The low price of Monroe, why squeeze out BTC to become the "dark net coin king"

Bringing up the dark net will always make people unconsciously associate with BTC; but now the most active cryptocurrency in the dark world is no longer bitcoin. The most preferred option for illegal trading is not BTC, but the heat is not warm. Fire – Monroe.

This privacy currency, which is often bundled with malicious mining software, has been inextricably linked to the dark network since its inception. Since the beginning of this year, many areas have been more and more social media to emphasize the increasingly close relationship with the black area of ​​the network. Slow fog technology cosine said that the current XMR is ranked first in the dark world's activity and ecology; the father of anti-virus software McAfee said that Monroe will win 100% of the support of the dark network… Unconsciously, "Monroe The promotion of the currency to the dark currency king seems to have gradually become the general consensus of the currency circle.

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Note: According to the hacking forum's voting on the acceptance of cryptocurrency in the dark network, Monroe is the most recognized, bitcoin is only higher than BCH (data from: Recorded Future; deadline: February 2018)

However, according to the research report of the blockchain data analysis company Mosaic in early July, the current cryptocurrency supported by the NET merchant website is still Bitcoin, and the number of related merchants is 326 percentage points higher than the second-ranked Monroe. . In the same month, the report released by Chain Analysis also pointed out that BTC's transaction amount on the dark network reached 515 million US dollars during the year, which is the highest cryptocurrency in the market, followed by XMR. In this case, where does the new secret coin king come from?

Note: According to Mosaic's research report on privacy coins, 43 (98%) of the dark web merchants' websites accept bitcoin and 10 (23%) accept Monroe. The cosine of the slow fog technology cosinus quoted the data and said that if the underground world of malicious worms is taken into account, Monroe's activity and ecology in the dark world is the first (picture taken from: Mosaic analyst Eli Ndinga's Medium account)

In the wild era of the lack of anonymous coins, grab the opportunity

Bitcoin still dominates the dark network, but the survey data of the above two research institutions also revealed that the use rate of BTC in this field has dropped sharply; the proportion of illegal trading activities is only Less than 1%, down 85% compared with seven years ago. Moreover, it is easy to foresee that these statistics will further decline in the future as the outside world's awareness of Bitcoin increases.

Bitcoin's annual trading volume in the dark market (data from: Chainlation)

It is no exaggeration to say that if it is not the dark market, especially the Silk Road, Bitcoin will not be accepted by the market so quickly. Of course, it is precisely because of the rapid development of BTC that it is gradually drifting away from the dark network; after all, the bitcoin that is constantly moving closer to the mainstream is indeed too high-profile for the users of the dark network that tend to be hidden. In order to maintain mystery and security, in recent years, Darknet has already turned its interest to some less well-known and more anonymous cryptocurrencies; such as Monroe and Zcash. According to data from Wallet Investor, the popularity of these two privacy currencies in the dark network has soared since last year, and far exceeds other similar currencies.

The Monroe coin, which was born earlier and is more active in the community at this stage, was accepted by ZCash before the dark network merchants. At the end of August 2016, two major dark-net markets, OASIS and AlphaBay, announced the addition of Monroe as a means of payment. Although XMR's penetration rate in the dark network was not high between 2016 and 2017, Monroe showed a clear advantage in its own anonymity at this stage of development.

Supplement: Among the top 20 cryptocurrencies in the market capitalization, the number of Mendoco Reddit communities ranks fourth, behind Bitcoin (1.1 million), Ethereum (444,000) and Litecoin (207,000); some data sources From: CryptoMiso, Reddit

Take the case of the AlphaBay seizure in the darknet market in 2017. The site was confiscated by the US FBI for $8.8 million in encrypted assets, including Bitcoin (1,605), Ethereum (8,309) and Zcash (3691). The specific collection amount is clearly stated; only the Monroe currency, due to the lack of private key information, is unknown.

The biggest enemy of AML on all chains

In fact, there are many interesting things related to the privacy of Monroe. In an interview with Mashable, the Internet company Akamai security researcher said in the previous year that when the cyber attacker extorts the Monroe currency, the inherent anonymity of the latter makes it impossible for the attacker to determine which attacker delivered the ransom; Last year, due to anonymity, some of the stolen NEM Coincheck could not be recovered. In order to prevent this, the Monroe coin, which is highly anonymized and difficult to track and supervise, was directly removed.

Of course, the cryptocurrency that was taken down by Coincheck and follower Korbit during the same period was Dash and Zcash. The anonymous technology of these currencies has its own merits, and it can also guarantee the security and privacy of transactions to a certain extent. However, compared to the Dash that can view the rich list of the rich and the Zcash that can selectively leak the transaction information, the degree of anonymity that the Monroe coin can show from the transaction parties to the transaction amount and even the transaction IP can be hidden. More prominent. And compared to Zcash, where the current private transaction costs are too expensive, the availability and convenience of Monroe is slightly better; because of the integration of the Bulletproofs mechanism in late 2018, transaction fees have dropped to near zero.

