This Year in Monero - 2021
April 24, 2021
Introduction
As a way to celebrate and show the growth that has happened for Monero across the past year on this, the 7th anniversary of the Monero project, I wanted to take a snapshot of statistics and social media posts to highlight this growth.
This is by no means an exhaustive list of ways in which Monero grew, and some of the most important growth came in increased acceptance and adoption of Monero for donations and payments:
- Merchants accepting Monero for payment
- FOSS Projects and Pro-Privacy Organizations accepting Monero for donations
Statistics
One of the most important ways we can deduce what has been happening in Monero is to look at the (thankfully, sparse) blockchain data available publicly.
Each section will highlight the previous year (04/2019 through 04/2020) as well as the current year (04/2020 through 04/2021) to give year-over-year comparisons and perspective.
Transactions
04/2019 through 04/2020:
- Monero transactions grew from ~7,000tx per day to ~10,000tx per day
- There were 2,811,244 total transactions, for an average of 7,702 transactions per day for the year.
04/2020 through 04/2021:
- Monero transactions grew from ~10,000tx per day to ~23,000tx per day
- There were 5,868,096 total transactions, for an average of 16,076 transactions per day for the year
Year over Year Growth
Monero's on-chain usage grew 208% YoY! Every one of these transactions was done via private-by-default transactions that protect sender, receiver, and amounts.
Blockchain Growth
04/2019 through 04/2020:
- Monero's blockchain grew 7.41GB in a year.
- There were 292,651 total blocks, for an average size of 29.56KB per block for the year.
- There were 2,811,244 total transactions, for an average of 2.76KB per transaction.
04/2020 through 04/2021:
- Monero's blockchain grew 13.34GB in a year.
- There were 262,588 total blocks, for an average size of 53.30KB per block for the year.
- There were 5,868,096 total transactions, for an average of 2.38KB per transaction.
Year over Year Growth
Monero's blockchain size grew 180% faster YoY while the average transaction size dropped 13.76% YoY (thanks, CLSAG)!
Emissions
04/2019 through 04/2020:
- Monero's block subsidy (emission) created 599,105.65XMR.
- There were 292,651 total blocks, for an average block subsidy of 2.04XMR per block for the year.
- Monero's emission per day dropped from ~2,000XMR to ~1,200XMR over the course of the year.
04/2020 through 04/2021:
- Monero's block subsidy (emission) created 362,406.83XMR.
- There were 262,588 total blocks, for an average block subsidy of 1.38XMR per block for the year.
- Monero's emission per day dropped from ~1,200XMR to ~750XMR over the course of the year.
Year over Year Change
Monero's inflation decreased 39.5% YoY and is steadily approaching the tail emission of 0.6XMR per block!
Fees
04/2019 through 04/2020:
- Monero's participants spent 1,101.07XMR on fees in a year.
- Monero averaged 3.016XMR in fees spent per day.
- There were 262,651 total blocks, for an average total fees to miners of 0.00419288XMR per block for the year.
- There were 2,811,244 total transactions, for an average of 0.000391666XMR per transaction.
04/2020 through 04/2021:
- Monero's participants spent 1,884.77XMR on fees in a year.
- Monero averaged 5.16XMR in fees spent per day.
- There were 262,588 total blocks, for an average total fees to miners of 0.00717767XMR per block for the year.
- There were 5,868,096 total transactions, for an average of 0.000321189XMR per transaction.
Year over Year Growth
Monero's fees spent increased 71.11% YoY while the average transaction fee dropped 17.99% YoY (thanks, CLSAG)!
Mining
12/2019 through 04/2020:
NOTE: This time range begins with the implementation of RandomX in the November 30th, 2019 network upgrade.
- Monero's network hashrate increased from 0.682GH/s to 1.21GH/s over the year.
- Monero forked to the ASIC-resistant mining algorithm known as RandomX.
- Monero started after the RandomX upgrade with ~27,000 miners.
- Monero unique miners increased from 27,247 to 37,380 over the year.
04/2020 through 04/2021:
- Monero's network hashrate increased from 1.21GH/s to 2.29GH/s over the year.
- Monero broke 100,000 miners for the first time in it's network history!
- Monero unique miners increased from 37,380 to 102,163 over the year.
* Disclaimer: These miner numbers are the lower bound, as they are the numbers visible via API of public pools where the API is reachable and provides miner count. There are likely many more miners that are solo, use private pools, or are on pools that do not expose miner count.*
Year over Year Growth
Monero's network hashrate increased 89.25% YoY and network miners increased 173.30% YoY and 274.95% since the introduction of RandomX!
04/2019 through 04/2020:
- Monero's main subreddit, r/Monero gained ~11,000 subscribers, going from ~157,000 to ~168,000 subscribers over the year.
04/2020 through 04/2021:
- Monero's main subreddit, r/Monero gained ~43,000 subscribers, going from ~168,000 to ~211,000 subscribers over the year.
