The amount of money Tezos raised is now valued at 400$,
that can practically create 200 to 400 startups and probably at least a 100 tezos ..

So what have been done already ? not much !!! because the founders are fighting with the foundation they set to be able to access the money as they want... You don't become cryptorich without being able to spend the money on whatever you wish ...


https://www.reuters.com/article/us-bitcoin-funding-tezos-specialreport/special-report-backroom-battle-imperils-230-million-cryptocurrency-venture-idUSKBN1CN35K

Digital Asssets for Everyone

WEB SITE · WHITE PAPER · BLOG · TWITTER · SLACK · REDDIT · SOURCE CODE


World's 1st Refundable ICO: August 8 - September 7 , 2016
ICO website: www.antshares.org



ICO Escrow：2-of-3 Multi-Signature BTC Wallet

Antshares have partnered up with two trusted and reputable institution which will get one key to the multi-signature wallet each.
 - HaoBTC.com, Chinese famous mining & BTC wallet provider. This 2-of-3 multi-signature is powered by HaoBTC, too.
 - DACA.asia, Digital Assets Coalition Asia. It was initiated by the companies of : OKCoin, BTCC, HuoBi, BTCTRADE, YuanbaoHui, BITMAIN, and some well-known experts :Yang Linke, Han Feng, Liao Xiang, Hu Hongjie, etc . Asia BlockChain DACA Association is committed to serve the Bitcoin and Blockchain development in Asia area.

Dear All: Antshares team will not ask for your private key, or under any circumstance, provide special ICO offer. Watch out for people asking for bitcoin transfer in private. Also, we do not approve any form of IOU trading and advise you to use EXTREME caution.

Cointelegraph Storyhttps://www.cointelegraph.com/news/antshares-partners-with-microsoft-to-digitalize-real-world-assets-with-blockchain
BraveNewCoin http://bravenewcoin.com/news/antshares-sets-out-to-be-the-peoples-digital-asset-blockchain/

Also in the news:
Bitcoinist http://bitcoinist.net/antshares-million-ico-two-weeks/
CryptoCoinsNews https://www.cryptocoinsnews.com/antshares-blockchain-successful-ipo
Yahoo Finance http://finance.yahoo.com/news/antshares-blockchain-based-ledger-protocol-211400004.html
NewsBTC http://www.newsbtc.com/2016/08/29/antshares-blockchain-based-ledger-protocol-for-financial-applications-launches-successful-ico/

to be continued...


Antshares' Chief Architect Shed Light on the Upcomming Developer Initiative! Tech guys check this out!
https://www.antshares.org/en-US/Blog/Details/31


Quote
Antshares is a decentralized and distributed ledger protocol that digitalizes real-world assets into digital ones, enabling registration, depository, transfer, trading, clearing and settlement via a peer-to-peer network.

Antshares keeps records of the transfers of digital assets with e-contracts. In Antshares, digital tokens generated by e-contracts function as general underlying data and could be used for recording titles and assets like equities, creditor’s claims, securities, financial contracts, credit points, bills and currencies, and could be applied for areas like equity crowdfunding, equity trading, employee stock ownership plans, peer-to-peer financing, loyalty programs, private equity funds, and supply-chain financing, etc.

understand antshares in 90 seconds



Linking the Real-World with Compliance

- Replacing Tokens with E-Contracts
The transfer on Antshare is conducted in the form the e-contracts. In most cases, the transfer of assets requires the digital signatures signed with the private keys from both the sender and the receiver. In certain cases, an extra signature from the issuer of the asset is required. Recording transfers of assets on the Antshare is merely an onchain solution of the transfer of offchain assets. There are no new legal relationships that parties could enter into, so unlike the tokenization, flaws in laws are eliminated.

- User-Controlled Identity Authentication

Antshare employs digital certificate to perform user identity authentication. Users (individuals or institutions) may apply for digital certificates from the certificate authority (CA) to prove the correlation between the identity and the public key controlled. CAs will not be appointed by Antshare, but freely chosen by the parties of a trade. For example, Chinese users may choose any one of the 38 CAs recognized by the MIIT, or choose the company who registered the equity to be the CA, to perform identity authentication and issue the certificate.Rather than the X.509 digital certificate solution, Antshare employs blockchain to maintain the certificate revocation list and is set to gradually develop a blockchain-based digital certificate and identity authentication solution.

