Monero’s XMR token has fallen to its lowest value against Bitcoin in eight years due to regulatory pressure on the privacy-focused blockchain network.
According to data from CoinMarketCap, the XMR-BTC chart hit a low of 0.001954BTC today, down 50% since the beginning of the year. Furthermore, the US dollar value of digital assets has also struggled, falling more than 20% in the past year to less than $120 at the time of writing.
Nevertheless, Monero developers are ramping up efforts to strengthen network privacy features despite regulatory challenges.
FCMP
A recent announcement on the website announced a new privacy mechanism, Full Chain Membership Proof (FCMP), to replace the current Ring system. Although the Rings system protects sender privacy, it is compromised by vulnerabilities such as EAE attacks, chain reorganization complexity, and statistical analysis vulnerabilities.
FCMP eliminates these risks and ensures comprehensive user anonymity. He further added:
“Full-chain membership proofs prove that the product spent is one of every product on the chain, effectively eliminating all these risks. This means that all inputs are Means sent from 16 to 100 million instant anonymity set.”
In particular, two important proposals regarding the implementation of FCMP were announced. The first proposal is in line with the upcoming Seraphis upgrade, which aims to enhance efficiency and privacy with customized proofs. Meanwhile, his second proposal, devised as a countermeasure against spam attacks, introduces features such as transaction chains, send view keys, and autonomous forward secrecy from Seraphis.
Privacy under attack
Monero's efforts to strengthen its network coincide with increased regulatory scrutiny of privacy-focused cryptographic tools.
Adewale Adeyemo, deputy US Treasury secretary, said terrorist organizations and rogue states like North Korea are exploiting anonymity tools like blenders to hide the origin of illicit digital assets.
To ensure compliance, the US government has initiated legal action against the developer of Tornado Cash, a cryptocurrency mixing service. Most recently, the government arrested the co-founders of privacy-oriented service provider Samurai Wallet on suspicion of operating an unauthorized money transfer business.
As a result, several crypto platforms, including Binance and OKX, have delisted privacy-sensitive digital assets from their platforms to comply with evolving regulatory standards.
Despite these developments, notable figures in the cryptocurrency space, including Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin, have continued to assert the legitimacy and innovation of the field.
