• Focus on anonymity
• Core Team as a monitoring entity
• Hustle and bustle about “fluffypony”
With a current market capitalization of around 2.56 billion US dollars, the cryptocurrency Monero ranks among the top 30 largest digital currencies. Like other cyber currencies, it uses blockchain technology, but with CryptoNote it uses a different protocol than Bitcoin and related tokens. The amount of available Monero has no upper limit, but grows more slowly from a certain point in time, so that a balance between newly generated and lost coins is optimally established. That’s how one should be deflation of the currency are prevented.
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However, there is another big difference to Bitcoin & Co.: Monero places even greater value on the protection of privacy and the anonymity of users. The transactions within the currency are also stored in a blockchain, but this is practically invisible. Users can only see their own transaction history with a certain code key. Other Monero users remain secret – unlike Bitcoin, where transactions are anonymous but can be viewed by anyone. Due to this property, Monero has already overtaken the largest cryptocurrency as the most popular digital currency for criminal businesses.
Since Monero attaches such great importance to privacy and anonymity, it is not surprising that little is known about the developers behind the digital currency. Only two people from the current core team overseeing the further development of the currency are known by name. All other members appear under a pseudonym – as does the actual initiator behind the digital token. However, to understand the story behind Monero, one has to go back a step further.
Fork from Bytecoin and rift
Monero was created in 2014 as a split of the internet currency Bytecoin. The cryptocurrency, which was also very successful, was criticized in various forums at the time, since 80 percent of the available tokens had already been mined before the currency was made known to a larger public. Some members of the crypto community then accused the makers of Bytecoin of a lack of transparency, the centralization of an actually decentralized currency and even fraud, as they would allegedly only manage their own pockets. In the spring of 2014, the user “thankful_for_today” presented the code base for a fork from Bytecoin in one of the forums – and quickly found followers.
With Monero, which was originally called BitMonero, there should be no so-called pre-mining before the public release, and it should also be possible to mine the currency with normal computers and without special hardware. While there was agreement on these points, there were disagreements on other details shortly after the launch of BitMonero. A dispute arose between the founder “thankful_for_today” and the community about the further development of the currency, which finally ended in a rift. A so-called core team then implemented another fork and launched Monero – with the support of a large part of the community. Even today, a core team consisting of seven members monitors the development of Monero, but the user “thankful_for_today” has disappeared – at least under this name – from the relevant forums, and BitMonero is no longer heard of either.
These people are currently behind Monero
The Monero core team itself does not contribute to the development of the cryptocurrency, the code is written by other developers and contributors who work for Monero in their free time or as a main job. Unlike the core team, who are not paid for their work, some of the developers are also paid for it. The core team sees itself as a monitoring entity whose members stay with us for as long as their time allows or the community allows. According to the core team – and probably also with a view to the history of “thankful_for_today” – they are aware that the latter in particular will not last forever.
Only a few people from the current core team are known by their real names, others are only represented under their pseudonyms. While the core developers were initially listed on the project’s website, the website now only provides information about the department’s tasks and refers to a non-public chat room. Nevertheless, some indications of the composition of the core team can be found in the Monero community.
Riccardo “fluffypony” Spagni
The best known in the crypto world is probably Riccardo Spagni, who also appears on the Internet under the name “fluffypony” and was long considered the face of Monero. He also regularly attends relevant industry meetings and gives interviews. Anonymity seems to be less important to him than to his comrades-in-arms, because a year and a half ago Spagni revealed an unusual amount of himself in a contribution to “Steemit”. According to his own statements, he lives in the South African city of Plettenberg Bay and has been married to his wife Saskia since October 10, 2010 – allegedly because this date is particularly easy to remember. The two have six dogs together and in his free time Riccardo Spagni works with drones, Lego, his watch collection – and thus to troll the crypto community as a “fluffypony”. For example, in May 2017, he teased a “SIGNIFICANT Monero announcement” on Twitter, only to later post a video parody. The fact that he was also causing spikes in the Monero course was criticized by many, but Spagni didn’t seem to mind.
In 2019, however, he gave up the position of chief administrator, and a user with the pseudonym “Snipa” took over the tasks instead, as the foundation informed. News that caused a stir in the community that Spagni has been accused and charged by the South African government with 378 counts of fraud and bill falsification. Damages of 1.5 million South African Rand are said to have occurred, as the tech portal “MyBroadband” reported. The co-founder of the cryptocurrency is said to have manipulated invoices and increased amounts. The arrest came in 2021 during a stopover of his private jet in Nashville, Tennessee by US authorities. He would not be extradited to South Africa until about a year later, but was released from South African custody shortly thereafter, as CoinGeek wrote. Apparently a court case is waiting for him there.
However, it is unclear to what extent Spagni is still involved in Monero’s core team. Although he was supposed to act as a substitute administrator to relieve his successor if necessary, some access rights were revoked with the arrest. Now he can still be found regularly in the associated Reddit forum and is also listed there as a moderator.
Francisco “ArticMine” Cabanas
The second core team member known by name is Francisco Cabanas. He is said to live in Canada and has a PhD in Physics. Cabanas, whose nickname is ArticMine, has been involved with cryptocurrencies since 2011 and has extensive business experience, including with non-profit companies. He is also frequently invited as a guest at conferences or in interviews, but rarely shares his private life with the public.
Alexander “Snipas” Blair
Spagni’s official successor also appears publicly under his real name. “Snipas” goes by the name of Alexander Blair, as revealed in a 2020 Monero talk show. On his Twitter profile, he describes himself as a Linux admin, software developer, code reviewer, and CTO of Hosho.io. However, the platform no longer seems to exist, as Blair himself confirmed in a comment on Reddit. According to data from the job platform LinkedIn, he currently works as a system administrator at a company called Snipanet Services.
Other members appear under pseudonyms
The Monero core team also includes “othe”, “smooth”, “luigi1111” and “NoodleDoodle”, according to a comment from a Reddit user. The developer “tacotime” has also been a member of the group since the start of the project, but withdrew from the foundation in 2018. According to Monero, he was primarily responsible for maintaining the code base, which was then transferred to Spagni and is now probably Snipa’s responsibility. Meanwhile, the developer “binaryFate” is also part of the core team. He was also the one who publicly announced after Spagni’s arrest that his access to the Monero platform would be largely blocked. Although “binaryFate” appears publicly on his Twitter profile picture, his real name is not known. The situation is similar with his colleagues, about whom – apart from their user names – hardly anything personal is known, or only contradictory information is circulating. For example, “luigi1111” is said to come from the Midwest of the USA, has been involved with several cryptocurrencies since 2013 and works as a system administrator in normal life. On other websites, however, it is said that he would test racing bikes as a full-time job. Such information should therefore be treated with caution.
Monero relies on donations and its own research branch
The Monero development team also includes more than 200 contributors, some using their real names and some using a pseudonym. In addition to the core team and developers, there is also a Monero Research Lab, which consists of academics, scientists and researchers from the fields of mathematics and cryptography and researches the CryptoNote protocol, among other things.
The team behind Monero is financed by donations from the community. In the early days, the original core team also gave the project financial support when the donations were not enough. Above all, investments were made in the infrastructure that keeps the digital currency running and thus forms the cornerstone of Monero.
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