Meeting the Demands of Financial Trades

- Certainty Bookkeeping without Forks
Antshares uses Joint mode for bookkeeping. Joint mode is advantageous over consistency and finality, it requires nodes to authenticate themselves to achieve a weak trust from other nodes.

- We Use Fiat Currency
Crypto-currencies like bitcoin could deliver a sound function as the medium of exchange, i.e. users may transfer assets globally via bitcoin. However, inflexible supply of crypto-currencies makes them highly volatile in price and jeopardizes their capacity to function as bookkeeping units and value storage.This is to say, while ANS is the stake and ANC is the gas, fiat currency can be directly used as currency on the Antshares Blockchain.

- The Division of Labor of Nodes and their Professionalization
With Antshare, our design goal is to have a clear division of the system’s workload. Bookkeeping nodes are at the center of the Antshare Blockchain. They are trusted by the holders of AntShares in reaching consensus and generating new blocks. Full nodes are critical participants of the Antshare network. They are run by service providers to store complete historical data and detect and relay transactions.

Highly Scalable Framework Design

- Low Latency, High Throughput and Pluggable
At the moment, the block generating rate is manually set at 15 seconds. With low enough latency in inter-nodes connection in the future, most blocks will be generated by every 1 second. With the bandwidth at 100Mbit/t and external cryptographic computing hardware, the Antshare Blockchain is capable of handling thousands, if no tens of thousands, of transactions per second.

- Hierarchical Design and Superconducting Transaction
Our hierarchical design places the order-book-keeping and order-matching functions on the second layer while achieving the full trading capacity through a mechanism called superconducting transaction.

dBFT Consensus Algorithm
https://www.antshares.org/Files/A8A0E2.pdf

1st refundable ICO (rICO) in the World
Quote
Refund Policy
We do have a refund policy should an over-funding scenario comes up due to the unlimited ICO funding target.
When the ICO terminates on Sept. 7th, 2016(Beijing Time), ICO participants could have the option of continuing or quitting based on the general conditions of the funds raised.
If a participant wishes to continue, he/she will not be required to do any extra operations; if he/she wishes to quit, a refund application should be submitted on www.antshares.org/ico anytime before the formal release of the Antshares Mainnet.
When a refund takes place, 100% of the bitcoins invested by the participant shall be refunded to the bitcoin address designated by the participant in his/her refund application.
The refund option will become unavailable upon the formal release of Antshares software, which is under development. The release date of the software is not determined yet but will not be within 7 days after the ICO termination, leaving adequate period of time for the participants’ deliberation.
All the bitcoins due in the refund process will be sent 30 days after the formal release of the software all together. The refund policy does not support a partial refund and is not revocable once applied.
Valid ICO amount and its allocations will be announced within several days after the formal release of our software.
Should a special occasion occur during the ICO, say, malicious refund leading to a 2/3 refund ratio, Antshares team reserve the right to proclaim invalidity of this ICO and refund all bitcoins raised.


TAT - The Antshares Team (full-time members)



Technical members:


DA hongfei
CEO & Founder
Crypto-currency evangelist since 2011, key opinion leader in China's crypto-currency/blockchain community


ZHANG Zhengwen
CTO & Founder
Former key bitcoin developer at huobi exchange


LI Jun
Architect
14 years financial IT experience, incl. infosys & China Financial Futures Exchange


CHEN Zhitong
Developer
Former bitcoin developer at huobi exchange


LIN Pengtao
Developer
Former bitcoin developer at huobi exchange


FAN Shoushou
QA Engineer

Business members:


TAO Rongqi
Business Strategy
Former marketing officer at BTCC with years of experience incl. Standard Chartered, China UnionPay, etc


YANG Wentao
Business Development
Left Morgen Stanley in Baltimore to join the antshares team, Master of Sci. in Finance at Johns Hopkins


WANG Tingting
Community
Social media marketing expert


LUO Tian
Business Development
Former BTCC marketing officer


ZHAO Xiaoling
Media
Graduated from the top journalism school in China, Fudan University

Antshares Blog  www.antshares.org/Blog/Index
 - Bounty Hunter Wanted! Claim your Antshares NOW!
We have our ICO rules here: https://www.antshares.org/en-US/Blog/Details?id=21
Our short video here:    (Our investment process changed a little bit from what's shown in the video to make it more user friendly, process shown in video is just for reference)
ICO process explained: https://www.antshares.org/zh-CN/Blog/Details/26


