Monero: No plans to go ‘legit’

A cursory Monero Google search brings up returns on a number of worrying links to criminal activity. For example, blockchain analytics firm Chainalysis released a report in January covering the state of crime in the crypto sector. Among other things, the report said that Monero use on dark webs was on the rise due to its single-minded focus on privacy (and its lower fees in comparison to bitcoin).

Earlier in 2018 reports began to emerge about North Korea planting malicious scripts onto computers which would mine Monero without the knowledge of the owner and send it back to the dictatorship. North Korea has been hit hard by sanctions and this was seen as an effective way to attempt to circumvent these measures.

In recent days the Monero project has been in the spotlight once again, as a new campaign to raise bail money for Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) detainees, is doing so using Monero mining. The initiative, launched by media publication The New Inquiry, is called Bail Bloc.

To take part in the campaign, users download a Monero mining programme from the Bail Bloc website that allows them to donate a percentage (from 10 to 50 percent) of their computer’s processing power towards Monero mining.

Bailbloc then cashes out the XMR and uses the proceeds to provide bail for ICE detainees. Speaking to the Observer, Bail Bloc co-creator Grayson Earle said: "With the rise of cryptocurrencies, we wanted to take some of that speculative energy and make it do something actually useful."

The rise of crypto-activism

Bailbloc is just the latest in a long list of parties attempting to harness the blockchain and cryptocurrencies to effect change or challenge the status quo. While Bailbloc is focused on abolishing the entirety of the detention system, including prisons and the related cash bail, a number of causes, which seem to be its polar opposite are also attracted to the digital currency sector.

An example is the growing link between members of the so-called "alt-right" and bitcoin but there are also less extreme examples of crypto-based activism, many focusing on effecting social change.

While the examples above represent extremes in their desired end result, it is important to consider the history of the cryptocurrency sector. To a large extent, bitcoin is a result of libertarian and crypto-anarchist ideologies. To this day, many of the people who participate in the sector relate or subscribe to these ideologies in some way.

The blockchain’s features of decentralization and relative anonymity lend themselves to activism due to their inbuilt censorship-resistant mechanisms. These features are perhaps most pronounced in privacy-centric projects such as Monero.

Because of its privacy-enhancing features, Monero, and to a lesser extent its peers like Zcash and Dash, are frequently in the news for all the wrong reasons. Reminiscent of the early days of bitcoin, the links between these privacy-centric projects and nefarious, or otherwise morally questionable, actions are often highlighted in the mainstream media.

From the horse’s mouth

More than most, Monero appears to pride itself on the ideologies that form its technological progression and as a result, continues to be a hotbed of activity for parties challenging the status quo.

Speaking on Episode 93 of Laura Shin’s Unchained Podcast, Monero’s lead developer, Riccardo "Fluffypony" Spagni, gave some insights on the continued link of the privacy-enhancing project to illegal or immoral activity — making the point that both concepts are subjective, and attitudes towards them differ wildly across cultures and political jurisdictions.

Thus, it is almost impossible to operate without breaking some law or moral code somewhere, he says, but that is not Monero’s intended use case. "Bitcoin in its infancy definitely had more illegal transactions, more nefarious transactions than ones that were used positively. But it outgrew that and I’m positive Monero will too."

Speaking to the illegal ways that Monero may be used, Spagni points out that you cannot code for or against human actions. Human beings are responsible for their actions and Monero is simply a tool.

"Monero is a tool the same way a kitchen knife is a tool. And I can’t imagine that a kitchen knife designer who designs an amazing, incredibly sharp kitchen knife and produces them in droves, lies awake at night worrying about all the murders that are occurring with his kitchen knife. It’s a tool. […] As a person who works on the tool, you want that tool to be as good as it possibly can. Not to enhance things for people who use it for nefarious reasons but to protect the people who are relying on it because it might mean the difference between life or death for them. And those are the people I think about."

Spagni is alluding to the increased use of Monero in Venezuela. "When I look at the impact that cryptocurrencies that bitcoin and Monero have on the Venezuelan people and how important a privacy-enhancing cryptocurrency like Monero might end up being if the government does decide to clamp down. I am reminded of the good that Monero does."

Spagni maintains that Monero is an important tool in facilitating the provision of a human right: the right to privacy. "My interest in Monero was primarily, at the time, and still is ideological. I have a belief in privacy as a basic human right. And I was interested in this technology that could advance that, that could enable people’s privacy especially those who were in places and situations where their privacy was taken away from them."

This ideology informs Monero’s continued push for transactional privacy. However, Spagni points out that the privacy inherent to the project is not absolute in that there are tools inbuilt into the network that support transparency. He says: "One wouldn’t normally associate transparency with Monero but there is a way that Monero can be private and transparent at the same time."

Spagni is referencing the ‘view key’ feature, which allows a user to reveal details about their wallet to a third party. He adds that this key can be divulged to authorities or those acting in an oversight capacity such as in the context of a charity or the tax man. He states: "There is default privacy, mandatory privacy but it is opt out and you can do it at any time.

Despite the often negative press coverage and its status as a hotbed of activity for parties who challenge the status quo, the Monero project continues to pride itself on its founding ideologies — and is pushing forward with technological innovations on its network that will support them. To that end, its development team is currently working on native Tor support on its network, an upgrade which is expected to be launched soon.