Monero (XMR) Rallies Amid Plans of Hard Fork in July

Privacy-focused protocol Monero is set to undergo a hard fork in July which would improve network security and fee changes, according to an announcement on GitHub. A testnet is set to be deployed next month.

Monero says the proposed hard fork would see version 15 of the privacy-focused coin launched with several upgrades for improved security. Since the announcement, its native coin XMR has rallied 11 percent. No separate coin will be issued after the hard fork at a block height of 2,668,888 expected in July. (Hard forks refer to a change to a blockchain protocol that would render the one previous to it invalid.)

The Monero protocol masks the wallet addresses of users, making it difficult to trace and track transaction behaviour.

What Happens After V15?

The hard fork set for July will usher in software iteration V15, with two previous versions going live in 2020 that introduced marginal upgrades. V15 will see an increase in Monero’s ring size from 11 to 16, along with fixes to its multi-signature mechanism.

Multisignature refers to a transaction that needs multiple signatures before it can be submitted to the network and executed, with ring size referring to the total number of signers in a ring signature. A ring signature is a form of digital signature in which a group of possible signers is merged to produce a single and distinctive signature that can authorise a transaction.

V15 will also introduce a “bulletproof+”, an upgrade to the bulletproof technology deployed on Monero in 2018 that ensures the information stored within a confidential transaction does not contain any false data.

News of the hard fork is welcome, considering the trouble Monero faced earlier in the year. The protocol’s biggest mining pool, MineXMR, approached 51 percent of the hashrate, which raised some serious alarms.