Monero
KLEAR3 ResearchPublished Updated
MoneroXMRMonero, a payment chain that hides the sender, the receiver and the amount of every transaction by default, has published code since April 2014. Its repository carries no licence GitHub can recognise, its block reward never reaches zero, and the privacy upgrade several 2026 articles describe as already live has, by the software's own account, not shipped.
What does Monero actually do?
Monero is a payment network where the sender, the receiver and the amount are hidden by default, for every transaction, with no toggle to turn that off. It settles through RandomX, a proof-of-work algorithm the project built itself to keep mining on ordinary computers rather than specialised hardware.
The repository that publishes the software describes itself in the same three words the project has used for over a decade: secure, private, untraceable. The first two are design goals almost any chain would claim. The third is the one that actually separates Monero from a transparent ledger, and it is not a slogan: it is a property enforced by the consensus rules every node runs.
Three mechanisms do the hiding, and each covers a different piece of a payment. A ring signature lets a sender's key blend in among a group of past outputs, so a verifier can confirm a real key signed without learning which one. RingCT hides the amount moved, while still letting the network check that no coins were created from nothing. A one-time stealth address is generated for every single payment, so two payments to the same person never share a visible destination.
None of that is optional for a Monero user. There is no transparent address to fall back on, and no setting that trades privacy away for a cheaper or faster transaction. That is the opposite of the choice most other privacy-capable chains leave open, and it is the detail this page keeps coming back to.
Source GitHub + getmonero.org, read 2026-10-14
Is the code actually open?
GitHub finds no licence on this repository, and that reading is misleading, not wrong. We opened the actual file: a readable BSD-3-Clause text, followed by two attributions, one of which reproduces a full MIT licence for code inherited from an earlier project, Boolberry.
A directory that trusts GitHub's own detector would print a blank next to Monero, the same blank it would print for a repository with no licence at all. Those are not the same situation, and the only way to tell them apart is to open the file ourselves rather than read a badge.
What is actually in it is a standard BSD-3-Clause body, copyright held by the Monero Project, with every clause a BSD licence requires. Two attributions follow it: one names code originally copyrighted by the CryptoNote developers, the other names code from Boolberry and reproduces the entire MIT licence that covers it, inline, in the same file. A detector built to match one template against the whole document fails the instant a second licence is pasted into it.
Source GitHub + fichier LICENSE, read 2026-10-14
The practical right is unaffected by the detection failure: Monero's own code is permissively licensed, and sixty-two tagged releases show a project that actually ships what it builds rather than letting work sit unreleased.
Source GitHub, read 2026-10-14
Is anyone still working on it?
Yes, heavily: 753 commits from 37 Git identities over the ninety days we measured, the most recent landing on 2026-10-13. Most of that work is a single unreleased upgrade, and several 2026 articles already describe it as live, which the software itself does not confirm.
That commit count is well above what most chains this age still draw, and a lot of it points at one thing: a project called FCMP++, short for Full-Chain Membership Proofs, meant to replace the ring signature entirely. Instead of hiding a spend in an anonymity set of just 16 outputs, the new design proves the output spent is one of every output the chain has ever recorded, closing statistical attacks that a fixed ring size cannot.
Several pages published this year already describe that upgrade as live on the main network, one of them naming a specific activation date. The one place that would actually settle the question is the fork table compiled into the software itself, and we read it on both the development branch and the tagged release published this month: neither has added a new entry since the last fork, in 2022. What several articles call shipped, the software itself still calls open. 20 tickets carrying FCMP++ in their title are still open, covering database integration and proof verification, none of them merged.
One caveat applies to every count on this site: ninety days is a window that slides on its own, and Git identities are not people. Several of the busiest Monero contributors sign under a single handle rather than a name, which this page treats as a floor on the headcount, never as the real one.
Source GitHub · getmonero.org (billet) · monero/monero — src/hardforks/hardforks.cpp (master + v0.18.5.3) + GitHub + bloc lu, read 2026-10-14
What shows it is running
- The network answers — block 3783623, read from a public node
- The repository is heavily worked on — 753 commits over the 90 days to 2026-10-14, 37 distinct Git identities
Source nœud public (Cake Wallet) · GitHub, read 2026-10-14
- The Monero network mines its first block
- The source code goes public on GitHub
- Hiding every amount becomes mandatory for everyone
- RandomX activates, aimed at keeping mining on ordinary computers
- Full-Chain Membership Proofs are proposed as a replacement for rings
- This page, checked and published
Where does it actually run?
On one chain, its own, and we read that chain ourselves rather than trusting a dashboard. A public node put it at block 3783623 on the day we checked, still running the same consensus rules it has used since block 2689608, with no bridge and no second network to confuse.
There is no wrapped version of this chain to get wrong, no bridge contract to trust, and no second network a reader needs to check before trusting a balance. The trade-off is the mirror image of that simplicity: everything happens at the speed and the cost of this one chain, and nothing elsewhere can share the load.
We did not take a dashboard's word for the chain being alive. A public node answered our own requestfor its last block header, and that block still carries the same consensus version as the one in the fork table's final entry, which is the clearest sign that the privacy upgrade discussed above has not changed what actually runs.
Source nœud public (Cake Wallet), read 2026-10-14
MoneroNetwork verified by reading its current block height on a public node.
What the coin actually does
XMR pays transaction fees, in full, to the miner who mines the block; nothing is withheld for a protocol or a treasury. New coins never stop arriving either: since 2022-05 the code has paid a flat 0.6 XMR floor on every block, forever, with no total ever written anywhere.
