Cryptography researchers have urged the Monero community to donate XMR in order to continue the development of the popular anonymous altcoin Monero.
Academics Brandon Gooddall (also known as Surae Noether) and Dr. Sarang Noether have launched crowdfunding campaigns to raise money to continue investigating the usefulness of Monero multi-sig wallets (wallets that require more than one key to send transactions).
The reason the academics have appealed to the community for funds is because Monero is proudly an open-source and non-profit cryptocurrency project.
As there is no defining, central organization to Monero, members of its Research Lab submit funding requests to the community. Both seek the equivalent of roughly $9,000 per month, each, in the Monero cryptocurrency (XMR).
In an email to Hard Fork, Monero founder and lead developer Riccardo Spagni, also known as ‘fluffypony,’ insisted on the necessity of the work to be funded.
“The Monero Research Lab has been primarily responsible for major innovations in Monero, such as RingCT, so I’d definitely attest to that,” Spagni wrote.
It should be noted that the funding campaigns list vastly different targets for XMR donations. Sarang’s requests 241 XMR (approx $9.1 per month) and Gooddall’s requests 376 XMR (approx $14.2k).
For what it’s worth, Gooddall explained his reason for the increase XMR target: the bear market. Goddall set a lower base rate for XMR’s price than his Monero colleague, predicting a continued downturn, at least over the next quarter.
“I am asking for $9,000 USD/month; this is in line with market rates for a Ph.D. scientist and mathematician (accounting for the tax implications of working outside a traditional employer), and represents my assessment of fair compensation. and I am asking at 71.88 USD/XMR as my baseline exchange rate,” Gooddall explained. “[For] the last two funding periods, I was using the 30 day EMA to estimate the Monero exchange rate, but this always leads to an over-estimate of price during a bear market.”
An ever-present focus of security in Monero is an obvious choice for research efforts. Recently, a bug in Monero’s wallet was found that made it possible to steal XMR from exchanges. Further still, just a few months ago, Monero joined other projects in paying over $24,000 in bug bounties over the course of one week.
So far, both campaigns are about 25 percent of the way towards their target. Both are pegged to fund research until the end of December.
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