On the other hand, it can be seen from the number of relevant cryptocurrency online exchanges. According to Coinmarketcap, there are only 58 exchanges on the door of the Monroe, which is much lower than the Dash coin that was born in the same year and the Zcash that appeared later. Although the latter two online exchanges are more likely to be related to the operation of the centralized team, but this can also reflect the taboo of the exchange's degree of anonymization of Monroe; after all, with the increasing attention of governments to the field, KYC/AML It has become an indispensable part of the exchange, and the Monroe coin, which has been repeatedly named by the government, will obviously increase the platform's concerns. It is reported that Zcash was suspected of being removed from Coinbase UK this month because it could not meet the requirements of the British regulatory authorities; but it is worth noting that Coinbase never considered the Monroe.

Data from: Coinmarketcap

Anonymity is strong, untrackable, transaction costs are extremely low, ecological construction is relatively complete, market value is stable (ranking has been in the tenth place)… The superposition of these features makes Monroe a favorite of hackers and dark nets. Earlier, Recorded Future's survey conducted by the Hacking Forum showed that Monroe's acceptance rate in the dark network ranked first. The cosine of the same hacker spoke on Weibo, saying that Monroe is the biggest enemy of AML on all chains, no one. Although this statement remains to be verified, it is not difficult to see the field's recognition of Monroe's anonymous technology.

What's even more interesting is that when Octan announced in October last year that it cooperated with Chainlysis and joined anti-money laundering monitoring, some netizens threatened to use Monroe coins to make troubles; the Twitter user named Willy Clicks said that sometimes he A new coin security account will be deposited, deposited into XMR, converted to BTC, and then directly withdrawn to the dark market, and then redeemed back to Monroe. This operation is only to stimulate the CEO of Changan. To a certain extent, the Monroe coin can make people's "deliberate" attribute, and it does coincide with the darkest net, the most free and humane release place.

Image taken from: Twitter

For the anti-ASIC obsession is hacker's mind

Of course, the above mentioned features are only the door knocking of Monroe into the dark net, and the reason why it can really find its position and connect with the dark net quickly is inseparable from the community developers' anti-ASIC mining machine. Obsession.

Similar to the mysterious state of keeping its core developers anonymous, the Monroe development community has an inexplicable commitment to resisting ASIC mining. CryptoNight, a memory-intensive algorithm used in this privacy currency, was not friendly to ASICs. Later, after the announcement of the sale of the CryptoNight-based X3 mine in Bitland, it immediately announced the revision of the core consensus algorithm to strongly resist the ASIC entering the XMR network.

Note: The current network computing power of Monroe is 312MH/s, which is less than one tenth of the computing power of Zcash network (the change of the total network computing power of Monroe; data from: bitinfocharts)

Thanks to the positive hardcore of developers and miners, Monroe has continued to support CPU and GPU mining since its development in 2014. This means that at this stage, even if you use a computer or even a mobile browser, you can dig XMR; this is just enough for cybercriminals to take advantage of. Since its birth, Monroe has been bundled by malicious mining software, up to the government departmental computer equipment, down to the TV set-top box, and even the college entrance examination enquiry system has the Monroe malicious mining program. According to a survey conducted by security company Palo Alto Networks, about 5% of current XMRs in circulation are excavated through malicious activities; and this is only considering the statistical results of hijacking mining tools, if you add web pages or other researchers. Unable to get mining software, the data may be far more than 5%.

Although Coinhive, the world's largest browser mining code provider, closed in early March, the cryptocurrency malicious mining attack has been depressed for some time; but soon mining software has appeared again and again, and several network security companies in June and early August. Also discovered a number of new malicious mining software. To be sure, as long as the community's determination to resist ASIC remains the same, with the almost untrackable characteristics of the Monroe, the event will continue like the inexhaustible weeds.

For this reason, Monroe's malicious mining software has been criticized for a long time; but it is undeniable that this activity active in the global network has intentionally or unintentionally promoted the connection between Monroe and Darknet, and also improved invisibly. The stickiness between hackers and Monroe. For this reason, coupled with the dark ecology of malicious mining and underground rivers and lakes, Monroe has become the most active and ecologically cryptocurrency in the current darknet world.

Developers say that anti-ASIC is to maintain fair mining, and that the pursuit of anonymity is due to the cherishment of privacy; founder Riccardo Spagni emphasizes that technology is not guilty. Logically, the dark-net activity has nothing to do with Monroe. However, these visions of Monroe are not similar to the pursuit of the dark net; and the rise of the old-fashioned payment-type cryptocurrency is not more or less driven by the darknet, and the bitcoin that has gradually faded out is 16 years. It was also because of the first time that AlphaBay accepted the market value and squeezed into the top ten.

(Article from: Hash school; Author: LucyCheng)

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