Monero Observer Weekly recap for all things Monero

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Vol. 01, No. 17-18 December 5 December 25, 2017

Performance

12/25 3W YTD
XMR / BTC 0.0257 +42.6% +79.7%
XMR / $ $360.78 +71.6% +2,516.2%
BTC / $ $14,026.60 +20.3% +1,355.6%
CAMCrypto30 $2,483.06 +53.7% +2,381.1%

Monero Observer Update

Hello everyone! Due to a busy holiday season, work, and other projects I have been working on, this issue of the Monero Observer is a special double issue to catch up on the past few weeks of Monero news and developments. Expect the Monero Observer to be back on its normal weekly cycle going forward.

Additionally, Monero Observer's website and design has been transformed with a completely new facelift thanks to u/tficharmers as he created and donated the HTML/CSS front-end templates to Monero Observer. This will hopefully make all readers experience much more enjoyable as the website is now more adaptive!

Project Coral Reef

The details of the Globee Secret Project were finally revealed. Fluffypony announced that they have over 50 online stores accepting XMR payments. Many of these stores are also offering an exclusive additional 15% discount on orders paid with Monero. These stores in aggregate get millions and millions of impressions and every store customer will see Monero during checkout even if they end up paying with fiat currency. You can see all participating stores and artists at ProjectCoralReef.com. Fluffypony discussed the news;

There are several reasons we went for musicians instead of trying to canvas something like Newegg. The first is that a lot of those stores already accept Bitcoin, which means you can already use Monero on them via xmr.to and similar. The second reason is that the Newegg target audience largely already know about Monero, or have at least heard of it. The third reason is that it’s hard to incentivise people to purchase GPUs with Monero.

Music fans, on the other hand, are rabid. If they can save 15% on a purchase, or get something exclusive, but have to jump through hoops to do so they absolutely will. "Tricking" someone into using Monero is really the first step to their achieving financial sovereignty.

We’re also aware that there are lots of pieces of the ecosystem that are weak, such as mobile wallet support and easy ways to purchase Monero, but many people are working on improving that status quo. And as these parts of the ecosystem are built out, there will be further interest from the same journalists who are reporting on Project Coral Reef right now.

And, too, this is just stage 1. There will be more coming next year from the same team that put this together. The biggest thing that Coral Reef has given us is leverage, due to the high profile nature of it, and we will be using that leverage to open doors elsewhere. Stay tuned!

  • Forbes reported how Monero is to be accepted by musicians such as Mariah Carey, G-Eazy, and Sia for the holidays.

  • FastCompany discussed the project and how the highly anonymized cryptocurrency Monero peeks out of the shadows.

  • CoinDesk, BTCManager, and CryptoSlate discussed the news as well.

    Fees / Bulletproofs

  • Sarang Noether discussed Monero compatible Bulletproofs. With current range proofs, the transaction is around 13.2 kB in size. If using single-output bulletproofs, the transaction reduces in size to only around 2.5 kB! This is, approximately, an 80% reduction in transaction size, which then translates to an 80% reduction in fees as well.  Bottom line: they're awesome, they work, the fees are lower, and they're moving into testnet.

  • dEBRUYNE and ArticMine posted a note on fees, providing a thorough overview of the situation, and that soon enough Bulletproofs will reduce transaction sizes by at least 80%.

  • The Merkle and Use The Bitcoin discussed bulletproofs.

    • Upcoming Monero Developments

    The Merkle discussed 5 exciting Monero developments to look forward to in 2018;

    1) Hardware Wallets
    2) Bulletproofs
    3) Kovri
    4) Multisignature support
    5) Darknet Adoption

    Stamp Monero - Guerilla Marketing Campaign

  • Stamp Monero, a guerrilla marketing campaign to bring awareness to Monero, was created. They believe stamping physical fiat currency is an efficient and legal way to spread the word about Monero. According to Federal Reserve estimates and their assumptions, each one dollar bill you stamp may be seen by 438 other people. And yes, it's legal (in the U.S.).

