monero-docs/docs/technical-specs.md

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Monero Technical Specification

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"
• 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 than median size of the last 100 blocks (M100)
• ~1.6 XMR as of June 2020; 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)
• ~50KB as of June 2020; check the latest block size

Current blockchain size

• Pruned node: ~ 57GB as of Jan 2023
• Complete chain without any pruning: ~138GB as of Jan 2023

Emission curve

Main emission

• first, the main emission is about to produce ~18.132 million coins by the end of May 2022
• as of June 2020 the emission is about 8 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 practically 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 16 (15 decoys)
• assurance: probabilistic / plausible deniability

Recipient privacy

• stealth addresses
• assurance: strong

Amount privacy

• ring confidential transactions
• assurance: strong

IP address privacy

For the full node (monerod):

• dandelion++
• assurance: won't protect against ISP/VPN provider, won't protect against the very first remote node in Dandellion++ protocol
• for the full protection user must manually wrap monerod with Tor

For the wallet (monero-wallet-gui or monero-wallet-cli):

• typically wallet runs on the same machine as full node so there is no risk
• if wallet connects to remote full node, there is no IP protection by default
  • user must manually wrap wallet with Tor