ICO Rules Highlight
 - 20 million ANS will be issued; in addition, a 4 million ANS weighted reward (early bird reward), amounting 20% and 4% of the total ANS respectively, or 40% and 8% of the volume in circulation of the first year.
 - This ICO does not have a pre-set price. The price shall be determined by the market. The ANS distribution will be proportional to the investment. To calculate: ANS received by a participant= (BTC invested by the participant/all valid BTC investment)*20,000,000*weighted factor.
 - A 120% factor is rewarded to those who participate between Aug. 8th and Aug. 13th. Beginning on Aug. 14th, the weighted factor will decrease by 1% each day until the termination of the ICO. For example, the factor will be 119% on Aug. 14th, 118% on Aug. 15th, 117% on Aug. 16th, and finally 100% on Sept. 2nd
 - When the ICO terminates on Sept. 7th, 2016(Beijing Time), ICO participants could have the option of continuing or quitting based on the general conditions of the funds raised.
 - When a refund takes place, 100% of the bitcoins invested by the participant shall be refunded to the bitcoin address designated by the participant in his/her refund application. The refund option will become unavailable upon the formal release of Antshares software, which is under development
 - The refund policy does not support a partial refund and is not revocable once applied.


Antshare Press Coverage & Syndication
2016-06-29 超级账本中国首次公开见面会，探讨区块链行业标准制定
http://www.8btc.com/hyperledger-onchain-ibm
2016-06-28 Onchain与微软合作探索区块链应用，小蚁二期众筹将于七月开启
http://www.8btc.com/onchain-microsoft
2016-05-23 Onchain小蚁加盟“超级账本”，参与制定区块链国际标准
http://www.8btc.com/onchain-hyperledger
2016-04-07 Onchain发布小蚁共识算法白皮书
http://www.8btc.com/onchain-paper-antshares
2015-11-02 10天2100个比特币，小蚁股众筹你“抢”到了吗？
http://www.8btc.com/antshares-2100btc
2015-10-09 小蚁众筹目标公布，2100BTC致敬中本聪？
http://www.8btc.com/antshares-2100



Antshare in Other Language
- German Thanks starsnshamrocks
- Russion Thanks knobson
- French Thanks kaicrypzen
- Italian Thanks Gianluca95
- Indonesia Thanks barnes13
- Slovenian Thanks Simple858
- Greek Thanks CoinBreader
- Polish Thanks Ebrelus
- Malayalam Thanks ether19
- Portuguese Thanks jpdorn
- Romanian Thanks ltcrstrbrt
- Dutch Thanks LitcoinCollector
- Croatian/Hrvatski Thanks sunce33
- Thai Thanks golfhuso
- Filipino Thanks  roncar
- Spanish Thanks mtnsaa


Antshare on ICO Research Sites
- Smithandcrown
http://www.smithandcrown.com/event/antshares-ico/
- ICOCountdown
http://www.icocountdown.com/
- Cyber.fund
http://www.Cyber.fund/
- ICOLIST
http://www.ico-list.com/

Posted by dahongfei on August 01, 2016, 10:36:10 AM

NEM is the New Economy Movement

A groundbreaking crypto-currency that gives control of their economy back to the people and establishes them as sovereigns over their own destiny.  A currency is an expression of a political ideology and social attitude.  Do not mistake us as just another cryptocurrency.  We are more than a cryptocurrency, we are a New Economy Movement.

NEM :: Descendant of Nxt  -  NEM - New Economy Movement


logo okaynow by futureutopian, on Flickr

Completely Fair Distribution - Equal Shares for ALL
No arbitrary distribution. Decentralized. The most egalitarian coin. Show your love to NEM.

NEM - #DevelopmentTeam

Opticalcarrier is an experienced distributed network technician with deep knowledge of the crypocurrency world. He is involved with NXT since the beginning and is now in command of a major part of NXT node infrastructures. He will take the lead role on building the NEM network infrastructure. bitcointalk.org/index.php?action=profile;u=165191

Jaguar is a highly experienced programmer; He shared the winning bounty for making JAVA signing codes for NXT; He has also been contributing important insights to the NXT source code flaw finding efforts. Jaguar will be responsible for NEM's technical direction. bitcointalk.org/index.php?action=profile;u=183319

Thies is relative newcomer to this forum but he is experienced in Java, large system architectures and other different technologies driving OSGI enterprise, JEE6, Integration Bus technology. He will work with Opticalcarrier and Jaguar on technical aspects of NEM. bitcointalk.org/index.php?action=profile;u=189273

UtopianFuture will work as NEM organizer/ promoter. He will monitor overall progress of NEM project and ensure NEM's core concepts of fairness and the egalitarian principle are implemented. bitcointalk.org/index.php?action=profile;u=182582 

A note on organization:

NEM will follow the principle of fluid organization. We believe the NEM's core principles of fairness and equality will attract many other talented developers and helpers. So while all of us are committed to NEM, we would welcome others developers/ helpers to join us and make NEM a success.

