Monero is uncompromising digital cash. You can pay and get paid without turning your financial life into a public record, while the network still enforces the rules for everyone.

No. Mixers take your coins, hold them, then try to hide the trail.

Monero never takes custody of your money. Privacy is built into the protocol itself for every transaction, all the time.

Yes. Monero uses strong public key encryption and zero knowledge proofs so that transaction data is never published in plain form.

On chain you only see encrypted commitments and proofs that the rules are followed, instead of a readable payment history.

In most places, using privacy tools is legal. Monero is a neutral asset, like VPNs, locks on doors or encrypted messages. Businesses and individuals should follow their local laws, but privacy itself is not a crime.

Monero is for everyone. It is used by ordinary people and businesses who do not want their salaries, savings, donations or purchases permanently exposed on a public ledger.

Bad actors abuse every money system that exists, including banknotes and transparent blockchains.

No. Monero is a decentralized network of nodes and users around the world. Nobody can turn off the Monero protocol or prevent people from using it.

Monero uses dynamic block sizes and adaptive fees to handle changes in demand. When more people use Monero, blocks grow to accommodate more transactions, and fees adjust to keep things running smoothly.

Monero is a decentralized project, developed by it's global community of cryptographers and developers. There is no central company or authority in charge of Monero.

The Monero Project is supported by donations from the community, and many contributors work on it voluntarily.

If you want to get involved, visit the Workgroups page for more information.

Running your own node gives you more control and independence from third parties, improves your sender privacy, and helps support the network.

Running a personal node is the safest way to interact with the Monero network. Your node verifies all the rules independently and does not rely on anyone else.

Keep in mind that your ISP can see you are running a Monero node.

A Monero full node requires at least 2 GB of RAM, 500 GB of free disk space, and a broadband internet connection with good upload and download speeds. An SSD is recommended for better performance.

Yes. You can run a pruned node, which stores only a portion of the blockchain data, reducing disk space requirements while still validating transactions and blocks.

Remote nodes can see that you are making some Monero transaction from your IP address - but they are unable to observe the transaction details, as it is encrypted on your device.

To improve privacy, consider using Tor or a VPN when connecting to remote nodes.

Monero hides three things at once:

1. Amounts: Encrypted so outsiders cannot see how much is being sent.
2. Receivers: Encrypted using one-time stealth addresses that only the receiver can recognize.
3. Senders: Protected by zero-knowledge proofs that show a spend is valid, without revealing which coin is spent.

Blockchain analytics can see that some transaction occured, but it is impossible to link transactions to specific users or addresses.

No system is perfect. Monero hides what happens on chain. Your operational security, network habits, KYC records, devices, and your own behavior still matter.

Yes. You can export your transaction history from your wallet, or share selected data when needed. Privacy means you control who sees your records. Monero does not stop you from disclosing them if you choose to.

A view key lets someone see your incoming and outgoing transactions for a given account, without them being able to spend your funds.

You can share it with an accountant or auditor to reconcile your books while keeping control over your money.

Your wallet can generate a proof that a specific payment was made to a specific address, or that you control a specific output, without revealing your full transaction history.

You can move to a fresh account with new view keys. Old keys will only see the history you already shared. Future activity returns to being visible only to you unless you decide otherwise.

ASIC resistance means that specialized mining hardware (ASICs) do not have a big advantage over consumer hardware (CPUs/GPUs). This helps keep mining more decentralized and accessible to more people.

Monero achieves ASIC resistance through the RandomX proof-of-work algorithm, which is optimized for general-purpose CPUs.

The amounts of newly mined coins are public. Every transaction includes proofs that its hidden inputs and outputs balance out, according to the rules. If someone tried to create extra coins, the equations would not work and nodes would reject the block.

Partially. Transaction privacy in Monero is quantum resistant, but the public/private key cryptography that controls ownership is not.

This is true for any blockchain that uses elliptic curve cryptography. Future quantum computers could potentially break these keys, so upgrades will be needed as quantum-safe standards develop.

Monero has always favored established, rigorously studied cryptographic schemes. The protocol currently uses:

1. Pedersen Commitments + Bulletproofs for confidential transaction amounts
2. Curve Trees to prove that a spent output belongs to a sender without revealing it
3. Stealth addresses for encrypting and unlinking recipient information on-chain

No. In 2017 a researcher found a flaw in old code that could have allowed extra coins to be created under very specific circumstances.

The bug was fixed, and the blockchain was scanned for the exact pattern an exploit would leave. Nothing was found and the supply matches the emission schedule, proving that this bug was not used in practice.

After you have downloaded the Monero software, your antivirus or firewall may flag the executables as malware.

Why does this happen?

This likely happens because of the integrated miner, which is used for mining and for block verification. Some antiviruses may erroneously consider the miner as dangerous software.

What to do:

1. Make sure the software you downloaded is legitimate
2. Add an exception for it in your antivirus, so that it won't get removed or blocked

Local sync wallets: These scan the blockchain on your device, giving you the best privacy, but require more storage and bandwidth.

Remote sync wallets: These use a remote server to scan the blockchain for you, reducing resource needs, but at the cost of some privacy.

On the Downloads page you will find the wallets released by Monero Core, as well as open-source wallets from community developers. Choose the one that fits your needs and technical comfort level.

Remote sync wallets use your private view key to scan the blockchain on your behalf. This means the wallet service can see your transaction history, but not able to spend your funds. It is convenience at the cost of privacy.

Your seed phrase. It is the root of your addresses and funds. Devices can be replaced. If you keep your seed phrase safe and offline, you keep your money.

If your seed is backed up and your device is locked, you can restore your wallet on a new device and move your funds. If an attacker gets both your unlocked device and your seed, they can spend your coins. Treat your seed like the keys to a vault.

Monero has a main emission phase and then a small ongoing tail emission of 0.6 XMR per block to reward miners and secure the network. The result is a predictable, gently increasing supply that trends toward a stable growth rate.

Tail emission is a constant block reward that never goes to zero. It avoids a future where miners rely only on fees and are tempted to favor large, visible payers or censor small users. A small, permanent reward helps keep security honest and decentralized.

Tail emission is fixed in absolute terms, so over time it becomes a smaller and smaller percentage of the existing supply.

As of 2025, the annual inflation of Monero is 0.85%, trending toward zero.

The goal is not zero new coins, but a steady, low inflation rate that can support long-term network security.

No. Monero launched in a fair manner, with no premine, no founder tax, and no early investor carve-out. Every unit in circulation was or will be mined under the same rules.

New coins are earned by miners who invest energy and hardware to secure the chain. The proof-of-work design aims to limit advantages from specialized hardware and keep mining accessible to more people.