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Monero: The Cryptocurrency Powering your Privacy
Monero, a name that's become synonymous with privacy in the cryptocurrency world, plays an integral role in this service's operations. If you're intrigued by how we protect your privacy, it's essential to understand how Monero works. This blog post will shed light on Monero functionalities, its privacy-focused features, and what happens when funds are received in a Monero wallet.
What is Monero?
Monero is a decentralized cryptocurrency, much like Bitcoin, but with a heavy emphasis on privacy and anonymity. Every transaction on the Monero network is confidential and untraceable, making it a popular choice for users who prioritize privacy.
Privacy Features of Monero
Monero employs a variety of features to ensure privacy:
Ring Signatures: In the world of digital currencies, typical transaction signatures trace back to the sender’s address, compromising privacy. Monero, however, employs Ring Signatures to combat this. In a Ring Signature, the sender's account keys are mixed with public keys on the blockchain, creating a 'ring' of possible signers. This ensures that the sender remains untraceable as it is computationally impossible to determine which of the participants' keys in the ring were used to produce the complex signature.
Ring Confidential Transactions (RingCT): Even though Ring Signatures protect the sender's identity, the transaction amount could still be visible on the blockchain, creating another privacy risk. RingCT was introduced to mask this transaction amount. In a RingCT, the actual transaction amount is hidden, but it can still be verified by the network as a legitimate transaction. This process involves complex cryptographic techniques that allow the network to confirm the transaction's legitimacy without knowing the exact transaction amount.
Stealth Addresses: Using these add an additional layer of privacy for the receiver of a Monero transaction. Instead of funds being sent directly to a reusable address, they are sent to unique one-time addresses on the blockchain that only the receiver can recognize and spend. This means that no two transactions can be linked to each other or to the receiver, ensuring the recipient's privacy.
Locked funds feature
When funds are sent to a Monero wallet, they don't become available immediately. Instead, they arrive as 'locked'. This locked state is a feature of Monero's protocol, aimed at preventing double-spending - a potential issue where a user spends the same coin more than once.
The 'locked' state means that the funds have been transferred to your wallet, but are not yet spendable. They're in a sort of transition period, during which the network verifies the transaction's authenticity. This process involves the transaction being confirmed by various nodes in the Monero network.
Typically, a Monero transaction needs 10 confirmations to be considered fully validated, at which point the funds are 'unlocked' and become available for the wallet owner to use. This usually takes around 30 minutes, given the 2-minute block time, but can vary depending on the network's activity.
Confirmations
In a cryptocurrency network, such as Monero, the time it takes for a transaction to be confirmed can depend on the level of network activity. This is due to the nature of the blockchain technology upon which these networks operate.
Blockchain technology involves a series of blocks, each containing multiple transactions. These blocks are added to the chain at regular intervals. For Monero, this is typically every two minutes. This interval is known as the block time.
When a transaction is made, it enters a pool of unconfirmed transactions. When the next block is created, it includes a certain number of these transactions. However, the block size is limited, so if there are more transactions in the pool than can fit in a block, some must wait until the next block is created.
Network
This is where network activity comes into play. If the network is very busy with a high volume of transactions, blocks can fill up quickly, and some transactions have to wait longer for confirmation because they're waiting for space in a subsequent block.
On the other hand, if the network is less busy, a transaction is more likely to be included in the next block and get confirmed more quickly. So, the time it takes for a confirmation depends on both the block time and the level of network activity.
In addition to this, Monero has a dynamic block size algorithm that adjusts the size of the blocks based on the network demand, allowing the network to handle larger transaction volumes when needed. This helps to maintain a balance between fast confirmation times and the decentralization of the network.
The way we work
In the context of CryptoCleaner's operations, a prune wallet is used for each order to ensure the exchange of the first transaction cannot identify us as a middle man. As soon as the funds are unlocked, we initiate the next steps in the anonymization process. We split the received amount into two: 0.9% is reserved for the system, while the rest is sent to the second (or more) exchange. This transaction moves the money from the Monero wallet to the target wallet, ensuring a seamless and private transfer.
To call exchanges anonymously, we use a combination of rotating proxies and multiple api keys, stay tuned for our next post: calling exchanges without kyc, yet another way to protect your privacy!
One more thing
As we wrap up this deep dive into Monero and its privacy features, it's worth mentioning that our commitment to privacy doesn't stop there. We've developed intricate methods to interact with exchanges while preserving anonymity, using a blend of rotating proxies and a multitude of API keys.
In our next blog post we will go into the specifics of these techniques. We will demonstrate how it's possible to maintain the highest standards of privacy, even when interfacing with exchanges. We look forward to having you with us on this journey towards greater anonymity in the world of cryptocurrency.
Stay anonymous, stay secure!