NEM discussion thread bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=426303.0
NEM forum https://forums.nxtcrypto.org/viewforum.php?f=58&sid=f9b9689593f761096779bfca849bcde6
NEM reddit page http://www.reddit.com/r/nem/
NEM bounties : see in the discussion thread or in forum
NEM ongoing stakeholder list at end of page 85 https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/ccc?key=0AlidWok7hW0DdDZ0amZpM00wQXhrR2lJM3pCOGRhNFE#gid=0; huge file 1379 stakeholders at the end of page 85.

HOW - TO

The fundraising is especially designed to promote fairness and egalitarianism. This is the first funding scheme of this type ever and we believe it is revolutionary in its effort to bring egalitarianism to the crypto industry.

If you do not have a Bitcointalk account yet, you need to create one to reserve a stake spot. Do not lose the account password, because you will need to access the account later to claim your share.

In the first 20 pages, stake spots are reserved only by showing "interest". After page 20, a fee has been introduced for late adopters. People who join after page 20 will still be distributed an equal share of NEM but they have to pay a fee to join in. Then after every 10 pages, the fee will be adjusted as a multiple of the initial fee. Another way to reserve a stake spot is to promote NEM to the outside community. Condition of promotion for a stake spot will be revised every 10 pages by the #DevelopmentTeam . We would greatly encourage you to spread NEM's idea to mainstream people outside the cryto-community even when you have already reserved a stake spot.

After we reach a critical mass, we will launch the NEM genesis block, (we plan not to have more than 4000 accounts in total, see FAQ below). A total of 4 billion NEM will be distributed equally to all adopters. That means every stakeholder will have an equal and fair share of NEM when NEM blockchain officially starts. Then you can sell- buy NEM freely and let the market forces determine the price.

One Bitcointalk account is entitled one stake spot. If you send more than the required amount at one time or multiple times, we will consider it a donation to NEM. 


History of the fund raising :

-------------------------
First 20 pages   : free to join in
pages 21-30     : fee = 0.001 btc or  10nxt
pages 31-40     : fee= 0.002 btc or 20 nxt ;
pages 41-50     : fee= 0.004 btc or 40 nxt
page 51-60       : fee= 0.008btc or 80nxt
page 61-70       : fee=0.016btc or 160nxt
page 71-80       :fee=0.0025 or 250nxt
-------------------------

How to join after page 80. Two ways

1. Pay a fee to join in
   
    Send 300 NXT to the address      14343293611098709683
    Send 0.03 BTC to the address    1Lk5Paws9T1YpoSeLeZT7ZeSQKW7UNq4TJ

    Counter sockpuppet measure: Sending address could be checked and if there were already two payments made to NEM's addresses before, then the third payment would be considered a donation. This measure comes into effect at page 81 and does not apply retroactively. So DO NOT SEND the fee to NEM from an exchange, you would need to withdraw to your account first. Thanks for your understanding. 
 
    After you send the fee, include the transaction hash in your reply post in this thread, to confirm your stake reservation.
    Donation is welcome but not necessary

2. Promote NEM to receive a stake pot without fee

+ Link this thread to any public forums or social media sites such as twoplustwo and Reddit ; Facebook ; Twitter; tennis, sport, fitness, Flickr, Pininterest etc. anywhere with decent traffic so that people can hear about NEM  ; or makes a comment in any crypto related articles so the readers know about NEM. You have to show proof of your work in your reply post in this thread, then you have reserved a stake spot.  Please be considerate when you promote NEM to the outside community.

+ Make a logo, currency symbol for NEM and post in your reply thread, then you have reserved for a stake spot and you can also get a development stake spot. See bounties for more information.

+ Make a fun meme for NEM and post in your reply thread, then you have reserved for a stake spot. This condition temporarily stops since we had quite a few memes in the last 10 pages. Could make a comback later.