Year over Year Growth
Monero's subreddit subscriber count grew 25.59% YoY and grew 290% faster than the previous year!
Top Ten Reddit Posts
- I'm glad Monero is used by criminals
- Today was an emotional rollercoaster; first I win a known amount of XMR in the Meme Contest, and then I tragically loose my private keys in a boating accident. What a day. Thank you for voting!
- Hal Finney, the first person to receive Bitcoin from Satoshi, took 11 days to realized he wanted more anonymity.
- A privacy 🔐 crisis is brewing. Defend yourself against tracking and surveillance
- Monero Visionary
- Satoshi talking about privacy features that got implemented in Monero but not Bitcoin
- I'm happy to announce Haveno: The Monero based DEX for trading XMR for fiat and cryptocurrencies! (PoC)
- Saw this piece of art in 4chan
- Reminder of the sound money report card
- 200k subscribers to r/Monero! 🥳
04/2019 through 04/2020:
- Monero's main Twitter account, @monero gained 3,502 followers.
- The @monero Twitter account went from 317,010 to 320,512 followers.
04/2020 through 04/2021:
- Monero's main Twitter account, @monero gained 69,209 followers.
- The @monero Twitter account went from 319,884 to 389,093 followers.
Year over Year Growth
Monero's Twitter follower count grew 21.63% YoY and grew 1,870% faster than the previous year!
Top Ten Tweets
- "Love this #Monero cheat sheet. Get your privacy on - @coinbureau"
- "'Arguing that you don't care about the right to privacy because you have nothing to hide is no different than saying you don't care about free speech because you have nothing to say.' ― Edward Snowden #monero $XMR - @girlgone_crypto"
- "Over 100k miners securing the #Monero network. New ATH. No ASICs. One CPU. One vote. https://miningpoolstats.stream/monero - @DontTraceMeBruh"
- "I'll have you know that the words 'Monero' and 'XMR' are not mentioned in Chainalysis crypto crime report 2021 that just came out. Not even once, over 113 pages. - @binaryFate"
- "If #monero came out first, then #bitcoin, everybody would say 'Why would I give up my privacy?'"
- ""In Nobody We Trust" - #Monero - @girlgone_crypto"
- "Now you know why I was so bullish for #Monero last year. The upcoming $XMR - $BTC atomic swaps are going to be a gamechanger. Will be interesting to see how much BTC 'disappears' from the #Bitcoin network when it goes live. - @coinbureau"
- "And the #Monero network has been upgraded! Enjoy your 20% cheaper, lighter, and faster to verify private by default transactions. #MoneroKeepsBuilding #CLSAG - @sethisimmons"
- "Bitcoin was envisioned as an anonymous P2P digital cash. However, that title is today best reserved for privacy coins like #Monero. In my video today, I look at Monero once again and explain why I think $XMR is so undervalued - @coinbureau"
- "We're excited to see THORChain, a cross-chain decentralised liquidity network, collaborating with Haven to integrate #Monero!"
Highlighted CCS Campaigns
- Bulletproofs+ audits
- Feather wallet GUI development
- CLSAG audit
- Research post-quantum strategies for Monero
- Monero Atomic Swaps research funding
- Monero Atomic Swaps implementation funding
- Add Monero to TxStreet
- anon: perfect peer to peer protocol from bottom to top
- tipxmr.live - a non-custodial livestream donation service for OBS
- Compilation time reduction and housekeeping
Major Upgrades
- CLSAG, a new ring signature mechanism that improves transaction efficiency
- "CLSAG, users see a 20% improvement in signature verification, and at least a 10% overall improvement for typical transactions. For example, a typical Monero transaction (2 inputs and 2 outputs) which usually weighs 2.5kB, takes only 1.9kB of blockchain space with CLSAG, a ~25% improvement."
- Monero put out several updates to resolve and prevent network attacks from a prolonged and aggressive attack on the p2p network
- "Monero’s peer-to-peer (p2p) network has been undergoing several different types of attack by an entity who has consistently attacked, spammed, and attempted to undermine the Monero network and community for years."
Something Missing?
If you see something missing from this post that was a major highlight of the year, please feel free to reach out via Twitter, Matrix, or email and I'll work to get it added ASAP.
Resources Used
Here is a quick list of the sources and tools I used to gather these statistics:
monero-blockchain-stats, using some hints from the following link for plotting:- Gnuplot for the graphs from data pulled via
monero-blockchain-stats - https://miningpoolstats.stream/monero for hashrate graph and current miner count
- https://subredditstats.com/r/monero for subreddit-related statistics and graphs
- https://github.com/oduwsdl/FollowerCountHistory for Twitter follower count history for @monero
Disclaimer: I am the author of https://sethsimmons.me/posts/this-year-in-monero-2021/ and the content for this blog post was originally shared there first.
Post tags : Community