Privacy Coins and Anonymity Flashcards

In a Monero transaction, what is the primary purpose of a ring signature?

Answer: To hide the true sender among a set of decoy outputs

Ring signatures mix the real spent output with decoys so an observer cannot tell which signer actually spent the funds.

Since the August 2022 network upgrade, what is Monero's mandatory ring size?

Answer: 16

The 2022 hard fork raised the fixed ring size from 11 to 16 (one real input plus 15 decoys).

Which Monero feature ensures that a recipient's public address never appears on the blockchain?

Answer: Stealth (one-time) addresses

Stealth addresses derive a unique one-time destination for each payment, so the published address is never recorded on-chain.

An investigator obtains a suspect's Monero private view key. What can the investigator do with it?

Answer: See incoming transactions to that wallet but not reliably confirm outgoing spends

The view key reveals incoming outputs to the wallet, but identifying outgoing spends requires key images from the spend key side.

Which Monero technology conceals the transaction amounts on the blockchain?

Answer: RingCT (Ring Confidential Transactions)

RingCT, introduced in 2017, uses Pedersen commitments to hide amounts while still proving no coins were created.

What was the main benefit of Monero adopting Bulletproofs (and later Bulletproofs+)?

Answer: They significantly reduced transaction size and fees for range proofs

Bulletproofs are compact range proofs that cut transaction size and fees dramatically compared to earlier proofs.

What does Dandelion++ do in Monero's network layer?

Answer: Obscures the originating IP address of a transaction by relaying it through a stem phase before broadcasting

Dandelion++ passes a transaction through a random chain of peers before diffusing it, making it harder to link a transaction to its source IP.