This talk begins with a dissection of life’s winding paths, exploring the choices and paths that brought each of us to MoneroKon. We’ll look at how well-known members of the Monero community first discovered Monero, pinpointing the specific moments or details that made it stick to them.

Then we’ll explore nature’s design: the hooks and loops that help burrs spread their seeds far and wide, and how that mirrors human attitudes. Some of us are mostly hooks, creating tiny signals and events that invite others in. Others are mostly loops, passive consumers of media and tools.

I’ll focus on practical strategies to increase the hook ratio. Because Monero needs more Velcro: more connections, people staying around, and maybe a bit more noise. Life’s too short to walk around with just loops hanging out.

The current Monero protocol uses linkable ring signatures to prove coin ownership in a way that doesn't leak the specific coin. But other designs do things differently! In this talk, we'll look at different approaches to proving ownership in digital asset protocols: Monero (today and tomorrow!), Firo, and Zcash. Each offers a unique and interesting look at how we can use different cryptographic techniques toward the same goal.

There are a few planned changes to Monero's consensus protocol revolving around the block format. A tweak to the PoW algorithm, RandomX, would allow for stability against DoS attacks with significant improvements to negative testing speed in the average case. On the FCMP++ side, to allow for wallets to check FCMP trees provided by nodes, a field called the "FCMP tree root" will be added to the block data. I will also discuss a more speculative change to the p2p protocol which would allow for header-only sync in Monero, and what has already been done to get that set in motion. The combination of all these changes have strong implications for node stability, wallet trust requirements for remote nodes, and the possibility for efficient SPV wallets.

Cake Wallet's stage time

OSPEAD estimates the age distribution of the real spend in Monero's ring signatures. Monero's decoy selection algorithm could be changed to closely mimic the real spend age distribution, yet an anti-privacy adversary can also use the real spend distribution to execute the MAP Decoder attack on past ring signature data. The attack raises the probability of correctly guessing the real spend in a 16-member ring from 6.25% to 23.5%, on average.

Multiple nonstandard decoy distributions are modeled as repeated measurements drawn from unknown distributions components, then estimated by the method of Bonhomme, Jochmans, & Robin (2016). The age distribution of ring signatures associated with a given decoy distribution is modeled as a two-component mixture distribution. The decoy distribution is subtracted from the on-chain data distribution to obtain the real spend distribution.

Anonymous cryptocurrencies face a fundamental challenge: ensuring both integrity and privacy while maintaining scalability. A key issue is the growing storage overhead, as transactions do not reveal spent outputs and requiring additional data to prevent double-spending. We propose a privacy-preserving payment scheme that mitigates this overhead by randomly partitioning unspent outputs into fixed-size bins. Once a bin reaches its reference limit, it is pruned from the ledger, reducing storage while preserving privacy. Our approach leverages smaller untraceability sets rather than the entire set of outputs, improving scalability. We formalize security and privacy for scalable privacy-preserving cryptocurrencies and analyze the role of randomized partitioning in untraceability and efficiency. We instantiate our approach with a Merkle-subtree-based construction that enables efficient proofs and pruning. Additionally, we evaluate the scheme’s resilience against large-scale attacks and discuss open problems, demonstrating how partitioning enhances privacy-preserving cryptocurrency design.

Secure your data and communications using GnuPG!

Can't get your head around about some of the GnuPG concepts?
- Asymmetric cryptography
- Hash functions
- Subkeys
- Dos and Don'ts
Let's go over them and see how to resist surveillance better!
Learn how to properly generate your key, store it, and take the most care of it.

A quick overview of the challenges we encountered with implementing P2pool with merge mining monero and how we overcame them

This presentation gives an overview of Monero reviews and audits related to FCMP++ and Serai. Justin from MAGIC Grants will discuss the importance of these reviews, how the vendors were selected, what their outcomes were, and what is next.

Money is now primarily digital, under full control of the governments or
respective organs, corporations hoard wealth like never before,
FIAT money, which is what most people have, loses drastically
on value due to inflation.

Yet, there is no cool cyberware, no Shinkanzen trains in
almost all cities, and the best we got in AI are
overbloated chatbots.

Now what?

On 2022-08-12, the Monero network was stress-tested with ~50,000 transactions and under $1,000 in fees in 24 hours, triggering “dynamic block sizing” for the first time, and highlighting performance constraints. Under peak load, a few nodes crashed, and the average confirmation times rose from about 2 minutes to roughly 30 minutes (≈ 15 blocks). Services like CakeWallet, by then running on “default low-priority fees”, also experienced a multihour slowdown, with some users reporting waiting times of 3 hours (https://x.com/cakewallet/status/1558094085642194945). These results expose concrete performance constraints in fee estimation, mining rules and node stability, and point to targeted improvements for optimized transaction pool management and adaptive fee algorithms to bolster the resilience of Monero. The findings underscore the need for ongoing, high-intensity testing, to ensure Monero can more efficiently handle unexpected traffic spikes without sacrificing privacy or decentralization.

