Monero Glossary: 40 XMR Terms Every Beginner Should Know

Monero has its own vocabulary, and a lot of beginner questions on forums come down to one unfamiliar word. This glossary explains the 40 terms you are most likely to meet, grouped by topic and written in plain English. For deeper definitions, the official Moneropedia is the reference.

Money and units

1. XMR

The ticker symbol for Monero, used on exchanges and in wallets. “Monero” itself is Esperanto for “coin”.

2. Piconero

The smallest unit of Monero: 0.000000000001 XMR (one trillionth). Monero amounts have 12 decimal places, compared with Bitcoin’s 8.

3. Atomic units

The way software stores amounts internally. One atomic unit equals one piconero, so 1 XMR is stored as 1,000,000,000,000 atomic units. You will see this mostly in developer tools and APIs.

4. Tail emission

The permanent block reward of 0.6 XMR per block that started in June 2022 after the main emission (about 18.132 million XMR) ended. It keeps miners paid and adds well under 1% to supply each year.

5. Fungibility

The property that every unit is interchangeable with every other. Because Monero hides transaction histories, no XMR can be “tainted” or blacklisted because of its past.

Wallets and keys

6. Wallet

Software that holds your keys, scans the blockchain for your payments and creates transactions. The coins themselves live on the blockchain; the wallet controls access to them. See the Wallets section for options.

7. Mnemonic seed

A list of words that backs up your entire wallet. The standard Monero seed has 25 words; some wallets (such as Feather and Cake Wallet) also support Polyseed, a 16-word format that stores the wallet’s creation date. Anyone with your seed controls your money.

8. Restore height

The block height from which a wallet starts scanning when you restore it from a seed. Setting it to roughly when you created the wallet saves a lot of sync time. Polyseed stores this information automatically.

9. Private spend key

The key that authorises spending. Never share it. It is derived from your seed.

10. Private view key

A key that lets a wallet detect incoming payments and their amounts, but not spend them. Sharing it reveals your incoming transactions to whoever receives it.

11. View-only wallet

A wallet created from your address and private view key alone. It can watch for incoming funds but cannot spend, which is useful for shop owners and for keeping an eye on cold storage.

12. Primary address

Your wallet’s main public address. Standard Monero addresses are 95 characters long and start with 4.

13. Subaddress

An extra receiving address generated from the same wallet. Subaddresses start with 8. Using a different one for each sender stops people from linking your payments together, and all funds still arrive in one wallet.

14. Integrated address

A longer address (106 characters) that bundles a standard address with a short payment ID. It is mostly used by exchanges and merchants; subaddresses have largely replaced it for everyday use.

15. Payment ID

An identifier some services used to tell deposits apart. Long, unencrypted payment IDs are no longer supported; only short ones embedded in integrated addresses remain. If an exchange asks for one, follow its instructions exactly.

Privacy technology

16. Stealth address (one-time address)

A unique address created for every single payment. The sender’s wallet derives it from your public address, but only your wallet can recognise and spend it. This is why your public address never appears on the blockchain.

17. Ring signature

A signature that proves one member of a group authorised a transaction, without revealing which one. Monero uses it to hide which output is actually being spent.

18. Ring size

How many outputs are in each ring. Monero’s ring size has been fixed at 16 (your real input plus 15 decoys) since the August 2022 network upgrade.

19. Decoys

The other outputs pulled from the blockchain to sit alongside your real input in a ring. Your wallet picks them automatically using an algorithm designed to make them look realistic.

20. Key image

A unique tag produced for each output when it is spent. The network records key images so the same coins cannot be spent twice, yet the tag cannot be linked back to which ring member was real.

21. RingCT (Ring Confidential Transactions)

The system that hides transaction amounts, introduced in 2017. Nodes can still verify that inputs equal outputs without seeing the numbers.

22. Bulletproofs+

The current range-proof system that proves hidden amounts are valid (not negative) without revealing them. It arrived in August 2022 and made transactions smaller and faster to verify than the original Bulletproofs from 2018.

23. View tags

A small optimisation added in 2022 that lets wallets skip most outputs that are not theirs. It reduced wallet sync times by an estimated 30–40%.

24. Dandelion++

A method for relaying new transactions so it is harder to tell which node first broadcast them. It protects network-level privacy, alongside Tor and I2P.

25. Tor and I2P

Anonymity networks that hide your IP address. Monero wallets and nodes can connect through them so that remote node operators and network observers cannot easily tie transactions to your location. See Privacy & OpSec.

Network and nodes

26. Node (daemon)

A computer running Monero’s node software (monerod), which stores the blockchain, checks every transaction and relays data to others.

27. Full node vs pruned node

A full node stores the entire blockchain. A pruned node discards about two-thirds of the data while still verifying everything, which makes it practical on smaller drives.

28. Remote node

Someone else’s node that your wallet connects to so you do not have to download the blockchain. It is convenient, but the operator can see your IP address unless you use Tor or I2P.

29. Block time

How often a new block is added. Monero targets about 2 minutes.

30. Confirmations and unlock time

A confirmation is a block added on top of the one containing your transaction. Monero wallets wait about 10 confirmations (roughly 20 minutes) before received funds become spendable, which is why you see “locked” balances.

31. Transaction key and payment proof

Every transaction has a secret transaction key held by the sender. Sharing it, or a generated payment proof, lets a specific person verify that you paid them, which is useful for disputes with merchants or exchanges.

32. Transaction fee and priority

The small fee paid to miners. Wallets let you choose a priority level; higher priority pays more to be included sooner during busy periods.

33. Hard fork (network upgrade)

A scheduled change to the protocol rules that all nodes must upgrade to. Monero’s last one was in August 2022. Upgrades do not create new coins; you simply update your software.

Mining

34. RandomX

Monero’s proof-of-work algorithm since November 2019. It is designed to run best on general-purpose CPUs and to resist specialised ASIC hardware.

35. P2Pool

A decentralised mining pool with no operator, where miners build their own share chain and get paid directly in the block reward. It is widely recommended over centralised pools. Details in our Mining section.

36. XMRig

Popular open-source mining software for RandomX. Download it only from its official sources, since fake versions are common malware.

Ecosystem and future

37. Haveno

A decentralised, non-custodial exchange network for trading XMR peer to peer. See Buy, Sell & Swap.

38. Atomic swap

A trustless trade between two blockchains, most commonly BTC and XMR, where either both sides complete or neither does.

39. FCMP++ (Full-Chain Membership Proofs)

Monero’s biggest planned privacy upgrade. Instead of hiding your input among 15 decoys, it proves the input belongs to the set of essentially all outputs on the chain. It has been in public testing; check our News section for current mainnet status. A new addressing scheme called Carrot is being developed alongside it.

40. CCS (Community Crowdfunding System)

Monero’s donation-based funding platform. Developers, researchers and other contributors post proposals, and the community funds the ones it supports.

Quick reference table

Tip: If you only memorise three things, make them these: the seed equals your money, subaddresses are for receiving, and “locked” funds just need about 20 minutes.

Warning: Nobody legitimate will ever ask for your seed or private spend key. Not wallet developers, not exchanges, not “support” accounts on social media. Anyone who asks is trying to steal from you.

Where to go next

Once these words feel familiar, the rest of Monero becomes much easier to follow. A natural next step is to pick a wallet, create a seed and receive a small test payment. When you are ready to look under the hood, the Technology section explains ring signatures, stealth addresses and FCMP++ in more depth.