Monero

Copyright (c) 2014-2026, The Monero Project
Portions Copyright (c) 2012-2013 The Cryptonote developers.

Table of Contents

• Development resources
• Vulnerability response
• Research
• Announcements
• Introduction
• About this project
• Supporting the project
• License
• Contributing
• Scheduled software/network upgrades
• Release staging schedule and protocol
• Compiling Monero from source
  • Dependencies
  • Guix builds
• Installing Monero from a package
• Running monerod
• Using Tor
• Pruning
• Debugging
• Known issues

Development resources

• Web: getmonero.org
• Mail: dev@getmonero.org
• GitHub: https://github.com/monero-project/monero
• IRC: #monero-dev on Libera
• It is HIGHLY recommended that you join the #monero-dev IRC channel if you are developing software that uses Monero. Due to the nature of this open source software project, joining this channel and idling is the best way to stay updated on best practices and new developments in the Monero ecosystem. All you need to do is join the IRC channel and idle to stay updated with the latest in Monero development. If you do not, you risk wasting resources on developing integrations that are not compatible with the Monero network. The Monero core team and community continuously make efforts to communicate updates, developments, and documentation via other platforms – but for the best information, you need to talk to other Monero developers, and they are on IRC. #monero-dev is about Monero development, not getting help about using Monero, or help about development of other software, including yours, unless it also pertains to Monero code itself. For these cases, checkout #monero.

Vulnerability response

• Our Vulnerability Response Process encourages responsible disclosure
• We are also available via HackerOne
• Monero is continuously fuzzed by OSS-Fuzz

Research

The Monero Research Lab is an open forum where the community coordinates research into Monero cryptography, protocols, fungibility, analysis, and more. We welcome collaboration and contributions from outside researchers! Because not all Lab work and publications are distributed as traditional preprints or articles, they may be easy to miss if you are conducting literature reviews for your own Monero research. You are encouraged to get in touch with the Monero research community if you have questions, wish to collaborate, or would like guidance to help avoid unnecessarily duplicating earlier or known work.

The Monero research community is available on IRC in #monero-research-lab on Libera, which is also accessible via Matrix.

Announcements

• You can subscribe to an announcement listserv to get critical announcements from the Monero core team. The announcement list can be very helpful for knowing when software updates are needed.

Introduction

Monero is a private, secure, untraceable, decentralised digital currency. You are your bank, you control your funds, and nobody can trace your transfers unless you allow them to do so.

Privacy: Monero uses a cryptographically sound system to allow you to send and receive funds without your transactions being easily revealed on the blockchain (the ledger of transactions that everyone has). This ensures that your purchases, receipts, and all transfers remain private by default.

Security: Using the power of a distributed peer-to-peer consensus network, every transaction on the network is cryptographically secured. Individual wallets have a 25-word mnemonic seed that is only displayed once and can be written down to backup the wallet. Wallet files should be encrypted with a strong passphrase to ensure they are useless if ever stolen.

Untraceability: By taking advantage of ring signatures, a special property of a certain type of cryptography, Monero is able to ensure that transactions are not only untraceable but have an optional measure of ambiguity that ensures that transactions cannot easily be tied back to an individual user or computer.

Decentralization: The utility of Monero depends on its decentralised peer-to-peer consensus network - anyone should be able to run the monero software, validate the integrity of the blockchain, and participate in all aspects of the monero network using consumer-grade commodity hardware. Decentralization of the monero network is maintained by software development that minimizes the costs of running the monero software and inhibits the proliferation of specialized, non-commodity hardware.

About this project

This is the core implementation of Monero. It is open source and completely free to use without restrictions, except for those specified in the license agreement below. There are no restrictions on anyone creating an alternative implementation of Monero that uses the protocol and network in a compatible manner.

As with many development projects, the repository on GitHub is considered to be the "staging" area for the latest changes. Before changes are merged into that branch on the main repository, they are tested by individual developers in their own branches, submitted as a pull request, and then subsequently tested by contributors who focus on testing and code reviews. That having been said, the repository should be carefully considered before using it in a production environment, unless there is a patch in the repository for a particular show-stopping issue you are experiencing. It is generally a better idea to use a tagged release for stability.

Anyone is welcome to contribute to Monero's codebase! If you have a fix or code change, feel free to submit it as a pull request directly to the "master" branch. In cases where the change is relatively small or does not affect other parts of the codebase, it may be merged in immediately by any one of the collaborators. On the other hand, if the change is particularly large or complex, it is expected that it will be discussed at length either well in advance of the pull request being submitted, or even directly on the pull request.

Supporting the project

Monero is a 100% community-sponsored endeavor. If you want to join our efforts, the easiest thing you can do is support the project financially. Both Monero and Bitcoin donations can be made to donate.getmonero.org if using a client that supports the OpenAlias standard. Alternatively, you can send XMR to the Monero donation address via the donate command (type help in the command-line wallet for details).

The Monero donation address is:
888tNkZrPN6JsEgekjMnABU4TBzc2Dt29EPAvkRxbANsAnjyPbb3iQ1YBRk1UXcdRsiKc9dhwMVgN5S9cQUiyoogDavup3H
Viewkey:
f359631075708155cc3d92a32b75a7d02a5dcf27756707b47a2b31b21c389501
Base address for restoring with address and viewkey:
44AFFq5kSiGBoZ4NMDwYtN18obc8AemS33DBLWs3H7otXft3XjrpDtQGv7SqSsaBYBb98uNbr2VBBEt7f2wfn3RVGQBEP3A

The Bitcoin donation address is:
1KTexdemPdxSBcG55heUuTjDRYqbC5ZL8H

Core development funding and/or some supporting services are also graciously provided by sponsors:

License

See LICENSE.

Contributing

If you want to help out, see CONTRIBUTING for a set of guidelines.

Scheduled software/network upgrades

Monero uses a scheduled software/network upgrade (hard fork) mechanism to implement new features into the Monero software and network. This means that users of Monero (end users and service providers) should run current versions and upgrade their software when new releases are available. Software upgrades occur when new features are developed and implemented in the codebase. Network upgrades occur in tandem with software upgrades that modify the consensus rules of the Monero network. The required software for network upgrades will be available prior to the scheduled network upgrade date. Please check the repository prior to this date for the proper Monero software version. Below is the historical schedule and the projected schedule for the next upgrade.

Dates are provided in the format YYYY-MM-DD. The "Minimum" is the software version that follows the new consensus rules. The "Recommended" version may include bug fixes and other new features that do not affect the consensus rules.