Riccardo Spagni, the prominent lead developer of Monero, is ending his role as lead maintainer of the protocol, to be replaced by one of the core developers, “Snipa”. Spagni will remain connected to the project as a backup developer.
Spagni, in his personality @fluffypony, is among the prominent crypto space personas, and part of the “Magical Crypto Friends” team. Beyond supporting Monero and the community, Spagni is a Bitcoin (BTC) proponent.
But the decision to leave as lead maintainer has caused skepticism, going as far as to call this an “exit scam”.
https://twitter.com/Excellion/status/1207145687806144512
However, Monero remains one of the most solid projects, with significant community involvement. The XMR asset, however, is facing restrictions, mostly based on its potential to veil transactions. XMR is now mostly accepted on exchanges only in case it is used in a non-anonymous manner.
XMR slid to $44.79 during the latest market sell-off, losing more than 16% week-on-week. The coin has been sliding from three-digit prices for years, and now abandoned its stability levels near $60.
The Monero network hashrate, however, has grown significantly after its latest hard fork. After a switch to the RandomX algorithm, Monero saw its mining rate soar by 300% within weeks, to above 900 MH/s. Still, the network is relatively small, and XMR remains attackable in case specialized miners target the coin.
After stepping aside, Spagni will work on his Tari Project, another development of privacy technology which will communicate with the Monero project.
https://twitter.com/fluffypony/status/1206819088523247617
XMR lost some of its appeal as it failed to line up among top coins, and lost most of its value. However, the project continues to aim at privacy, and is one of the most prominent anonymous coins.
XMR trading has now switched to the IDCM exchange, where more than 45% of volumes are concentrated. BINANCE is also supporting XMR activity, and for OKEx, the pair has significantly lower activity after a recently delayed delisting.
