Report on MONERO XMR

Overview – Monero XMR

• Project Founded: Monero was founded in April 2014
• ICO (mm/yy): - No ICO for monero, ICO is a new concept monero was founded before it.
• Circulating Supply: 14,609,405 XMR
• Number of Wallets on the network: There is supposed to be only 1 wallet, excluding Exchange & Third party wallets.
• Total Supply Once Mined: 18.132 Million coins by ca. end of May 2022

Links
• Website: https://getmonero.org/home

• Github: https://github.com/monero-project/monero

• Twitter: https://twitter.com/monerocurrency?lang=en

• Web Forum / Slack Channel: https://forum.getmonero.org/ / There is no direct link for slack. You can request invite links on bitcointalk forum or https://monero.slack.com/

• Reddit: https://www.reddit.com/r/Monero/

• Whitepaper: https://downloads.getmonero.org/whitepaper_annotated.pdf

Ratings (out of 5)

Team:
• Riccardo "fluffypony" Spagni ([email protected] / @fluffyponyza),
• Francisco "ArticMine" Cabañas ([email protected]),
• smooth ([email protected]),
• othe ([email protected]),
• luigi1111 ([email protected]),
• tacotime ([email protected]),
• NoodleDoodle ([email protected])

Market:

• Market Cap -$ 826,091,580 | 285,157 BTC , Volume - $ 15,499,900 | 5,350 BTC

Adoption

Exchanges
• #monero-otc (OTC)
• Bitsquare (decentralized)
• BitMEX
• Bittrex
• Bter
• CoinCut (OTC)
• Cryptopia
• Livecoin (BTC and USD trading pairs)
• LiteBit (Bankwire/GiroPay/iDeal/SOFORT)
• MoneroDirect (Euro only)
• Poloniex
• ShapeShift (Instant)
• Tux Exchange
• Bitfinex (XMRUSD, XMRBTC)
• Alfacashier
• Kraken (XMRUSD, XMREUR, XMRBTC)
• BIT.AC
• Premium investment and exchange services

Block Explorers
• ChainRadar
• MoneroBlocks
• MoneroExplorer
• MoneroHash Explorer
• xmrchain.net
Payment Gateways
• Living Room of Satoshi
• Monero Merchants
• Paybee (Private Beta)
Tools
• nestorgames
• ForkGuard Network Monitoring
• MoneroBase Price Charts and Tools
• MoneroPric.es Price Converter
• MoneroPrice.com Price Converter
• Offline Monero address generator
• Monero Monitor for Chrome
Services
• Azur Samui - Luxury Apartment and Villa Development, Koh, Samui, Thailand
• California Fintech Network
• Infield Loan Services - Atlanta, Construction Consulting, Contract review, Feasibility, Funds Escrow
• Cryptostorm VPN
• Esperanto lessons from Kaja
• Farmer ALP, LLC, Arizona
• Guitar Music Theory course w/ 30% XMR discount
• MyMonero Web-based Wallet
• Pradeep Atluri, Psychiatrist, New York
• Simple, no non-sense hosting
• Web Developer - Stefanos
• XMR.to Monero to Bitcoin Payment Service
• algoStrategic - Internet Marketing and Web Development
• Emmanuel Galang, Canada Immigration and Refugee Lawyer
• Web Developer - Python with Django web framework
Goods
• CryptoMercado - coffee and snacks
• Cryptonic Physical Monero & Bitcoin coins
• Fine Art from Jeanine King ~ Artwork of Home/Archtecture, Pets, Potraits, Caricatures ~ International Shipping
• Digital gift cards
• Mushroom cultures, mushroom growing supplies, seeds
• Handcrafted goods
• Cellphone and laptop repair online store in Sweden
Entertainment
• Crypto Kingdom
• MoneroDice
• SafeDice
• Crypto Games

Darknet Markets
It is difficult to know all darknet sites as they are hidden services in tor but some known sites are Alphabay, Oasis, Silkroad
Valuation:

• The value of Monero for today is $56.55617077. It has a current circulating supply of 14.6 Million coins and a total volume exchanged of $14,253,655.7

Liquidity:

• Whaleclub,
• Bitmex,
• Livecoin,
• Kraken,
• Poloniex,
• Bittfinex
• Official Site exchange list, link - http://monero.org/services/exchange/
• Liquidity is good as it is accepted in major exchanges

Project Goals & Overview

• What is the overall goal of this company and the blockchain?

