Monero (XMR) GUI wallet updated ๐ Finally easier Ledger Nano S usage!๐๐ฑ
The Ledger Nano S has supported Monero for a while now but actual usage of the Monero wallet software to access the hardware wallet has been more difficult than it should be - until now. The Monero developers have released the Monero GUI version 0.12.3, which has a more complete integration of the Ledger Nano S which makes the whole process a lot easier.
Monero on the Ledger is hard
Monero uses a very different blockchain architecture than most blockchains do, so it was quite a feat to enable Ledger Nano S hardware functionality to begin with. When it was added about a month ago I was very excited about the new functionality, and even wrote a guide on how to set up the Monero wallet on the Ledger using the command-line interface but sadly I got stuck right after. After generating a wallet, I couldn't get the addresses to match up with the Ledger device's and I didn't dare to send some test-funds to it. Due to the complexity of getting it to work, I sort of gave up and decided to wait on further improvements to the GUI wallet.
No more CLI!
This is what the CLI wallet looks like
Monero has had a graphical user-interface (GUI) for a long time but up until a couple of days ago it hadn't fully supported the Ledger Nano S yet. In order to access the device users first had to generate a wallet from it by using the Monero command-line interface (CLI), after which accessing it through the GUI would be possible. Using a CLI is quite difficult and alien for most users - so most ended up giving up.
Fortunately in the 0.12.3 release of the Monero GUI wallet the use of the CLI wallet is no longer necessary. The graphics interface displays options to access the Ledger Nano S straight from the menu and it can generate it's own address from there. That's great, and it makes the implementation a lot easier to use.
It's still not easy
Though the new Monero GUI certainly makes the whole process easier, it doesn't make it easy per se. I don't think Monero will ever really be a one-click cryptocurrency. Even with this improved Ledger experience, I still found that setting up the wallet and using it was a lot more complicated and time consuming than it is for most wallets.Even when connecting to a remote node, thus foregoing downloading the entire blockchain, I still had to synchronise my wallet for a couple of hours before I was ready to go. If you don't want to use a remote node (it's less trustworthy than running your own node - just like with Bitcoin) but want to run your own node instead, downloading the 50gb blockchain is required as well. All in all these processes took me several days - not something for people with a lack of patience.
Is this the version that makes it easy enough to use?
That's the real question of course. Is it easy enough to use that it's actually better to store it on the Ledger rather than on mymonero, or god forbid: an exchange? I think the answer is yes.๐While the former implementation was a minimum viable product that worked if you were tech savvy enough, this new Monero GUI version is actually usable enough for those slightly less adept. It's still absolutely out of reach for the uninformed, but if you consider yourself to be somewhat of an intermediate then I think you'll be able to manage with this wallet. If I had to compare it in terms of annoyances, I would put it on par with IOTA's wallet - usable, but with lots of sighing.
Monero has some interesting properties
I continue to be impressed by the Monero developers and development. Not only in the Ledger Nano S integration process, but also in the other innovations that are happening such as Ring signatures, project Kovri and others that I barely have the technical prowess to understand. I have no doubt that Monero is one of the most innovative cryptocurrencies out there - on par with Bitcoin itself.
It is for this reason that I just had to have some XMR in my portfolio. Privacy is a highly underappreciated feature in cryptocurrencies and Monero is simply the best privacy coin out there, and the only one which takes privacy seriously in a way that both bold and italic combined cannot sufficiently express.
Click here to read the announcement on the Monero subreddit
Monero rocks my world. :) It may not be that easy to use, but the fundamentals and devs behind it are some of the strongest around!
Definitely! The only problem is that the developers are typical developers: really bad at marketing and user-friendliness. But the fundamentals are super strong. It's like BTC from a few years ago.
I seriously looked at buying Monero earlier this month. I even downloaded v0.12.2 of the wallet, but then didn't install it. I don't know why, but try as I might, I just can't get excited for this crypto! Maybe this will help a little. I want Monero, but I also don't want Monero!
If you think privacy coins are worth investing in, then Monero is really your only choice. It has a different fundament than the others in that 100% of all transactions are private. Most privacy coins offer privacy as an extra feature which is not private at all (if 99 people transact in the open and you opt for privacy, everybody knows you're the one using the privacy feature).
But it's not just that. They go so far in taking privacy seriously, layering privacy layers on more privacy layers, down to masking the IP addresses.
Public blockchains cannot ever be truly private because the base on-chain transactions are not. Really, if there's any privacy coin you should look into it's this one. Don't stop at the videos either: go look at the subreddits and see the difference in community and developer attitude and involvement.
If I were Edward Snowden I wouldn't be pushing ZCash (which has lots of red flags) but Monero instead. I don't find many projects that go above my level of understanding but Monero is so advanced that I truly have difficulty following some of the developments - it's some really advanced stuff.
I just don't get a warm fuzzy feeling from it, especially after the horror show of a fork where people ran around like headless chickens playing a game of "Will-the-real-Monero-please-stand-up?".
Also, I may have bought PIVX and ZCash instead... Go Snowden!
Honestly I think privacy coins are still ahead of their time and too hard to call at this stage. Much will change before they really become useful!
The fact is that right now we don't even need them. I could send you funds from my BTC or ETH address today and you would not it it was from me. I could be clever and send via an exchange or an unused spare Ledger address that I never use again, but even this is redundant. Why do I say this? Because we still don't know who Satoshi Nakamoto is! And don't tell me that very powerful organisations have not tried to find him/her/it/them.
Well yes you can cover your transactions from me somewhat by using an intermediary, but you obviously sacrifice privacy to those intermediaries completely. That may not be such a big deal for you, because you don't care all that much if your bank knows what you're spending to whom.
But what if you're a big corporation handling billions of dollars, then privacy becomes a whole different ballgame. From corporate espionage to shady/secret business deals to exploiting loopholes in the legal system - there are a lot of reasons why corporations do not want their financial information publicly available. When it comes to Monero, the attitude is that privacy is black or white, not a slider. Something is either private, or it is not.
I'm telling you, Monero...!
Where else do you think Bitcoin whales are hiding their profits?? They can't cash it out without facing the tax man and giving away half and while they hate everything non-BTC, they always have a soft spot for XMR and LTC because those are actually decentralized. I'm pretty sure you can find some interesting correlations in the BTC and XMR charts...
Good point. Thanks for the advice.
Monero is one of my favorites. Its security and equitable mining scheme appeals to me.
Thanks for the update.
Namaste, JaiChai