Good Lord I need a nap after fact checking and writing this response. Lol
Monero doesn't have a fixed cap. It has tail emission. 0.6 XMR per block, started May 2022. Creates about 1% inflation initially and trends toward zero over time. Keeps miners incentivized long-term without relying on fees alone.
Supply is predictable. We know exactly how many coins exist: roughly 18.44 million XMR plus 0.6 XMR every 2 minutes. Accounting for lost coins, probably deflationary in practice. That's scarcity.
On 51% attack resistance—yeah, attacks were attempted recently. August 2025 saw a 6-block reorg. September brought an 18-block reorg, the deepest in Monero's history. The selfish-mining attack peaked around 33% hashrate, not majority control. No double-spends executed, no funds stolen, but 118 transactions rolled back. Real stress test.
Monero's response was immediate. FCMP++ development accelerated. An alpha stressnet launched October 3, 2025.
FCMP++ moves from ring signatures with a ring size of 16 (15 decoys + 1 real) to full-chain membership proofs. Instead of proving your transaction came from one of 16 possible outputs, it proves it came from one of millions across the entire chain. Makes tracing effectively impossible.
Optimization competitions ran. 100 XMR bounty for helioselene, 250 XMR for ec-divisors. They achieved a 5x speedup in proof generation. Beta stressnet targeted Q1 2026.
Consensus hardening happened at the same time. "Share or Perish" fork-choice proposals are under active development. They’re designed to penalize delayed block broadcasts and kill the profitability of selfish mining. Additional finality layers and merge-mining concepts are being explored.
December 2025 status: hashrate at 6.74 GH/s, network stabilized, 17 active FCMP++ implementation issues with 4 closed, XMR up 94% year-over-year despite the attacks, privacy cryptography intact. Zero protocol compromises.
The network got tested. It responded with technical fixes, transparent crisis management, and fast timelines.
If you need untraceable transactions at scale—nothing else does what Monero does.