+ Translate this thread to any other language and post it to one of that language's community, then you have reserved for a stake spot.

+ Make a video for NEM, then you have reserved for a stake spot.

The fee to join in will be 350 NXT or 0.035BTC after page 90. The fee will be increased by 50NXT or 0.005BTC after every 10 pages until the fundraising is over.


-----------------

Integrity guaranteed. NXT, BTC sent to this project won't be touched until an official date for the genesis block is announced. This project is serious and will go forward. The money collected here will be dedicated 100% to NEM developers to make the genesis block and other supporting apps. It all goes to make NEM a feasible project.

If you want to use escrow, feel free to ask Anon136 to hold your money until an official date for launching the genesis is announced. Show proof that he holds your fund, then you reserve a stake spot. 

------------------

NEM is likely to be a fork of Nxt code. I love NXT and I admire the brilliance and vision of NXT inventor BCNext. His idea of a decentralized world is beautiful and in that world we should have more forks of his work such as NEM.

NEM as a fork of NXT could have following features

NEM 100% Proof-of-Stake (PoS) currency.  Coins are earned solely by charging transaction fees.  Unlike other currencies with PoS mining, NEM's PoS mining does not cause monetary inflation.  The total amount of NEM in circulation is 4 billion.  NEM is resistant to +90% attacks via its transparent mining algorithm.

NEM improves different features of Bitcoin, removes some disadvantages (e.g. bloated blockchain) and resolves a big environmental issue.  Time between blocks is one minute.  This increases the rate of orphaned blocks, but makes it more convenient for the users.

NEM doesn’t use so-called “scripts” aka predicates.  This simplifies and accelerates transaction processing. Advanced features like multisig will be created on top of the core as 3rd party services.

NEM is routable through Tor and I2P anonymous networks.

Some improvement over NXT could be possible:

Block Chain stored in database

Secure Wallet

Bitcoin like Addresses

Multi Precision arithmetic

NEM as a fork of NXT could have following features

- Decentralized Alias System / DNS - Register names and assign them to URIs.  URIs can be anything from web addresses to NEX account numbers.  These aliases will be tradeable in the near future.

- DDoS Protection

- Decentralized Asset Exchange / Colored Coins - This allows gateways to issue assets on the NEX network.  These assets can include cryptocurrencies (BTC, LTC, etc), fiat currencies (USD, EUR, RMB, etc), stocks and other assets.

- Transparent Mining - Transactions are encrypted.  Only PoS block generator can decrypt transactions.

- Arbitrary Messaging

- Instant Transactions

- Decentralized Marketplace / Auction - Buy or sell goods/services in a distributed manner.  All listings are broadcast to all nodes on the network in P2P fashion.

- Distributed Storage

- Multi-signatures

- Blockchain Shrinking

- Two-phase Payments

- Voting System

- Reputation System

- Decentralized Mixing Service

- Distributed Computing

- Smart Contracts

- Hardware Wallets

---------------------------
NEM needs you to spread the word.
---------------------------

Codes from "opensource" or "decompiled" version of NXT are available
Initial NEM codes can be found here https://github.com/NxtEM/nem

-----------------------------
In the future:

If you can run a NEM node, it will help us stabilize and secure the network.  If you have invested in NEM, it is beneficial to you to run a VPS to help to secure the NEM network.  Hallmarking your node helps the network, but is not absolutely necessary
How-to directions on running a hallmarked VPS NEM node
How-to run NEM on your Raspberry Pi

Security Tips

NEM videos : upcoming
NXT videos go to NXT thread bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=345619.0

Join in if you want to be a part of NEW ECONOMY MOVEMENT. 4 billion coins will be issued. That's right there will be 4 billion of NEM instead of 1 billion. We thought NXT is like gold which can be used in valuable transactions while NEM is like silver and can be used everyday.

Disclaimer:

- While we are committed to the idea of " Completely Fair Distribution - Equal Shares for ALL "; the fund raising terms are subject to changes upon the discretion of the #DevelopmentTeam .
- There is no refund. Nothing comes out of NEM's receiving addresses until the genesis block is launched. We are committed to move the project forward. However, in the unlikely event that the project disintegrates and no one picks it up, the remaining development fund will be sent to a charity of the community's choice. 
- No contractual promise is made to anyone.
- Be patient

FAQ:

1. How many shares of NEM would I get ?

There is no specific number yet. Our current formula is number of NEM per stake spot = 4 billion/ (total account stake + development stake). At the moment we are aiming for roughly 3-4000 accounts in which 5% is development stake, but it could be more, could be less depending on the fund raising.

