Biltong
Active member
As suspected quite empty - only 12 posts in last 12 hours, but this post impressed me:
Some notable weaknesses of Monero:
I liked the honesty - it shows confidence. Sure Trolls will latch onto it, but we can turn it back on them since we posted it ourselves.
Also as each problem/new development is addressed it can stay on the list crossed out with the date when fixed/created. I think new users will be highly impressed with the honesty and openness.
If you acknowledge your challenges openly it shows maturity, willingness to adapt and absolute confidence in your own abilities.
Some notable weaknesses of Monero:
- Privacy. I would argue that Monero is the most private currency around, but it is not perfect. There are still some privacy concerns. Most notably is an attack where one can figure out which node is the origin of a transaction. This is being mitigated with the development of Kovri, which is an I2P router in C++. With this implemented, transactions would instead be pushed to the network within I2P. The majority of node syncing would still occur over the clearnet since I2P speeds are limited. RingCT is not yet required, so some pool operators have yet to use these new privacy enhancements. It will be required later this year. Finally, the minimum mixin (being renamed to "ring size" to help avoid confusion with Bitcoin mixing services) of 2 is too low. Less than 25% of transactions use a ring size greater than 2. The minimum is supposed to be increased to 4 the same time RingCT will be made mandatory, but there is some discussion to increase this number further.
- Mining centralization. A large proportion of Monero mining is consumed by 4 large pools. As of writing, no single pool controls more than 20% of the total hashrate, but mining decentralization is extremely important. Smart mining is being developed to try and increase the hashrates of solo miners. (edited)
- No phone wallets. It is quite difficult to use Monero on your phone. Right now the only options are wallets that hold your keys for you (see Freewallet, which the community heavily discourages the use of) or web wallets (MyMonero). Jaxx claimed to have the implementation finished in December, but they later said that Monero support was scrapped. Exodus and others are still working on adding Monero, but in the meantime, this is difficult.
- Transaction size. As others have pointed out, Monero transactions are very large. I personally do not think this is a major issue, but they are much larger than a Bitcoin transaction.
- Limited use. Monero does not have the same level of adoption as Bitcoin. Although Monero has more volume than most coins similar in size, it is typically used as a tool to anonymize Bitcoin.
- Development difficulty. I mentioned this earlier with Jaxx, but Monero is harder to add things to than Bitcoin-based coins. For instance, may wallets added support for ZCash's non-anonymous coins very shortly after release. Edit: we have yet to have a hardware wallet support Monero.
- Limited merchant tools. To accept Monero currently, a merchant still has to do a bit of work. Projects like PayBee are trying to mitigate this, but the project has not seen much public development in the past year.
- Geographic limitations. No, Monero use is not limited to certain geographical areas. But certain areas have not seen significant adoption of Monero. These regions include South America, Africa, and Asia. Additional translations and resources are needed to help increase use in these regions.
I liked the honesty - it shows confidence. Sure Trolls will latch onto it, but we can turn it back on them since we posted it ourselves.
Also as each problem/new development is addressed it can stay on the list crossed out with the date when fixed/created. I think new users will be highly impressed with the honesty and openness.
If you acknowledge your challenges openly it shows maturity, willingness to adapt and absolute confidence in your own abilities.
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