchains

Pedersen commitments C = xG + aH, the homomorphic balance check, the overflow loophole, and how Bulletproofs+ prove amounts in range with no trusted setup.

Monero's Math I: Hiding Sender & Receiver

in The Math of Monero: Cryptography Across Blockchains

Stealth addresses via ECDH (P = Hs(rA)G + B), ring signatures that hide which key signed, and key images I = x·Hp(P) that stop double-spends without naming the output.

Where the Math Diverges: Transparent vs Private

in The Math of Monero: Cryptography Across Blockchains

What a transparent transaction reveals, why pseudonymity isn't privacy, the three things a private chain must hide, and the two schools that solve it.

Digital Signatures: ECDSA, Schnorr & EdDSA

in The Math of Monero: Cryptography Across Blockchains

How all blockchain signatures descend from Schnorr, why ECDSA names the spender, and how Monero generalizes one signature into a privacy-preserving ring.

Elliptic Curves: One Idea, Different Curves

in The Math of Monero: Cryptography Across Blockchains

Why Bitcoin and Ethereum use secp256k1, Monero uses Ed25519, and Zcash adds pairing curves — and how the curve choice follows from each chain's goals.

Hash Functions: The Common Workhorse

in The Math of Monero: Cryptography Across Blockchains

SHA-256 vs Keccak across Bitcoin, Ethereum and Monero, the hash-to-scalar and hash-to-point maps Monero adds, and how hashing becomes commitment.

The Shared Math Under Every Blockchain

in The Math of Monero: Cryptography Across Blockchains

The four ideas every cryptocurrency is built from — finite fields, groups and the discrete-log problem, one-way hashes, and signatures — and why Monero invents almost no new math.

The Math of Monero: Cryptography Across Blockchains

The mathematics every cryptocurrency shares — finite fields, elliptic curves, the discrete-log problem, hashes and signatures — and exactly where Monero re-points that same toolkit…

What Gives Monero Value?

in What Is Monero?

Why Monero is worth anything: utility, scarcity and trust — private fungible cash, sound issuance, decentralization, network effect and censorship resistance, and the honest differ…

Building on Monero: Developer Integrations

For developers: build your own Monero integration — a wallet, a BTCPay-style payment processor, or an instant-swap exchange — using monerod, the daemon RPC, monero-wallet-rpc, acco…

Monero Protocol Engineering: For Contributors

The level a Monero core or research contributor is expected to know. Implementation-grade detail: the Ed25519 cofactor-8 pitfalls and point validation, decoy selection and the outp…

Monero Internals: Cryptography & Protocol Deep Dive

For people who find the rest too easy. The real math and machinery: the Ed25519 group and key derivation, stealth-address ECDH, CLSAG ring signatures and key images, RingCT with Pe…

Swapping Monero

Everything you need to convert other crypto into Monero (and back) without an account: how swaps work, doing one step by step, picking a trustworthy service, and understanding rate…