Monero glossary
39 terms you will meet when using Monero, defined in plain English. Type to filter.
- Atomic swap
- A trustless trade between two blockchains (for example BTC for XMR) where either both sides complete or neither does, with no exchange holding funds in the middle. Read the guides
- Atomic unit (piconero)
- The smallest unit of Monero. One XMR equals 1,000,000,000,000 (10^12) atomic units, also called piconero.
- Block reward
- New XMR created in each block and paid to the miner who found it, plus the transaction fees in that block.
- Block time
- The target interval between Monero blocks: about two minutes.
- Bulletproofs+
- A compact zero-knowledge range proof used in Monero since 2022. It proves an amount is valid and not negative without revealing it, and is smaller and faster than the original Bulletproofs. Read the guides
- CCS (Community Crowdfunding System)
- The Monero community’s donation-based funding platform for development, research and outreach proposals.
- Churning
- Sending your own funds to yourself one or more times. Its privacy benefit is debated and depends on timing and context; it is not a substitute for good habits. Read the guides
- Dandelion++
- A transaction-relay protocol that first passes a new transaction quietly through a few random peers before broadcasting it, making it hard to link a transaction to the IP address that created it.
- Decoy (mixin)
- An existing output from the blockchain included in a ring signature alongside the real input so observers cannot tell which one is being spent.
- FCMP++
- Full-Chain Membership Proofs plus Spend Authorization. Monero’s planned upgrade that replaces 16-member rings with a proof over essentially every output on the chain, greatly enlarging the anonymity set. Read the guides
- Fungibility
- The property that every unit of a currency is interchangeable with every other. Because Monero hides transaction history by default, coins do not carry a traceable “taint”.
- Hard fork (network upgrade)
- A scheduled protocol change that all nodes must adopt. Monero has used planned upgrades to add features such as RingCT, Bulletproofs and view tags.
- Haveno
- Open-source, non-custodial peer-to-peer exchange software for trading Monero against fiat and other cryptocurrencies, run over Tor by independent networks. Read the guides
- I2P
- An anonymous overlay network, an alternative to Tor, which Monero nodes and wallets can use to hide their IP addresses.
- Integrated address
- A Monero address with a short payment ID embedded. Largely replaced by subaddresses for telling incoming payments apart.
- Key image
- A unique value derived from an output and its private key. Publishing it with each spend lets the network block double spends without revealing which output was spent.
- Monero (XMR)
- A privacy-focused cryptocurrency launched in 2014 in which sender, receiver and amount are hidden by default. Read the guides
- Node
- A computer running monerod that stores the blockchain, verifies transactions and relays them. Running your own node is the most private way to use a wallet. Read the guides
- Output
- A chunk of XMR sent to a one-time address in a transaction. Your wallet balance is the sum of the unspent outputs it can recognise as yours.
- P2Pool
- A decentralised mining pool that runs as its own sidechain. Miners keep full control and are paid directly in the Monero block reward with no pool operator. Read the guides
- Payment proof (tx key)
- A secret generated for each transaction that the sender can share to prove to a specific person that a payment was made to a given address.
- Polyseed
- A newer 16-word Monero seed format that encodes the wallet’s creation date, so restores know where to start scanning.
- Pruned node
- A node that keeps roughly a third of the blockchain data while still fully verifying it, saving disk space.
- RandomX
- Monero’s proof-of-work algorithm, designed to run best on ordinary CPUs and resist specialised ASIC hardware. Read the guides
- Remote node
- A node run by someone else that your wallet connects to. Convenient, but the operator can see your IP address and the timing of your activity.
- Restore height
- The block height a wallet starts scanning from when restored from seed. Setting it close to your wallet’s creation date makes recovery much faster. Read the guides
- Ring signature
- A signature that proves one member of a group signed without revealing which one. Monero currently uses rings of 16 (one real input, 15 decoys). Read the guides
- RingCT
- Ring Confidential Transactions. Introduced in 2017, it hides transaction amounts using cryptographic commitments.
- Seed (mnemonic)
- The list of words — 25 in the standard Monero format, 16 in Polyseed — that can recreate your wallet. Anyone holding it controls the funds. Read the guides
- Seraphis and Jamtis
- A proposed future transaction protocol (Seraphis) and address scheme (Jamtis) for Monero, under long-term research.
- Spend key
- The private key that authorises spending. Never share it.
- Stealth address (one-time address)
- A unique address generated for every payment so that outputs on the blockchain cannot be linked to the public address the recipient shared.
- Subaddress
- An extra receiving address derived from the same wallet. Giving a different subaddress to each payer prevents them from linking your payments together.
- Tail emission
- A permanent minimum block reward of 0.6 XMR per block, active since June 2022, which keeps miners paid as fees alone may not secure the network. Read the guides
- Tor
- The onion-routing network that hides your IP address. Monero wallets and nodes can route traffic over Tor.
- View key
- A private key that lets the holder see incoming transactions to a wallet without being able to spend. Useful for audits and watch-only wallets.
- View tags
- A one-byte tag added to outputs in 2022 that lets wallets skip most outputs that are not theirs, speeding up wallet sync considerably.
- Watch-only wallet
- A wallet created from the address and private view key that can show incoming funds but cannot spend.
- XMRig
- A widely used open-source miner for RandomX on CPUs. Read the guides