Monero 0.18.5.4 and Every Fluorine Fermi Release Since 2025

Monero has shipped ten “Fluorine Fermi” point releases since July 2025. None changed consensus, but together they hardened nodes against spy nodes and malicious remote nodes, improved hardware wallet support, and modernized networking. On 16 October 2026 the project announced 0.18.5.4, the current version for both the command-line tools and the GUI. Here’s what each release changed, in date order, and what node runners and wallet users should do.

At a glance: the release table

Dates below come from the monero-project GitHub releases page and getmonero.org announcements. Where the two differ by a day, the GitHub tag date and the blog post date are listed separately.

The 0.18.4.x series (July 2025 – March 2026)

0.18.4.1 and 0.18.4.2: wallet fixes and a remote-node leak

0.18.4.1 (25 July 2025) was a bug-fix release. It fixed stale multisig data after a failed refresh, a password-change bug, and subaddress lookahead handling, and added a set_subaddress_lookahead RPC endpoint.

0.18.4.2 (26 August 2025) mattered more for privacy. It fixed a privacy leak when using a malicious remote node and made the displayed connection count more accurate. Many mobile and light-wallet users rely on remote nodes, so this was a fix worth installing quickly.

0.18.4.3: spy-node mitigation

Announced on 9 October 2025 and described as “highly recommended”, 0.18.4.3 changed how nodes choose peers. It adds /24 subnet deduplication so that a node is less likely to connect to many peers in the same IP block, which is a pattern associated with so-called spy nodes run by surveillance firms. Cointelegraph’s 10 October 2025 report connected the release to that concern. The update also refreshed seed nodes and raised the batch subaddress limit.

Note: Peer-selection changes reduce exposure but don’t eliminate it. Running your own node over Tor or I2P is still the strongest defence. Our Privacy & OpSec section explains why.

0.18.4.4 to 0.18.4.6: hardware wallets and P2P polish

• 0.18.4.4 (19 November 2025) made exporting the Ledger secret view key mandatory and fixed a transaction-pool weight miscalculation in an edge case.
• 0.18.4.5 (11 January 2026) fixed a crash in the Ledger Monero app, added Ledger Nano Gen5 support, and fixed a race condition that dropped connections during sync. U.Today noted the release on 18 January 2026, in the middle of XMR’s run to a new all-time high.
• 0.18.4.6 (11 March 2026) fixed a peer-list filter bug, several P2P connection bugs, and a multisig key exchange failure in monero-gen-trusted-multisig.

The 0.18.5.x series (May – October 2026)

0.18.5.0: SOCKS v5 in, UPnP out

Announced on getmonero.org on 11 May 2026, 0.18.5.0 was the last larger feature release of the 0.18 line. Highlights from the official post:

• SOCKS v5 support in both the daemon and the wallet, which helps users routing traffic through Tor or other proxies.
• UPnP support removed from the daemon.
• ZMQ improvements, including a restricted RPC mode and better reporting of stem-phase (Dandelion++) transactions.
• Wallet hardening, with stronger proof validation and a change-address sanity check.
• Tighter restricted RPC, limiting sensitive wallet-RPC methods when --restricted-rpc is set.
• LoongArch build support.

Warning: If your home node depended on UPnP to open its P2P port automatically, it will stop accepting inbound connections after you upgrade to 0.18.5.x. Forward TCP port 18080 manually on your router (and 18089 if you run a public restricted RPC).

0.18.5.1 and the 0.18.5.2 GUI

0.18.5.1 (8 July 2026) added an IPv6 connection display, fixed slow shutdown when using Tor or I2P, restricted the get_alt_blocks_hashes RPC, and fixed memory leaks in readline and in RandomX on Windows. A GUI-only 0.18.5.2 followed on 21 July 2026.

0.18.5.3: the “highly recommended” October release

On 6 October 2026 the project announced 0.18.5.3, calling it a highly recommended release with a large number of bug fixes. The most user-relevant items in the official changelog:

Node (daemon)

• Fixes P2P connection stalls and restores transaction relay after a restart.
• Groups public IPv6 connection limits by /64 subnet, the IPv6 version of the earlier anti-spy-node logic.
• Improves LMDB database resizing and block relay handling.
• Tightens restricted RPC: disables get_transaction_pool, improves privacy filtering, limits get_public_nodes to public-zone peers, and rejects deep block submissions.

Wallet

• Hardening against malicious remote nodes, across four separate pull requests.
• Better validation for cold signing and multisig, and faster refresh for old accounts.
• Fixes for an infinite loop when estimating transactions with many outputs, and for payment ID display.

Other

• Updates RandomX to v1.2.3.
• Prevents log injection via malformed JSON and HTTP headers.

0.18.5.4: the current release

GitHub tagged 0.18.5.4 on 17 October, and getmonero.org announced CLI and GUI builds dated 16 October 2026. It’s a minor follow-up that:

• fixes DNSSEC validation for checkpoints, blocklists and update checks, and
• restores string-to-integer conversion in JSON RPC requests, a compatibility behaviour the release notes say is slated for removal in v0.19.

That last point is worth noting for developers. Integrations that send numbers as strings over JSON RPC should be fixed now, before the 0.19 series arrives with FCMP++.

Do you need to upgrade?

None of these releases is a hard fork, so an older 0.18 node won’t be cut off from the network. But security fixes only help you if you install them. For wallet-specific advice, see our Wallets section.

How to upgrade safely

1. Download only from official sources: the Downloads page on getmonero.org or the monero-project GitHub releases page.
2. Verify the hashes. Check the file’s SHA-256 against the GPG-signed hashes list, and verify the list’s signature with the developer keys in the source tree’s utils/gpg_keys directory.
3. Stop monerod cleanly (exit in the daemon console, or stop your service) before replacing the binaries.
4. Replace the binaries and restart. Your blockchain database (~/.bitmonero by default) and wallet files don’t need to be touched.
5. Check port forwarding if you’re coming from a version older than 0.18.5.0.

Tip: On a Linux server, keep the old binaries in a dated folder for a day or two. If something misbehaves, rolling back is just a symlink change.

Also new: a redesigned getmonero.org (beta)

On 8 September 2026 the project announced beta.getmonero.org, a redesign of the official site funded through the Community Crowdfunding System. The beta runs no JavaScript, contacts no third-party servers, follows the browser’s light or dark setting, and uses icon formats that load under Tor Browser’s strictest security level. It has moved from Jekyll to Astro. Only English, Arabic and Chinese were available at launch. The team asks testers to report problems on GitHub with “[beta]” in the issue title.

What comes next: 0.19 and FCMP++

The FCMP++ and Carrot upgrade is being tested on a separate v0.19.0.0-beta stressnet branch, with v3.0 released on 25 September 2026. That will be the next consensus-changing release, and no activation date has been announced. Until then, 0.18.5.4 is the version to run.