Iroh is a distributed systems toolkit for building on direct connections between any two devices, no matter where they are. It provides content-addressed storage and verified streaming, similarly to IPFS.
In this workshop, we will build a peer-to-peer content delivery network that works on all devices and can be used to stream videos or distribute large assets such as LLM weights.
Once learning the basics—opening p2p QUIC connections using iroh, plugging in iroh-blobs and building a p2p CDN that uses the machines of the workshop participants—we will be able to provide large data items and efficiently download them from multiple providers.
NB: You will need cargo and a rust IDE installed.

While the decentralised nature of Distributed Ledger Technology systems suggests the absence of a central authority, it does not eliminate the possibility of supernodes within the network. To investigate this, we collected peerlist data from TCP flows, validated our connection inference algorithm, and mapped the Monero network’s structure, achieving high accuracy that improves with longer observation periods.
This study is the first to uncover connectivity patterns in Monero’s updated peer protocol, providing visual and structural insights into its topology. A key focus is an interconnectivity among the 14 highest-degree nodes and their immediate neighbours. With a reasonably accurate approximation of the network structure, simulating an Eclipse attack becomes feasible. Furthermore, overlapping neighbours among supernodes enable attackers to reduce the number of unique connections required, making such attacks more cost-effective.

Monero uses an adaptive block weight based upon the CryptoNote excess size penalty with a short term median over the last 100 blocks, https://bytecoin.org/old/whitepaper.pdf This leads to the Monero fee market. We will consider the impact of FCMP++ on this fee market. In the particular necessary changes to support FCMP++, the impact FCMP++ on spam attacks, and the critical importance of the tail emission on proof of work security, growth management and spam control. We will also discuss the resulting transaction fee changes and simplification of the transaction fee calculations by Monero wallets. We will also consider the implication of The FCMP++ Monero Fee Market on both small block (Bitcoin Core type) and large / adaptive block (Bitcoin Cash type) post emission fee markets.

Edge's stage time

As Monero continues to be regularly delisted from centralized exchanges, P2P services, and decentralized exchanges, atomic swaps are bound to attract increased liquidity. While BTC-XMR atomic swaps have made a lot of progress, Ethereum-based ones have stalled after their initial momentum.
This talk will go over some changes which could be introduced to make atomic swaps easier to use and more popular on EVM-based blockchains, from a technical standpoint as well as from a user's one.

Off-chain payment channels have tremendous utility. Thousands of transactions can be aggregated every minute without consuming block space; and seamless point-of-sale transactions would make Monero purchases feel no different to using a credit card or Venmo.

Unfortunately, payment channels require a persistent state mechanism to keep track of the payment channel balance; something that is highly unlikely to be introduced to Monero (for good reason). Therefore it may appear that payment channels are impossible in Monero.

Enter Grease: a minimal, bidirectional proof-of-concept payment channel implementation for Monero. It makes use of verifiable, consecutive, one-way functions (VCOF) and consecutive linkable ring adapter signatures (CLRAS) in concert with a smart-contract enabled blockchain (SCEB) to provide payment channels with the promise of unlocking these and other use cases.

We discuss our implementation, potential refinements and improvements and the impact of FCMP on future development.

Nearly all blockchains in existence use digital signature schemes for unlocking funds for expenditure, even though this primitive is overkill for that purpose. A commitment scheme suffices, as long as the opening protocol binds to the transaction. Moreover, and perhaps surprisingly, this minimally sufficient primitive can be compatible with an architecture for anonymous payments -- and, incidentally, post-quantum security.

This signature-free strategy does not require public key cryptography except optionally and in the form of an encryption scheme for recipients wanting to receive notifications of incoming payments on-chain. Recipients comfortable with off-chain notifications benefit from the smallest possible transactions and thus transaction fees. This talk covers the life cycle and technical features of transactions in this paradigm, as featured by Neptune Cash.

Generalized Discrete Logarithm Problem (GDLP) is an extension of the Discrete Logarithm Problem (DLP). The DLP is not quantum secure. However we have proven that GDLP is. In this workshop we will discuss the complexity theory properties of the GDLP and compare it to the DLP.

Nym is a noise-generating mixnet built on top of a decentralized network. By adding noise and mixing packets in its anonymous overlay network with per-packet routing, it accomplishes superior privacy to existing VPNs and even Tor. It also offers a "fast" mode that turns mixing off and offers speed comparable to VPNs, and is faster than Tor. NymVPN is an interface, for all major operating systems, that makes using the Nym mixnet as easy as using a traditional VPN. No identity is required to subscribe to NymVPN as users are identified with key-pairs where the keys are used to create unlinkable anonymous credentials. These anonymous credentials are then used to "log in" to the VPN and delink any payment from usage of NymVPN. And Monero can be used for payment!

Remember when Linux users went for "like Windows, but cheaper?". They've lost their edge - libre, better, customizable, loved by users, stable and performant. Are we Monero folks just “Bitcoin with better privacy,” clinging to a fading dream? Network effects are kicking our ass—money loves a crowd. Is there still some place for us in the world? Are we the last cypherpunks or are we doomed to be the crypto equivalent of groupies for a band that’s already broken up? I'll propose some meaningful things we can do in this situation.