• The overall goal of monero is to create a secure, private, untraceable currency. The company allows users to be their own banks and control their funds as the user desires.
• The three pillars of Monero are privacy, decentralization and scalability.
• Anyone can use monero without downloading it by using web interface. The blockchain is dynamic in size there is no limit to blockchain size unlike bitcoin which has 1mb block limit.
• There is a penalty inside the algorithm which checks excessive block size limit.
• The new block's size (NBS) is compared to the median size M100 of the last 100 blocks. If NBS>M100, the block reward gets reduced in quadratic dependency of how much NBS exceeds M100. E.g. if NBS is [10%, 50%, 80%, 100%] greater than M100, the nominal block reward gets reduced by [1%, 25%, 64%, 100%]. Generally, blocks greater than 2M100 are not allowed, and blocks <= 60kB are always free of any block reward penalties.
• Release 0.10.1 added a dynamic fee system using the formula Fee=(R/R0)(M0/M)*F0.As usage of Monero increases, the per-transaction fees will decrease while the total transaction fees will increase.

High level technical overview

Monero is a open source project by group of 7 core members. The main technical features of monero are:-

• Untraceable
• Dynamic block size limit
• Fungible
• 2 key authentication which allows user to stay anonymous or non-anonymous

Link to monero technical goals & chievements

• https://getmonero.org/design-goals/
• https://getmonero.org/knowledge-base/moneropedia/

Team & Community

• Who are the main founders & executives of the company? What are their backgrounds? Are they full-time?
  The Monero Core Team
  Monero is not governed by any foundation or central body, but ongoing development, maintenance, and research is primarily directed and often funded by a core team of seven individuals.
  Five members of the Core Team prefer to stay pseudonymous at this time, but two of them are more public and have revealed their real identities. For ease of reference those two members (Riccardo and Francisco) are at the top of the list below, but beyond that the list is presented in no particular order:
  • Riccardo "fluffypony" Spagni ([email protected] / @fluffyponyza): Based out of South Africa, Riccardo brings a strong business acumen and a deep understanding of cryptocurrency, software development, and cryptography to the table. He has been involved with cryptocurrency-related projects since 2012.

• Francisco "ArticMine" Cabañas ([email protected]): Based in Canada, Francisco holds a PhD in Physics and brings extensive business and non-profit experience to the table. He has actively researched and invested in cryptocurrencies, since 2011, and focuses on the economic, social, regulatory and long-term viability aspects of cryptocurrencies.

smooth ([email protected]): A software developer, entrepreneur, and investor, smooth has been involved in several cryptocurrency projects since 2011, including development of the first multicurrency exchange (initially supporting Bitcoin and Namecoin). By virtue of his long-standing involvement in the cryptocurrency community, he is well known and trusted by many.

• othe ([email protected]): Based in Germany, othe has been interested in cryptocurrency since early 2011. Currently he works as an independent consultant for various cryptocurrency-related businesses. He is known for his previous work as a core Vertcoin developer.

• luigi1111 ([email protected]): Hailing from the Midwest, USA, luigi1111 is a sysadmin by day. He has been actively involved in several cryptocurrencies since 2013, and loves cryptography, probability, and English grammar.
•
• tacotime ([email protected]): A bioinformatics enthusiast and software developer from Toronto, tacotime has been involved in cryptocurrency since 2011. He is well known for his work on MC2, a hybrid PoS/PoW cryptocurrency, and his contributions to various Conformal projects such as btcd.

• NoodleDoodle ([email protected]): A former Silicon Valley engineer, NoodleDoodle is a seasoned hardware and software developer. He started his involvement with cryptocurrencies in 2012 and currently spends his time working on "cool aerospace stuff" for a university.
How big is the greater development community? # of developers that have contributed to code?
Contributors
Main contributors from GITHUB – link below
https://github.com/monero-project/monero/graphs/contributors
The Monero Research Lab
The Core Team forms an integral part of the Monero Research Lab, but the researchers, scientists, and academics that are primarily focused on Monero research are listed below. They have chosen to remain pseudonymous for the moment. They are:
• Surae Noether: Lead researcher for the Monero Research Lab, Surae holds a PhD in Mathematical Sciences and brings a rich understanding of cryptography and homological algebra to the mix.
• Sarang Noether: Having completed his Masters in Mathematical Sciences, Sarang is currently completing his doctoral degree in Physics, while devoting time on the side to the advancement of Monero research.
• Shen Noether (previously) A graduate student focused on algebraic geometry.
• Other Contributors
• There have been massive contributions to Monero from its inception from so many people, including: zone117x, LucasJones, wolf`, Professor David Andersen, wallet42, Neozaru, Gingeropolous, cAPSLOCK, and many, many others.

