The monero-web blog

Straight answers about Monero — what its privacy actually protects, where the real weaknesses are, how seeds and wallets work, and how to run the whole stack yourself.

Is Monero traceable? What blockchain analysis can and cannot see

An honest look at what Monero's privacy actually hides, where the real weaknesses are, and what law enforcement has demonstrated versus merely claimed.

·10 min read

How Monero actually works: stealth addresses, ring signatures and RingCT

A plain-English walkthrough of the three technologies that make Monero private, why each is necessary, what they cost, and how a transaction uses all three.

·10 min read

Monero vs Bitcoin privacy: what each one actually protects

Bitcoin is pseudonymous, not anonymous. What each chain reveals, why mixing is not equivalent to Monero, and the honest trade-offs on both sides.

·8 min read

Mining Monero at home: RandomX, P2Pool, and whether it is worth it

Why Monero is the last major coin you can mine on a normal CPU, how to set it up with XMRig and P2Pool, and the honest electricity arithmetic to do first.

·10 min read

Monero atomic swaps: trading BTC for XMR with no exchange in the middle

How BTC to XMR atomic swaps work without scripting on the Monero side, why adaptor signatures make them possible, what the timelocks do, and the real risks.

·9 min read

Monero scams and how to avoid them

The scams that actually take people's Monero: fake wallets, seed phishing, recovery services, clipboard hijackers, malicious nodes, and how to stop each.

·9 min read

MyMonero's web wallet is gone. Here's what to use instead.

MyMonero's browser wallet is no longer available. Your funds are safe — here's how to recover a 13-word seed and which Monero wallet to move to.

·10 min read

Monero seed formats explained: 25-word, 13-word, Polyseed and BIP-39

Why Monero has four seed phrase formats, what each one encodes, which wallets accept which, and why converting between them gives you a different wallet.

·8 min read

How Monero light wallets actually work — and what your view key reveals

A light wallet server scans the blockchain with your view key. Exactly what that lets it see, what it cannot do, and whether the trade is acceptable.

·9 min read

Monero restore height explained (and why your balance looks wrong)

What a restore height is, why guessing too high hides your transactions, how to work out the right block, and how to fix a wallet showing the wrong balance.

·7 min read

Run your own Monero light wallet server with monero-lws

A practical guide to running monero-lws with monerod: hardware, ZMQ wiring, TLS, scanner threading, and the throughput limits nobody documents.

·8 min read