In my talk, I will describe the advantages (and pitfalls) of P2P networks, including how they can help bypass censorship, as well as needless centralisation like ICANN’s domain-name monopoly.

I will explain the value of mesh networks and their great untapped potential — how they can be used to save lives during emergencies and make digital communication more efficient. I will give examples of mesh networks used today, such as Meshtastic, and will warn about the perverse, surveillance-focussed use of mesh networks by companies like Apple and Google.

The elephant in the room almost no one dares to talk about: mobile network attack vectors, from IMSI Catchers to SS7. Not only state actors are capable of intercepting your sms and calls, anybody who is motivated and skillfull enough can do it. This workshop will include a live demonstration against various devices, even so-called secure ones.
https://shadowshield.run/

This presentation explores the intersection of Ayn Rand’s philosophical principles, particularly her emphasis on individualism and personal sovereignty, with the concept of privacy in the context of cryptocurrency. Rand championed the right of individuals to control their own lives, property, and decisions, free from external force. I'll be discussing how cryptocurrency—decentralized, pseudonymous, and resistant to centralized oversight—embodies Rand’s ideals by empowering individuals to safeguard their financial privacy against the surveillance state and institutional overreach. Crypto feels like a real-world spin on Rand’s vision, giving us a way to take back control. Ultimately, my goal is to show how Rand’s philosophy provides a compelling intellectual foundation for understanding and advocating privacy in our modern era.

1.The basics of the legal circumstances both inside and outside the USA.
2.The New Second Amendment: Self defense is a universal human right, regardless of nationality.
3.The three design objectives of The New Second Amendment and the triple constraint they form.
4.The FGC-9 was the first attempt at overcoming the triple constraint.
5.How the Urutau refines the FGC-9 concept, being cheaper, easier to make, more reliable, and more OpSec-aware.

Forget the rules; it's all about living in the moment and creating something bold and unforgettable. Some materials are provided. Just bring your energy and let's make some art!
Please meet us at the courtyard!

EVM Monero Swaps

An important but overlooked use case for digital asset mnemonic seeds is risky situations like border crossings, where inspection or seizure of property could make possession of a written mnemonic dangerous. How can these situations be handled safely? We will look at existing approaches with a critical eye and identify important concerns.
We will then propose a controversial alternative that uses off-the-shelf cryptographic components in a new way.

Monero has excellent transaction-level privacy, and things should get even better soon with FCMP++s. But these innovations aren't sufficient if you have deanonymization vectors on the network level. Tor gives you network privacy in theory — but how do you know your Monero wallet isn't leaking some network traffic outside of Tor? Proxy leaks are a surprisingly common class of security vulnerability, and they've historically been difficult to audit for.

SocksTrace is a tool designed to detect proxy leaks by intercepting network syscalls using seccomp. SocksTrace is suitable for usage in CI testing as well as manual QA testing, and it can also SOCKSify connections if used with applications that don’t support Tor. This talk will cover the technical design of SocksTrace, how our approach compares to existing tools like Whonix and torsocks, and how Monero application developers can integrate SocksTrace into their workflows.

Since 2015 the Critical Decentralization Cluster (CDC, https://decentral.community) has been the hub for cryptocurrencies, privacy, decentralization and open-source hardware at the annual Chaos Communication Congress (C3). The Monero community has been an integral part of the cluster since day 1. Preparations for the 39th edition of C3 (39C3) are now rolling out and we are looking to involve Monero and affiliated projects even more.

According to recent analysis by the Monero Research Lab, one or more anti-privacy adversaries have set up many spy nodes on the Monero network, composing up to 40 percent of reachable node addresses. Connections to these spy nodes would make up an estimated 15 percent of the privacy-sensitive outbound connections established by honest nodes that use the default configuration. This talk will quantitatively estimate the privacy impact of spy nodes even when Monero's Dandelion++ protocol is used. The following countermeasures will be evaluated: opt-in IP address ban lists, anonymity networks like Tor and I2P, a Dandelion++ alternative called Clover, subnet deduplication, and protocols that verify that an internet address is really operating a distinct node. The Confidentiality, Integrity, and Availability triad in information security will guide comparisons of these countermeasures.

The EU’s DAC8 directive, alongside MiCA and CARF, is the next phase of global financial surveillance - mandating centralized exchanges to report user holdings and transactions straight to tax authorities. This talk explores what that means for the future of privacy-preserving cryptocurrencies like Monero. While XMR is resilient on-chain, the off-ramp problem remains unsolved - especially for large-value exits. Without a sustainable, anonymous OTC ecosystem, Monero’s true potential remains bottlenecked. This presentation will break down the coming regulatory wave and open the floor to building the next generation of off-ramping infrastructure.

Luke Szramowski from Cypher Stack talks about some of the difficulties regarding the research into divisors.

Edge's Prize Announcement (1000$ in XMR!)

Closing Ceremony