monero-docs/docs/technical-specs.md

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Monero Technical Specification | Monero Documentation

Monero Technical Specs

Live

  • Monero blockchain is live since 18 April 2014

No premine, no instamine, no ICO, no token

  • Monero had no premine or instamine
  • Monero did not sell any token
  • Monero had no presale of any kind

Proof of Work

  • CryptoNight
    • v0 since block height 0
    • v1 since block height 1546000 (forked on 2018-04-06)
    • v2 since block height 1685555 (forked on 2018-10-18)
    • v3 since block height 1788000 (forked on 2019-03-09); "CryptonightR"
    • would change every ~6 months to discourage ASIC-s development
  • RandomX
    • v0 since block height 1978433 (forked on 2019-11-30)

Difficulty retarget

  • every block
  • based on the last 720 blocks (24h), excluding 20% of the timestamp outliers

Block time

  • 2 minutes
  • may change in the future as long as emission curve is preserved

Block reward

  • smoothly decreasing and subject to penalties for blocks greater then median size of the last 100 blocks (M100)
  • ~3.1 XMR as of Feb 2019; for the current reward check the coinbase transaction of the latest block

Block size

  • dynamic
  • maximum of two times the median size of the last 100 blocks (2 * M100)
  • ~20KB as of Feb 2019; check the latest block size

Emission curve

Main emission

  • first, the main emission is about to produce ~18.132 million coins by the end of May 2022
  • as of Feb 2019 the emission is about 15 XMR per 10 minutes
  • see charts and details

Tail emission

  • the tail emission kicks in once main emission is done
  • it will produce 0.6 XMR per 2-minute block
  • this translates to <1% inflation decreasing over time

Max supply

  • ~18.132 million XMR + 0.6 XMR per 2 minutes
  • technically infinite but practicaly deflationary if accounted for lost coins

Divisibility

  • Monero is divisible up to 12 digits
  • The smallest unit is called piconero and equals 1e-12 XMR, or 0.000000000001 XMR

Sender privacy

  • ring signatures
    • the ring size is 11 (10 decoys)
  • assurance: probabilistic / plausible deniability

Recipient privacy

  • stealth addresses
  • assurance: strong

Amount privacy

  • ring confidential transactions
  • assurance: strong

IP address privacy

  • there is an ongoing effort to integrate Tor into Monero wallet for transaction sending
  • assurance: none at the moment - please use TOR or I2P