- It is HIGHLY recommended that you join the #monero-dev IRC channel if you are developing software that uses Monero. Due to the nature of this open source software project, joining this channel and idling is the best way to stay updated on best practices and new developments in the Monero ecosystem. All you need to do is join the IRC channel and idle to stay updated with the latest in Monero development. If you do not, you risk wasting resources on developing integrations that are not compatible with the Monero network. The Monero core team and community continuously make efforts to communicate updates, developments, and documentation via other platforms – but for the best information, you need to talk to other Monero developers, and they are on IRC. #monero-dev is about Monero development, not getting help about using Monero, or help about development of other software, including yours, unless it also pertains to Monero code itself. For these cases, checkout #monero.
The [Monero Research Lab](https://src.getmonero.org/resources/research-lab/) is an open forum where the community coordinates research into Monero cryptography, protocols, fungibility, analysis, and more. We welcome collaboration and contributions from outside researchers! Because not all Lab work and publications are distributed as traditional preprints or articles, they may be easy to miss if you are conducting literature reviews for your own Monero research. You are encouraged to get in touch with the Monero research community if you have questions, wish to collaborate, or would like guidance to help avoid unnecessarily duplicating earlier or known work.
The Monero research community is available on IRC in [#monero-research-lab on Libera](https://web.libera.chat/#monero-research-lab), which is also accessible via Matrix.
- You can subscribe to an [announcement listserv](https://lists.getmonero.org) to get critical announcements from the Monero core team. The announcement list can be very helpful for knowing when software updates are needed.
The CLI wallet is available in different languages. If you want to help translate it, see our self-hosted localization platform, Weblate, on [translate.getmonero.org]( https://translate.getmonero.org/projects/monero/cli-wallet/). Every translation *must* be uploaded on the platform, pull requests directly editing the code in this repository will be closed. If you need help with Weblate, you can find a guide with screenshots [here](https://github.com/monero-ecosystem/monero-translations/blob/master/weblate.md).
If you need help/support/info about translations, contact the localization workgroup. You can find the complete list of contacts on the repository of the workgroup: [monero-translations](https://github.com/monero-ecosystem/monero-translations#contacts).
Monero is a private, secure, untraceable, decentralised digital currency. You are your bank, you control your funds, and nobody can trace your transfers unless you allow them to do so.
**Privacy:** Monero uses a cryptographically sound system to allow you to send and receive funds without your transactions being easily revealed on the blockchain (the ledger of transactions that everyone has). This ensures that your purchases, receipts, and all transfers remain private by default.
**Security:** Using the power of a distributed peer-to-peer consensus network, every transaction on the network is cryptographically secured. Individual wallets have a 25-word mnemonic seed that is only displayed once and can be written down to backup the wallet. Wallet files should be encrypted with a strong passphrase to ensure they are useless if ever stolen.
**Untraceability:** By taking advantage of ring signatures, a special property of a certain type of cryptography, Monero is able to ensure that transactions are not only untraceable but have an optional measure of ambiguity that ensures that transactions cannot easily be tied back to an individual user or computer.
**Decentralization:** The utility of Monero depends on its decentralised peer-to-peer consensus network - anyone should be able to run the monero software, validate the integrity of the blockchain, and participate in all aspects of the monero network using consumer-grade commodity hardware. Decentralization of the monero network is maintained by software development that minimizes the costs of running the monero software and inhibits the proliferation of specialized, non-commodity hardware.
This is the core implementation of Monero. It is open source and completely free to use without restrictions, except for those specified in the license agreement below. There are no restrictions on anyone creating an alternative implementation of Monero that uses the protocol and network in a compatible manner.
As with many development projects, the repository on GitHub is considered to be the "staging" area for the latest changes. Before changes are merged into that branch on the main repository, they are tested by individual developers in their own branches, submitted as a pull request, and then subsequently tested by contributors who focus on testing and code reviews. That having been said, the repository should be carefully considered before using it in a production environment, unless there is a patch in the repository for a particular show-stopping issue you are experiencing. It is generally a better idea to use a tagged release for stability.