• Has the company raised any equity funding from venture capital firms? If so, when did they raise it?

The information on raising capital cannot be found so the safe assumption can be that the venture did not raise capital or did ICO. The price of monero is fairly non-volatile.

Market & Competitive Landscape

• How big is the market that the team is going after?

• The team wants to make 18.132 Million coins by ca. end of May 2022

• What other block chain companies are going after the same area?

• Zcash is also targeting the fungibility concept. Zcash is adopted by JPMorgan & Chase.
• Link -https://www.forbes.com/sites/laurashin/2017/05/22/jpmorgan-chase-to-integrate-zcash-technology-to-its-enterprise-blockchain-platform/#44bcf8167a33

Does this company have any advantages or disadvantages over the blockchain companies?

• Advantage is that monero is fungible ie. All coins are treated fairely and equal. The block size is dynamic so processing or hashing power required is dynamic. Monero has a web interface and also has a 2 keys so a user can select from being anonymous or un-ananomous for a transaction.

• What are incumbent companies currently in the space (non-crypto)?
  • Data not available

Does this company have any advantages or disadvantages over these incumbents?
• Data not Available

• What is the major advantage of doing this as a blockchain company?
  • Data not available
  • Enterprise / Consumer Blockchain Adoption

• What applications have been built on top of this application so far?

• Jax is an application that was being developed, but the team has halted the project because monero was lacking API support.
• Mobile wallet applications on ios & android are being developed by open source method. Link -https://forum.getmonero.org/6/ideas/87026/open-source-monero-mobile-wallet-for-android-and-ios

• Which enterprises are building tools on top of the application or are currently piloting the tech?
  • No Data Found

• Are there any consumer applications for this technology that have been launched or are in
  development?

• Mainly adopted in dark-net sites – alphabay, oasis market

Major events on the timeline / horizon

• Anything coming up in regards to project launches, forks, features, new exchange listings?

• Project releases can be read here - https://github.com/monero-project/monero/releases
• Hard forks are scheduled to happen about every 6 months in Monero.

Valuation

• Given the company’s progress how does the valuation compare to other blockchain tokens it is around?
  • Valuation of monero is good as it is adopted in alphabay. Alphabay has a very high traffic; some say it is more than amazon. Because monero is being used their and the value of cryptocurrency is directly proportional to the number of users, monero is doing good. Monero gives you the option to stay anonymous or non-anonymous ny its 2 keys so the valuation of monero is good.

Risks

• What are the major risks associated with this blockchain?
  • Dynamic Block Size
  • Hard forks scheduled every 6 months

• Company going under? Involvement from founders?

• No Information found. Monero developers are pseudonymous.

• Biggest roadblocks for the company?

• Users are usually confused as their technology is difficult to understand. The web interface is only there. Company lacks good API support. GUI interface is not perfect.

• How much money does the company have left in the bank?
  • No data availabl
  Recommended Resources for Additional Information

• Any recommended reading, blog posts, articles, or research papers

• Research Paper - https://lab.getmonero.org/
• Core tech insight - https://cryptonote.org/

Analyst Summary

• Analyze information from above sections to determine whether the project is exciting, viable, and worth investing in.

Monero is an innovative crypto currency that solves privacy and fungibility issues that persist in the dominant crypto currency, Bitcoin. It solves them by automatically mixing transactions with previous transactions and does this by implementing ring signatures.
Users typically hold two key pairs for each public key address, a spend key and a view key so that traceability is available if required by an auditor and without giving control of the funds that is unlocked by spending key.
The project is very exciting. The developers are trying to solve major crypto currency issues such as forking, fungibility, block size problems, and users can be anonymous and non-anonymous as well. One of the many cool features of Monero is that it supplies the user with a view key. The view key can be used to de-anonymous the account associated with that view key. The accounts which need to be audited and kept public can be made so by publishing the view key. Monero is anonymous by default and has de-anonymous capability on demand. This crypto currency is very promising in the future. Summing it up, Monero is something which can change the world for better and free people from the great banking scam. It can give the right of privacy back to people.
I believe that the project is worth investing in. The concept and technology of Moneno is very promising.

                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                Thank You

                                MONERO ( XMR ) Report 
                                BY – Maskal Boipai
                                XLRI. Jamshedpur, Alumuni
                                [email protected]