2. What is the difference between regular stake and development stake ?

No difference except that development stakes are reserved for NEM developers/ helpers and they can use their regular accounts for these stakes.

3. I am an investor. Can I give you 50 BTC to get a bigger stake in NEM ?

NO - NEM's egalitarian principle means no single stakeholder should receive much more NEM than another stake holder regardless of how rich he is

4. How could you prevent multiple buy-ins ?

In short - We can't. Multiple buy-in will be possible with multiple accounts. We also want you to have the ability to buy a NEM stake for your loved ones so they could all join the movement. However accumulating many NEM stakes goes against NEM's principles of fairness and equality, therefore the #DevelopmentTeam  reserves the right to refund you the money if an effort to unfairly accumulate NEM stakes is discovered.

Detail explanations are here
bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=426303.msg4661493#msg4661493
bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=426303.msg4671768#msg4671768

5. I contribute to NEM development so much more than some others. Why don't I have more (development) stakes than him/ her ?

Initially I would make decisions on allocation of development stakes with input from the #DevelopmentTeam  and the community. So this blame falls on me. I will try my best to follow NEM's principle of fairness and equality but mistakes can sometimes happen and some people might be unhappy. On the other hand, NEM is also NO ENVY MOVEMENT. Volunteerism is greatly appreciated. it should be kept in mind that NEM-ers do not envy the rich; NEM-ers do not envy the talented; NEM-ers do not envy the beautiful because we all are beautiful people Smiley

6. Can you compare NEM to NXT, Mastercoin, CounterParty Protocol and Ethereum ?

A brief comparison to NXT is made here bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=426303.msg4675997#msg4675997. To compare with others, in short NEM is the first crypto-coin that no wealthy person or early adopters can obtain a significant percentage of by using money to buy-in or by using a huge mining rig. That to me symbolizes a great sense of fairness and egalitarianism. There will also no one with many  NEM available for "dumping" when it starts on an exchange. That means there will be a significant financial upsides to NEM. On the technological front, NEM would have its own blockchain and features developed by the #DevelopmentTeam .



post by utopianfuture on January 19, 2014, 03:09:00 AM

Monero (XMR) is a privacy-focused cryptocurrency that is not based on Bitcoin's code.

Monero aims to be a fungible and untraceable digital medium of exchange. It intrinsically has a higher degree of privacy than Bitcoin or any of its various forks. It was launched on April 18, 2014 (preannounced and no premine/ICO/etc.).

The official core team members are (in no particular order) - Riccardo "fluffypony" Spagni, luigi1111, NoodleDoodle, smooth, tacotime, Franciso "ArticMine" Cabañas, othe

Announcements
Please visit News, announcements and editorials on the Monero Forum for the latest news.
Visit our StackExchange site, where you can ask, answer, and view technical questions!

Features

• Untraceable payments
• Unlinkable transactions
• Blockchain analysis resistance
• Adaptive parameters

Academic and Theory

Monero's functionality is backed up by academic research and cryptographically proven schemes. Much of this research is done by the Monero Research Lab. Since Monero was initially based on the CryptoNote protocol, the CryptoNote whitepaper is also an invaluable reference for validating Monero's unlinkability and untraceability claims.

• The CryptoNote Whitepaper
• Initial Review of the CryptoNote Whitepaper
• MRL-0001: A Note on Chain Reactions in Traceability in CryptoNote 2.0
• MRL-0002: Counterfeiting via Merkle Tree Exploits within Virtual Currencies Employing the CryptoNote Protocol
• MRL-0003: Monero is Not That Mysterious
• MRL-0004: Improving Obfuscation in the CryptoNote Protocol
• MRL-0005: Ring Signature Confidential Transactions

Specifications

• PoW algorithm: CryptoNight [1]
• Max supply: Infinite (see note below) [2]
• Block reward: Smoothly varying [3]
• Block time: 120 seconds
• Difficulty: Retargets at every block

[1] CPU + GPU mining (about 1:1 performance for now). Memory-bound by design using AES encryption and several SHA-3 candidates.
[2] Initial number of atomic units is M = 2⁶⁴ - 1. However, once the block reward reaches 0.3 XMR per minute (sometime in 2022) that is treated as the minimum subsidy, which means that Monero's total emission will forever increase by ~157680 XMR annually.
[3] Uses a recurrence relation. Block reward = (M - A) * 2^-20 * 10^-12, where A = current circulation. Roughly 86% mined in 4 years (see graph).