**Anyone is welcome to contribute to Monero's codebase!** If you have a fix or code change, feel free to submit it as a pull request directly to the "master" branch. In cases where the change is relatively small or does not affect other parts of the codebase, it may be merged in immediately by any one of the collaborators. On the other hand, if the change is particularly large or complex, it is expected that it will be discussed at length either well in advance of the pull request being submitted, or even directly on the pull request.
Monero is a 100% community-sponsored endeavor. If you want to join our efforts, the easiest thing you can do is support the project financially. Both Monero and Bitcoin donations can be made to **donate.getmonero.org** if using a client that supports the [OpenAlias](https://openalias.org) standard. Alternatively, you can send XMR to the Monero donation address via the `donate` command (type `help` in the command-line wallet for details).
Core development funding and/or some supporting services are also graciously provided by [sponsors](https://www.getmonero.org/community/sponsorships/):
There are also several mining pools that kindly donate a portion of their fees, [a list of them can be found on our Bitcointalk post](https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=583449.0).
Monero uses a scheduled software/network upgrade (hard fork) mechanism to implement new features into the Monero software and network. This means that users of Monero (end users and service providers) should run current versions and upgrade their software when new releases are available. Software upgrades occur when new features are developed and implemented in the codebase. Network upgrades occur in tandem with software upgrades that modify the consensus rules of the Monero network. The required software for network upgrades will be available prior to the scheduled network upgrade date. Please check the repository prior to this date for the proper Monero software version. Below is the historical schedule and the projected schedule for the next upgrade.
Dates are provided in the format YYYY-MM-DD. The "Minimum" is the software version that follows the new consensus rules. The "Recommended" version may include bug fixes and other new features that do not affect the consensus rules.
| 1788000 | 2019-03-09 | v10 | v0.14.0.0 | v0.14.1.2 | New PoW based on Cryptonight-R, new block weight algorithm, slightly more efficient RingCT format
| 1788720 | 2019-03-10 | v11 | v0.14.0.0 | v0.14.1.2 | forbid old RingCT transaction format
| 1978433 | 2019-11-30 | v12 | v0.15.0.0 | v0.16.0.0 | New PoW based on RandomX, only allow >= 2 outputs, change to the block median used to calculate penalty, v1 coinbases are forbidden, rct sigs in coinbase forbidden, 10 block lock time for incoming outputs
Approximately three months prior to a scheduled software upgrade, a branch from master will be created with the new release version tag. Pull requests that address bugs should then be made to both master and the new release branch. Pull requests that require extensive review and testing (generally, optimizations and new features) should *not* be made to the release branch.
Dependencies need to be built with -fPIC. Static libraries usually aren't, so you may have to build them yourself with -fPIC. Refer to their documentation for how to build them.
Tested on a Raspberry Pi Zero with a clean install of minimal Raspbian Stretch (2017-09-07 or later) from https://www.raspberrypi.org/downloads/raspbian/. If you are using Raspian Jessie, [please see note in the following section](#note-for-raspbian-jessie-users).
* If using an external hard disk without an external power supply, ensure it gets enough power to avoid hardware issues when syncing, by adding the line "max_usb_current=1" to /boot/config.txt
If you are using the older Raspbian Jessie image, compiling Monero is a bit more complicated. The version of Boost available in the Debian Jessie repositories is too old to use with Monero, and thus you must compile a newer version yourself. The following explains the extra steps and has been tested on a Raspberry Pi 2 with a clean install of minimal Raspbian Jessie.
* Install the latest version of boost (this may first require invoking `apt-get remove --purge libboost*-dev` to remove a previous version if you're not using a clean install):
* From here, follow the [general Raspberry Pi instructions](#on-the-raspberry-pi) from the "Clone Monero and checkout most recent release version" step.
