Category: Guides

A Monero wallet needs a node. The wallet holds your keys and produces signatures, but it doesn't store the blockchain. It asks a node for the blocks and transactions it needs to scan, and that request pattern tells the node operator a few things even though Monero amounts and addresses are encrypted on chain by..

Monero’s promise is that nobody can see your balance or your counterparties. But that same privacy creates a practical problem: how do you prove to someone that you actually paid them? On Bitcoin you point at a public transaction and anyone can trace it. On Monero the recipient’s balance, your outputs, and the amounts are..

Monero addresses come in three shapes, and the differences are not cosmetic. Which one you hand out determines whether your payment gets routed correctly, whether the sender can attach a reference, and how much of your receiving activity stays separated. The prefixes tell you which is which, but two of the three start with the..

Every Monero wallet shows two numbers that quietly scare new users: unlock time, sometimes displayed as “10 blocks (about 20 minutes)”, and a balance split between locked and unlocked. It looks like the network is holding your money hostage. It is not. Unlock time is a consensus rule that protects you against a specific double-spend..

Most people send a Monero transaction maybe a handful of times a year. The fee is usually a fraction of a cent, so nobody looks at it. Then one day the network gets busy, the fee is suddenly a few cents, and the question comes up: what am I actually paying for, and why did..