Official downloads and links

Getting Started - Follow the guide to set up the software and start mining.

Official forum

Source and binaries
Also see below for optional GUI.

Latest release: 0.10.1.0 Wolfram Warptangent

• Source code
• Windows, 64-bit (downloads.getmonero.org/win64) - SHA256: 727a53dd154b61fd653f81da27788077fdf519301c81d3c1eb033c1ff2bf97c6
• Windows, 32-bit (downloads.getmonero.org/win32) - SHA256: ce77137b33bcaeb59273cb73b86e426e35e6209fb52a7e74fd9432a5a3018041
• OS X, 64-bit (downloads.getmonero.org/mac64) - SHA256: 447cebae257864b3706a8622f495bfd9fae780a6b277e1e31ac83bef7bc855c6
• Linux, 64-bit (downloads.getmonero.org/linux64) - SHA256: bf09eea27c957e7e2bdd62dac250888b301d4d25abe18d4a5b930fa7477708c7
• Linux, 32-bit (downloads.getmonero.org/linux32) - SHA256: 9a18d274970df85d6bc926dc99407959c680c36f19017996be9c758f6c02cf06
• ARMv7 (downloads.getmonero.org/arm) - SHA256: 57221605997a3cd815f2a9689486abbdb124263fff047ca61068900eb7cb1839
• FreeBSD 64-bit (downloads.getmonero.org/freebsd64) - SHA256: 3858d4786b65a37e981b142e9c0f256ac66662314794d05f595c4c30cb5b6ddb

Donations for general development

XMR: address (OpenAlias) donate.getmonero.org
address (full) 44AFFq5kSiGBoZ4NMDwYtN18obc8AemS33DBLWs3H7otXft3XjrpDtQGv7SqSsaBYBb98uNbr2VBBEt7f2wfn3RVGQBEP3A
viewkey: f359631075708155cc3d92a32b75a7d02a5dcf27756707b47a2b31b21c389501
BTC: 1KTexdemPdxSBcG55heUuTjDRYqbC5ZL8H
Alternative Clients

Please visit: How to choose a Monero client

Miners

• CPU, open source - Wolf`'s CPU miner.
• CPU, closed source - yvg1900 - Yam M8a Miner New version - use at your own risk.
• GPU, open source - Tsiv Nvidia GPU Miner (based on ccminer) Early in development - Thanks Tsiv!
• GPU, closed source - Claymore AMD GPU miner - Early in development - use at your own risk.

Blockchain explorer

• moneroblocks.info
• chainradar

Exchanges, Services, and Related Projects

Please visit Merchants and services directory

Pools

For an up-to-date list of pools, go to http://moneropools.com

FAQ

What is CryptoNote?
CryptoNote is the technology that allows creation of privacy-centric cryptocurrencies. You can visit their website here. The level of anonymity provided by CryptoNote isn't possible with Bitcoin code base by design. Bytecoin (BCN) was the CryptoNote reference implementation, and XMR is based on BCN's code.

Two of the main features of CryptoNote are ring signatures that mask sender identities by mixing and one-time keys that make transactions unlinkable. Their combined effect gives a high degree of anonymity without any extra effort on the part of the user.

Unlike Bitcoin, your funds are not held in the address you give out to others. Instead, every time you receive a payment it goes to an unlinkable address generated with random numbers. When you decide to spend the funds in that one-time address, the amount will be broken down and the components will be indistinguishable from identical outputs in the blockchain.

For example if 556.44 XMR are sent, the protocol will break it down into 500 + 50 + 6 + 0.4 + 0.04 and a ring signature will be performed with other 500's, 50's, 6's, 0.4's, and 0.04's in the blockchain. Unlike the "CoinJoin" mixing method, CryptoNote mixes outputs not transactions. This means no other senders need to be participating with you at the same time or with the same amounts. Any arbitrary amount sent at any time can always be rendered fundamentally indistinguishable (a mathematical proof is given in the white paper).

The degree of anonymity is also a choice rather than decided by the protocol: do you want to be hidden as one among five or one among fifty? The size of the signature grows linearly as O(n+1) with the ambiguity so greater anonymity is paid for with higher fees to miners.

