Monero
Private, censorship-resistant digital cash live since 2014. All transactions shield sender, receiver and amount by default (ring signatures, stealth addresses, RingCT), making privacy a built-in monetary right rather than an opt-in feature. Fair-launched with no premine, mined with the CPU-egalitarian RandomX algorithm, and funded by community crowdfunding. Averaging ~35–40k transactions/day in early 2026 with active development (FCMP++ full-chain membership proofs in beta testing).
The reference implementation of private, censorship-resistant digital cash: permissionless, fair-launched, self-custodied money with twelve years of organic survival. Monetary design is fixed-schedule rather than economy-linked, and it makes no attempt at spending-power stability.
M69 Score
Scored against the Money2069 Manifesto — see methodology. Higher = more aligned.
Detailed Rating Breakdown
Issuance Model3x3.0
Fully permissionless, debt-free issuance via egalitarian CPU mining (RandomX), but the emission schedule (declining curve plus a fixed 0.6 XMR/block tail) is time-based — no link to real economic activity and no demand-responsive elasticity or contraction.
Spending Power Stability2x1.0
Free-floating with no stability target, benchmark or mechanism; spending power tracks a volatile market price.
Fiat Independence & Interoperability2x5.0
Sovereign unit of account with zero fiat reserves, no banking dependency and no fiat reference anywhere in the protocol; structurally immune to fiat failure.
Traction2x4.0
Twelve years live, ~35–40k transactions/day in early 2026 (up ~30% over two years), active development (May 2026 release, FCMP++ beta stressnet) and a strong organic culture; merchant acceptance and unit-of-account use remain narrow and exchange delistings constrain access.
Sovereignty5.0
No shutdown vector, fully self-hostable open-source stack, non-custodial, and private by default — the exemplar of privacy as a monetary right; consensus rules are enforced by the network, not an operator.
Governance3.0
Open, transparent development with community crowdfunding (CCS), but informal rough-consensus decision-making with no formal process or constitutional protection; emission rules are protected only by social consensus around hard forks.
Resilience3.0
Survived repeated adversarial events (ASIC waves answered by RandomX, exchange delistings, network spam attacks) with fully redundant infrastructure; but funding is donation-based, the cryptography is complex, and there is no economic-stress mechanism beyond the free float.
Inclusivity4.0
No identity requirement, near-zero fees, fair launch with no premine or insider allocation, and identical rules for every participant; price volatility and technical complexity are the main practical barriers.