BlocksInform
Frederick Munawa
Frederick Munawa is a Technology Reporter for Coindesk. He covers blockchain protocols with a specific focus on bitcoin and bitcoin-adjacent networks.
The non-contentious hard fork to upgrade one of crypto’s most popular privacy protocols, Monero, was successfully completed today. The fork took place at block 2,688,888 (18:47 UTC) and enhances the network with a host of new privacy-preserving features:
- The number of signers for a ring signature has been increased from 11 to 16 for every transaction. Ring signatures are digital signatures that can be produced by any member in a group. It should be computationally infeasible to determine which key (from that group of keys) was used to create the signature. Ring signatures make it impossible to trace the origin of a Monero transaction.
- The previous Bulletproofs algorithm was upgraded to “Bulletproofs+.” Bulletproofs are zero-knowledge proofs that enable confidential transactions. Bulletproofs+ reduces transaction size and increases transaction speed. Overall performance is expected to improve by 5-7%.
- View tags are a new way to speed up wallet syncing by 30-40%. Wallets that support monero include LEDGER and Trezor, two popular hardware wallets. Cake wallet is a hot wallet that was originally exclusive to monero but now also supports bitcoin (BTC), litecoin (LTC) and haven (XHV).
- Fee changes will minimize fee volatility and improve overall network security.
- Multisignature functionality has been improved and critical security patches were added.
The price of XMR is holding steady, currently trading at $165.80 at the time of publication.