* If you would like a specific [version/tag](https://github.com/monero-project/monero/tags), do a git checkout for that version. eg. 'v0.18.3.4'. If you don't care about the version and just want binaries from master, skip this step:
If you are running Monero in a jail, you need to add `sysvsem="new"` to your jail configuration, otherwise lmdb will throw the error message: `Failed to open lmdb environment: Function not implemented`.
Check that the dependencies are present: `pkg_info -c libexecinfo boost-headers boost-libs protobuf readline libusb1 zeromq git-base pkgconf gmake cmake | more`, and install any that are reported missing, using `pkg_add` or from your pkgsrc tree. Readline is optional but worth having.
Third-party dependencies are usually under `/usr/pkg/`, but if you have a custom setup, adjust the "/usr/pkg" (below) accordingly.
Clone the monero repository recursively and checkout the most recent release as described above. Then build monero: `gmake BOOST_ROOT=/usr/pkg LDFLAGS="-Wl,-R/usr/pkg/lib" release`. The resulting executables can be found in `build/NetBSD/[Release version]/Release/bin/`.
By default, in either dynamically or statically linked builds, binaries target the specific host processor on which the build happens and are not portable to other processors. Portable binaries can be built using the following targets:
The required packages are the names for each toolchain on apt. Depending on your distro, they may have different names. The `depends` system has been tested on Ubuntu 18.04 and 20.04.
Using `depends` might also be easier to compile Monero on Windows than using MSYS. Activate Windows Subsystem for Linux (WSL) with a distro (for example Ubuntu), install the apt build-essentials and follow the `depends` steps as depicted above.
The produced binaries still link libc dynamically. If the binary is compiled on a current distribution, it might not run on an older distribution with an older installation of libc. Passing `-DBACKCOMPAT=ON` to cmake will make sure that the binary will run on systems having at least libc version 2.17.
**DISCLAIMER: These packages are not part of this repository or maintained by this project's contributors, and as such, do not go through the same review process to ensure their trustworthiness and security.**
This section contains general instructions for debugging failed installs or problems encountered with Monero. First, ensure you are running the latest version built from the GitHub repo.
We generally use the tool `gdb` (GNU debugger) to provide stack trace functionality, and `ulimit` to provide core dumps in builds which crash or segfault.
When it terminates with an output along the lines of "Segmentation fault (core dumped)", there should be a core dump file in the same directory as monerod. It may be named just `core`, or `core.xxxx` with numbers appended.
Instructions for debugging suspected blockchain corruption as per @HYC
There is an `mdb_stat` command in the LMDB source that can print statistics about the database but it's not routinely built. This can be built with the following command:
The output of `mdb_stat -ea <path to blockchain dir>` will indicate inconsistencies in the blocks, block_heights and block_info table.
The output of `mdb_dump -s blocks <path to blockchain dir>` and `mdb_dump -s block_info <path to blockchain dir>` is useful for indicating whether blocks and block_info contain the same keys.
These records are dumped as hex data, where the first line is the key and the second line is the data.
Because of the nature of the socket-based protocols that drive monero, certain protocol weaknesses are somewhat unavoidable at this time. While these weaknesses can theoretically be fully mitigated, the effort required (the means) may not justify the ends. As such, please consider taking the following precautions if you are a monero node operator:
- Run `monerod` on a "secured" machine. If operational security is not your forte, at a very minimum, have a dedicated a computer running `monerod` and **do not** browse the web, use email clients, or use any other potentially harmful apps on your `monerod` machine. **Do not click links or load URL/MUA content on the same machine**. Doing so may potentially exploit weaknesses in commands which accept "localhost" and "127.0.0.1".
- If you plan on hosting a public "remote" node, start `monerod` with `--restricted-rpc`. This is a must.
Certain blockchain "features" can be considered "bugs" if misused correctly. Consequently, please consider the following:
- When receiving monero, be aware that it may be locked for an arbitrary time if the sender elected to, preventing you from spending that monero until the lock time expires. You may want to hold off acting upon such a transaction until the unlock time lapses. To get a sense of that time, you can consider the remaining blocktime until unlock as seen in the `show_transfers` command.
