On August 13, Monero, one of the ecosystem’s most significant privacy protocols, carried out a protocol update to enhance a number of the network’s privacy and security features.
Almost 4 months after it was announced, the hard fork was carried out successfully on block 2,688,888 thanks to the combined efforts of more than 70 engineers.
According to their website, the hard fork introduced a number of modifications to the internal multi-signature process to facilitate the flow of data such as key sets and data synchronization between wallets.
“Multisig means that a transaction needs multiple signatures before it can be submitted to the Monero network and executed. Instead of one Monero wallet creating, signing, and submitting transactions all on its own, you will have a whole group of wallets and collaboration between them to transact.”
In addition, from 11 to 16 cosigners are now necessary to approve ring signatures. Ring signatures make it impossible to track the origin of network transactions. Monero is the most popular cryptocurrency among fans of privacy thanks to that feature.
In order to strengthen the network’s anonymity, the bulletproof algorithm was improved to bulletproof+, a zero-knowledge proof technique launched in 2018. Bulletproof+ hides the precise amounts of transactions and only displays the transactions’ origin and destination.
The “View tags” option, a new feature that allows wallet syncing to be sped up by 30% to 40%, was another noteworthy advancement brought about by the new release.