    Additionally, there has been a lot of discussion regarding how we as a community can increase donations to the Monero fund. They are hoping this serves to further this goal of giving back to the Monero fund and helps get more users involved in promoting and contributing directly to the success of Monero. They are donating 10% of our proceeds to the general Monero fund and various Monero FFS projects.

  • BTCManager discussed Stamp Monero, “More than three years after its birth, the community is now undertaking a clever guerilla marketing campaign to spread awareness and encourage broader adoption by individuals.”

    Multisignature

  • It was announced that Multisig has been merged into master and will be included in the next release.

  • Newsbtc.com discussed that the next Monero client release will have full Multisig support as the code has been merged into the official development branch. They say that this is good news for darknet adoption of Monero payments as so far, most DNMs remain on the fence about XMR due to the lack of multisig support. With the new client due out soon, that will all come to change as well.

    Monerujo Android Wallet Update

  • There is a new released of Monerujo, “Satoshis Dream.” The new release brings seamless integration with BTC Spending / XMR.TO.

  • The Monerujo team also wished the community happy holidays with some customizable Monero greeting cards.

    Monero Dev Meeting Logs

    Monero dev meeting summary and logs from December 17th are now available, highlights include;

  • An option to disable DNS lookups has been added (to assist with offline mode)
  • Bulletproofs are live on TestNet
  • The math has been reviewed and looks good. Now it's time to really test it.
  • "The best test for crypto is time" --Surae
  • A huge discussion(which took up most of the meeting time) on when to implement in production. The 2018 March or September hardfork...
  • Should BP's not make it into the March hardfork, a reduction in fees will be implemented.
  • The Monero Hardware team had a breakthrough today that allows for easier firmware upgrades.
  • Next meeting Jan 14, 2018

    Mastering Monero

    Serhack is working on a new project, "Mastering Monero: Be your own private bank," an ebook written mainly by Serhack and some great community users. It will explain the methods, features and why you should join the Monero world. From public address to the sub-project Kovri, you will know almost everything about Monero by downloading Mastering Monero ebook

    Ledger Hardware Wallet Update

    Ledger Crypto Dev posted an update on the Monero Integration into Ledger. It appears they are still aiming for a Q1 2018 release.

    Monero vs... Verge?

    Verge has been recently making its way up the rankings as the next up and coming “privacy” coin. While I rather not get too deep into this discussion, it appears anyone who is willing to do their homework can see that at best, Verge is bitcoin with tor integration and stealth addresses. See the Monero stack exchange for a more in-depth comparison.

    VLC Media Player Accepting XMR Donations

    The creator of VideoLAN discussed that VLC will start accepting Monero donations on January 1st. The post discusses in detail why he believes privacy of the blockchain is not optional and therefore Bitcoin is not an ideal cryptocurrency. He goes on to highlight Monero as the best cryptocurrency available today that is private, secure, and most importantly fungible.

    Monero Monitor Podcast

    • A new episode of Monero Monitor was released. The episode focuses on Nimble Wimble with Andrew Poelstra. The podcast covers the technical details of Mimblewimble's scaling and privacy-enhancing features, discusses the real world logistics of using the protocol, and looks at some of the coolest features enabled by the technology. They also discuss how Bulletproofs can help both Mimblewimble and Monero better scale, and also touch on how ValueShuffle might further improve privacy in Mimblewimble.

    Monero Cat Web-Comic

    Around the Web

    Guides

    Monero Marketing

  • Monero Marketing posted a new holiday Monero graphic.

  • u/hellae posted a new Monero infographic.

  • u/snirpie posted a new Monero infographic as well to share on social media.

  • Monero Designs released a new Monero wallpaper.

  • Monero Designs released a new Monero marketing graphic.

  • u/BestMelvynEU posted a new Monero promo design.

  • Check out this Monero holiday sweater!

    • Web Mining

  • Reuters reported that Transneft said on its computers had been used for the unauthorized manufacture, or “mining”, of the cryptocurrency Monero but said the firm now had systems to prevent this happening again.

