Monero's hardfork set for July 16

The expected “uncontroversial hardfork” will start from block 2668888.

A stock photo of two forks.

“Uncontroversial hardfork” means the community has reached a consensus, and the old chain will just die out unless someone decides to keep it running. However, such an outcome is highly unlikely since the only changes are security improvements, and there’s nothing one would disagree over. The upcoming changes are an increased number of signers in a ring signature (from 11 to 16), multi-signature fixes, wallet/node sync speed up, the bulletproof protocol upgrade, and more.

As the West continues to impose new sanctions on Russia and regulators tighten their grip on crypto exchanges, privacy coins, including Monero, surged wildly. Since February 24, Monero (XMR) added 80%, compared to Bitcoin, which added 9%.