Start with the fee, because the code that checks every block settles it without room for argument. A Monero coinbase transaction must pay out exactly the block subsidy plus the fee, to a single output, and the chain rejects a block that pays anything else. No part of a Monero fee funds a treasury; the project itself is funded separately, through public donations and a per-proposal crowdfunding system, never through a tax on transactions.
Source monero/monero — src/cryptonote_core/blockchain.cpp, read 2026-10-14
Supply is the other half, and it is a floor rather than a ceiling. The constant written into the code pays a fixed subsidy per minute once the halving schedule runs its course, which works out to 0.6XMR at the network's roughly two-minute block time. The project's own account puts that floor in force from 2022-05 onward, and the block we read today still pays close to that exact amount.
Circulating supply on the day we checked stood at 18,817,299 XMR, a figure we read from an aggregator rather than from the chain ourselves. Nothing in the code ever reaches a final total; the subsidy keeps paying, forever, on purpose.
Source monero/monero — src/cryptonote_config.h + moneropedia · CoinGecko, read 2026-10-14
- In circulation18,817,299.437
- Issued, not circulating24.6
- What the token is forDirectly verified
- How many existThird-party supported
- How new ones appearDirectly verified
- Who received themDirectly verified
- Who can change the rulesDirectly verified
The KLEAR3 rating
2.9out of 5 in the KLEAR3 rating
Each axis gets 0 to 5 from the facts in the register, against thresholds written in advance. The overall score is their weighted average, and it only appears once at least 5 of the 6 axes rest on a measured fact.
- Audits ×1.3
- Open code ×1.2
- Business model ×1.1
- Token alignment ×1
- Governance ×1
- Maturity ×0.7
- Open code4
public repository · 62 published releases · 753 commits in 90 days
What holds it back licence unresolved: readable but not reusable
- Audits3
code reviewed in the open: 753 commits in 90 days, 12 years in production
What holds it back no report in our registry · no report opened: we do not know what they found
- Business model3
business model published by the protocol · collected by the miner, who receives the whole fee
What holds it back 2 question(s) unanswered: who pays, who collects, where the money goes
- Governance2
decision mechanism published
- Token alignment1
circulating share known
What holds it back total supply not measured · emission schedule unknown
- Maturity5
12 years of public code · 1 network verified by us
We rate the protocol: how it is built, how much of it can be checked, how its token lines up. Never an investment. A high score is not advice to buy, and a low one is not advice to sell.
What we could not establish
Three things. We found and opened one formal audit, of a single signature scheme, and no page indexing every review this project has had. The circulating-supply figure here comes from an aggregator, not a node we queried. And nobody is named as sitting on the Core Team itself.
The audit we found and opened, of the CLSAG ring signature construction, is real and names the two people who carried it out. What we did not find is a single page listing every component this project has had independently reviewed, so this page does not claim a count of audits, only the one we could actually open and read.
The circulating figure quoted above comes from an aggregator rather than from a sum we computed on the chain ourselves, and it is a snapshot, not a final count: every two minutes, a little more is added to it regardless of when this page is read.
The project describes its own Core Team as closed, unpaid and reachable only by invitation, and no public member list exists on the project's GitHub organisation. That is a stated design choice, not a gap we failed to fill, but it still means no name on this page can be checked against a role.
Source getmonero.org (billet + rapport PDF) · CoinGecko · GitHub + getmonero.org (Workgroups), read 2026-10-14
Frequently asked questions
Is Monero’s privacy mandatory, or can a transaction still be traced?
Yes, mandatory, and it has been since a scheduled upgrade at block 1400000. Every Monero transaction hides the amount, the sender and the receiver by default, with no setting that turns any of that off, and no transparent address left as a fallback.
That mechanism is called RingCT, and the project's own documentation describes it plainly: hidden amounts, origins and destinations, with coin generation that still verifies without trusting anyone. Before block 1400000 none of that was required, and a sender could choose a transparent transaction instead.
Zcash makes the opposite default: its shielded addresses hide the same details, but a plain, transparent address sits right next to them, and most of the real leaks on that chain happen at the seam between the two, not in the cryptography itself. Monero never gives a sender that transparent option to begin with. A node still has to see every input it verifies; it simply learns nothing else about it.
Does Monero really have no supply cap?
No, and the code says so directly: a minimum block reward is written into it, 0.6 XMR, repeated forever, rather than a total the supply is meant to stop at. The project's own account puts that floor in force from 2022-05 onward.
The constant that sets it, FINAL_SUBSIDY_PER_MINUTE, pays 0.3 XMR a minute, and a block lands roughly every 120 seconds, which is where the 0.6 XMR figure comes from. The block we read ourselves today still pays close to that exact amount.
That is not an accident left in the code by mistake: a reward that never reaches zero is the project's own answer to a question every capped coin eventually has to face, who keeps paying for security once new coins stop arriving. On a chain whose fees already go entirely to the miner, that floor is the one guarantee a miner can actually count on.
Has the FCMP++ privacy upgrade already shipped on Monero?
No, not on this software, despite what several pages published in 2026 already claim. The fork table compiled into the current release stops at fork 16, at block 2689608, and the block we read today still carries that same version number.
We checked two copies of that table rather than one: the development branch and the tagged release published on 2026-10-06, days before we read it. Both stop at the identical height, fork 16, block 2689608.
What is true is the direction: 20open tickets on the project's own tracker carry FCMP++ in their title right now, covering database integration and proof verification. A proposal from 2024-04-27 is still being built, not a feature already running for anyone. None of the pages making the opposite claim point back to the one place that would actually settle it, the table the software itself ships with.
Related: our Dogecoin profile shows another chain whose block reward never reaches zero, for an entirely different reason, and our methodology sets out what counts as a source here.
Ask an assistant to summarise it and check what it claims.