Ring signatures are explained below. Reproduced from CryptoNote:

A normal signature looks like this. There's only one participant, which allows one-to-one mapping.



A ring signature obscures identities because it only proves that a signer belongs to a group.



This allows a high level of anonymity in cryptocurrency transactions. You can think of it as decentralized and trustless mixing.



How does this compare to other anonymous solutions?
Ring signatures originate from the work of Rivest et al. in 2001 and the implementation in CryptoNote relies in particular on Fujisaki and Suzuki's work on traceable ring signatures. There are two other anonymity implementations currently available or in development. One is ZeroCoin/ZeroCash's use of zero-knowledge proofs. The others are based on gmaxwell's CoinJoin idea (such as mixing services for Bitcoin or the altcoin Darkcoin).

1. Comparison with ZeroCoin and ZKP-based approaches:
You can read about ZeroCoin and zero-knowledge proofs (ZKP) here. The ZK environment allows an anonymity set that includes everyone in the network because the validity of an output can be proven without knowing the corresponding public key until it is spent. The largest risk is that this is recent research-level cryptography that hasn't been subjected to years of cryptanalysis, so exploits may emerge down the road. Ring signatures are much simpler and more mature, with many peer-reviewed papers published over more than a decade.

Other issues with ZKP include the RSA private key used to initiate the accumulator, which must be trusted to be destroyed by the generating party. It also obscures the entire economy, not just sender/receiver identities. If the ZK system is compromised, then an attacker can continuously spend coins that don't exist using false proofs. This damage is hidden from everybody due to total blinding and consequently at any given time it's not possible to know if the network has already been compromised. There is a tradeoff between these inherent risks and the maximal anonymity set provided by ZKP. CryptoNote aims for a different balance through the dual layers of privacy provided by one-time keys and ring signatures.

2. Comparison with CoinJoin-based approaches:
XMR is more qualitatively similar to mixing implementations like CoinJoin. The differences arise in the departure from the Bitcoin protocol, which allows XMR to use new cryptography to provide decentralized and trustless mixing of superior quality. The critical problem with mixing services is the need to trust the operators. As an example, blockchain.info's mixer gives the following disclaimer: "However if the server was compromised or under subpoena it could be force to keep logs. If this were to happen although you haven't gained any privacy you haven't lost any either."

The CoinJoin-inspired Darkcoin performs mixing with selected "masternodes" since it still uses ordinary signatures that can be mapped one-to-one. The motivation is that a randomly selected node is less likely than a single service to exhibit bad faith (such as keeping logs) . In practice, a few VPS companies host the vast majority of nodes and this approach relies on the integrity and good behavior of these nodes. XMR's more fundamental cryptographic approach doesn't have these vulnerabilities and the quality of anonymity is much higher.

XMR's ring signatures are also far more secure and convenient than CoinJoin because they mix outputs not transactions. This means a transaction doesn't involve waiting around for other senders to mix with. Nor is a user restricted to mixing only if others are sending the same amount. Arbitrary amounts can be sent at any time without anyone else's participation. This feature makes a timing analysis of the blockchain useless.

Overview of a transaction
Bob decides to spend an output, which was sent to the one-time public key. He needs Extra (1), TxOutNumber (2), and his Account private key (3) to recover his one-time private key (4).

When sending a transaction to Carol, Bob generates its Extra value by random (5). He uses Extra (6), TxOutNumber (7) and Carol's Account public key (8) to get her Output public key (9).

In the input Bob hides the link to his output among the foreign keys (10). To prevent double-spending he also packs the Key image, derived from his One-time private key (11).

Finally, Bob signs the transaction, using his One-time private key (12), all the public keys (13) and Key Image (14). He appends the resulting Ring Signature to the end of the transaction (15).





Posted by Monero on April 25, 2014, 12:38:50 AM

The cryptocurrency exchange, Bitfinex, made an announcement that they will no longer serve U.S. customers within their trading platform. The changes will take place starting November 9th.

Here's the announcement:

As indicated in the announcement, we are terminating trading, deposits, and withdrawal functionality for U.S. individual customers by no later than November 9, 2017. U.S. customers are already barred from receiving financing from other users on Bitfinex’s peer-to-peer financing platform. This restriction will remain and, in addition, U.S. individual customers will no longer be able to provide financing on Bitfinex effective November 9, 2017.