  • The Guardian reported that the video sites Openload, Streamango, Rapidvideo and OnlineVideoConverter are allegedly loading mining software on to visitors’ computers, making them generate tokens for the bitcoin-like cryptocurrency Monero, according to security firm Adguard.

  • IB Times reported that a Starbucks was using costumer computers to mine Monero.

  • The Merkle discussed that Digimine Monero mining bot is spreading through Facebook messenger.

  • Bleeping Computer reported that WordPress sites around the globe have been the targets of a massive brute-force campaign during which hackers attempted to guess admin account logins in order to install a Monero miner on compromised sites.

  • V3 reported that cyber crooks are conducting a sophisticated "malware campaign" against Linux and Windows servers. Security specialists at F5 Networks said hackers are targeting vulnerable IT systems to install malware with the sole purpose of mining the Monero cryptocurrency.

    • r/Monero 70k+ Subscribers

    Congratulations to r/Monero for breaking 70k+ subscribers!

    Shopping with Monero

  • Reservoir Mugs has integrated GloBee and is now accepting Monero. They are offering 20% off entire orders for customers that pay with Monero. Promo Code: MONEROROCKS

  • Congrevape.com now accepts Monero, 25% off your whole order when using it.

  • Ventelite now accepts Monero.

  • Gadget Habits now accepts Monero.

    • Forum Funding System

    1. MoneroMoo Full Time Coding, January-March - Funding complete!
    2. Coordinator for Localization Group + Various Maintenance - Funding complete!
    3. Monero Bounty for Hackerone - 85.0% funded
    4. Monero Tracking Challenge #2 - 52.05% funded

    Top 5 r/Monero posts of the last few weeks

    1. Monero is here.
    2. Project Coral Reef: furthering mainstream adoption of Monero
    3. Multisignature just got merged!
    4. 'Be Your Own Bank', A Cautionary Tale
    5. "Privacy matters" starter pack

    Until next time…

    Enjoy this webcomic by u/RoyalMayonnaise

    Issues

    1. Vol. 01, No. 17-18 12/5/17 12/25/17
    2. Vol. 01, No. 16 11/28/17 12/4/17
    3. Vol. 01, No. 15 11/21/17 11/27/17
    4. Vol. 01, No. 14 11/14/17 11/20/17
    5. Vol. 01, No. 13 11/7/17 11/13/17
    6. Vol. 01, No. 12 10/31/17 11/6/17
    7. Vol. 01, No. 11 10/24/17 10/30/17
    8. Vol. 01, No. 10 10/17/17 10/23/17
    9. Vol. 01, No. 09 10/10/17 10/16/17
    10. Vol. 01, No. 08 10/3/17 10/9/17
    11. Vol. 01, No. 07 9/26/17 10/2/17
    12. Vol. 01, No. 06 9/19/17 9/25/17
    13. Vol. 01, No. 05 9/12/17 9/18/17
    14. Vol. 01, No. 04 9/5/17 9/11/17
    15. Vol. 01, No. 03 8/29/17 9/4/17
    16. Vol. 01, No. 02 8/22/17 8/28/17
    17. Vol. 01, No. 01 8/15/17 8/21/17

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    About

    Monero Observer is a free weekly news publication released every Tuesday, created in an effort to keep the Monero community up to date on all the latest news and developments related to Monero. We aim to achieve this by aggregating all the relevant information into one convenient location in an easy-to-digest format. We sift through the noise so you don’t have to.

    Monero Observer is proudly funded by the Monero Community! It is operated and maintained by monerooby_doo. Donations (XMR) are greatly appreciated:

    Please email any questions, feedback, corrections, suggestions, or anything you think should be included in future issues.

    The HTML/CSS front-end templates were created and donated by u/tficharmers.

    Disclaimer

    This site contains opinion for informational purposes only and does not constitute investment advice. Information may contain errors and omissions. Use solely at your own risk. The authors of this site and/or the authors of articles linked to from this site may have financial investments that may bias their opinions, including ownership of Monero currency. Always do your own research, form your own opinions, and never take risks with money or trust third parties without verifying their credibility.