Monero Developers Aim to Reduce Transaction Size by 80% or More

Standing still in the world of cryptocurrency will eventually lead to sudden demise. This is why the Monero developers are working on a new solution to reduce the network’s transaction size. If this effort is successful, transactions will become 80% smaller than they are now. The goal is to implement this change by September 2018 at the latest, although that date is subject to change.

Monero Transaction Size Needs to be Addressed

In the world of cryptocurrency, very few people actually wonder how large their individual transactions are on the network. The answer would surprise a lot of people, as one would think there isn’t much data involved in sending money across a blockchain. As it happens, the reality is very different. That’s especially true in the world of Monero, where the anonymity and privacy offered by the network come at the cost of larger transaction sizes.

To put this into perspective, a single output transaction on the Monero blockchain is 6 kilobytes in size. That may not seem like much, but one has to keep in mind the average Bitcoin transaction size is around 250 bytes, give or take. This means every transaction conducted in XMR is over 20 times the size of a Bitcoin transfer. From a long-term perspective, this vast size difference is not manageable, and something will need to change sooner or later.

While it is true the Monero ecosystem has a dynamic block size to ensure this doesn’t become a big problem anytime soon, the developers are actively looking for ways to improve upon things before the situation gets out of hand. The new solution goes by the name of multi-output bulletproofs. It is a solution currently being researched and developed by the Monero Research Lab, and it currently exists in a Java version only. There will be a C++ version as well, but it will only support single output BulletProof transactions at first.

What makes this concept so interesting is that it can effectively reduce the size of a single output transaction to 704 bytes. Compared to the current 6 kilobytes, that is a reduction of over 80%. For double output transactions, the size would be reduced from 12 kilobytes to under 800 bytes. No one can deny this would certainly make things a lot more convenient for all Monero users, as the current massive transaction size will hinder the growth of this ecosystem moving forward.

When exactly this BulletProof implementation will come to Monero remains to be seen. For now, it is tentatively scheduled for the September 2018 hard fork, but the team wants to ensure this concept goes through rigorous testing first. There is little point in releasing a half-baked solution, especially when it is one that is vital to the Monero ecosystem. 

There is more exciting news to report in the Monero world. Monero’s multisignature implementation is still being tested, and Surae Noether is reviewing this technology as we speak. Guides have surfaced for setting up 2-of-2 and 2-of-3 Monero multisignature accounts already, but it will be good to see the results of this peer review. It will be an interesting year for Monero in 2018, as a lot of good features and projects will be finalized in the next twelve months.