That explains it.

Thanks dEBRUYNE. You are spoiling us

- What is the the recommended minimum size of RAM and Swap-Partition, for running an Monero node, that now improves & strengthens the network and won't be to small/slow in 6 or 9 months?
Other Node(s) specs would be:  
- be a typical Linux VPS, with 100 Mbit or 1 GB/s speed,
- hosted at trusted & professional hosters and DataCenters with verifiable good history (of network quality, service and ethics) and best possible carriers, peerings and strategic location
[in order to get the possible networking quality, in this geographical or political region, obv. to max out benefits for the XMR network and community]

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Is any virtualization solution preferred? XEN vs. OpenVZ vs. KVM vs. other vs. doesn't matter?

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In order to be more objective, when judging Moneros development. I am interested in things, situations, directions, decisions and results, that in your opinion: weren't perfect/could have been done better/maybe some potential wasted/resources not efficient used or surrounding conditions that changed maybe to Moneros disadvantage, etc.

From my POV, nearly everything went close to perfect. Looking at other privacy related coin projects, other coin projects in general, Moneros status in the general crypto currency scene, general crypto currency adoption and ecosystem development, the end of Bitcoins dominance & claim for sole representation (that harmed the whole crypto currency scene and even Bitcoin itself), more and more demand for privacy, anti-surveillance etc. by endusers, the clear finding, that the in Q1/Q2 2014 predicted & hyped battle of the (competing) privacy coins to replace Bitcoin, as #1 Dark Market currency, that was supposed to happen in 2015 didn't occurred (the project benefited from this switch of focus & direction). + other positive developments

Looks kinda to perfect. I don't want to badmouth anything or want to search something negative. I am really interested in objective assessments and realistic observations.
(I know I wouldn't believe myself, if someone talks about a big project like this and being so successful and flawless. Sounds fanboyish.)


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Is it correct, that we have a good chance, that around June 2016 Monero will be market-ready? Meaning the software is usable, functional and tested enough, so that first end-users and vendors (outside of the Monero community) can try Monero out?
A rough date, when Monero is available for interested parties and the general public, to test, evaluate and use, would be pretty cool to know.

No one can know for sure what will be needed in 6-9 months because it depends on network activity.

However, as general guidelines based on current and moderately increased usage:

• 1 GB of RAM seems to be close to the minimum that works well, and this probably won't increase much regardless of usage. After syncing you can probably get by with quite a bit less.
• 1 CPU core is fine, this might become an issue at a much higher usage level, but we aren't near that yet.
• 15 GB is a reasonable minimum for storage, depending on usage in the future it could be higher.
• Make sure incoming connections are enabled.
• If you have spare bandwidth consider increasing the default bandwidth limits
• If you end up with extra CPU you can always enable solo mining as a support for the network (even though you don't expect to get much from it), but don't do this if your VPS provider has limits on CPU load.

We did but that was weeks ago. I'm not sure what is driving the big rise.

Is this technology compatible with Monero's protocol? https://bitco.in/forum/threads/buip010-xtreme-thinblocks.774/

I browsed it but did not study it carefully. However, in many respects having to do with mining, mempools, p2p, etc., Monero works mostly the same as Bitcoin so my first impression would be that the same technique could be used if it turns out to be a win. Of course our volume is low enough that optimizing these things isn't urgent right now, but can be added later.

It's okay if you are careful. You are going through exit nodes. Always an issue when security is involved. The likelihood that exit nodes would try to trick you with a fake Monero chain seems low at this point given that Monero is pretty small and unknown. You can deal with his by checking your top hash against trusted sites (but if you are doing that through tor as well...)

Also, the README should be updated to point out you should delete or stash your p2pstate.bin file before switching to Tor (every time!) because otherwise your node can be identified by the node ID. (By deleting the file your node will generate a new one with a random ID.)

So as you can see things are a bit rough here, but usable if you are careful.


Monero I2P is not working yet.


No one has tried running Monero as a hidden service and if they did it would be tricky to connect to it. For now it relies on connecting to clearnet nodes via exit nodes.

Not sure of the answers to your other questions so I'll let other reply.

States 0.9.1.0. Everyone was made aware via various outlets that it was a mandatory upgrade.