User:Fireice/Monero Sandbox

Privacy


Monero's blockchain protects privacy in three ways. Ring signatures enable the sender to hide among other transaction outputs, stealth addresses hide the receiving address of the transaction and RingCT hides the amount of the transaction. As a consequence, Monero features an opaque blockchain. This is sharp contrast with transparent and traceable blockchain used by Bitcoin. Thus, Monero is said to be "private, optionally transparent".

Monero has two sets of keys, called a "view key" and a "spend key". View key can be separately shared to enable optional transparency. However, the system is designed to ease processing on mobile devices, as it is impossible to calculate an accurate wallet balance without a spend key.

Problems
In April of 2017 new research unearthed two major threats to Monero user's privacy. First threat, described as "Leveraging Output Merging", involves tracking transactions where two outputs belong to the same user, such as when a user is sending the funds to himself ("churning"). Second threat, "Temporal Analysis", shows that predicting the right output in a ring signature is easier than previously thought.