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maybe this is a stupid question but hey, posting will hurt nobody so I'll give it a shot. :)

I'm wondering, what exactly a Monero is, speaking data wise. According to the Bitcoin Whitepaper, a Bitcoin is "a chain of digital signatures" and I think I get what that means and having read the Cryptonode Whitepaper, this hasn't fundamentally been changed in Monero.

What I'm wondering is: What exactly is created when a new block is found and the Moneros as reward are given out to the lucky miner? Is it just a series of bytes which propably can be represented as a string? And if so, how is the nominal amount (e.g. 25 Monero) attached to that string and how is it possible to only spend a fraction of those Monero?

Or to put it another way: What exactly is a satoshi or the atomic unit of Monero made up from?

I know those questions are propably not easy to answer and have been answered before, but I just couldnt find a satisfying answer.

Thanks a lot to anyone who is willing to shed some light on those questions! :)

Moroccan Engineer
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boinkflip
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3 Answers3

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I'm wondering, what exactly a Monero is, speaking data wise. According to the Bitcoin Whitepaper, a Bitcoin is "a chain of digital signatures" and I think I get what that means and having read the Cryptonode Whitepaper, this hasn't fundamentally been changed in Monero.

That's right. It's the same. But in Bitcoin, one signature is checked against one public key, and in Monero it's checked against arbitrarily many keys (ring signature), thus hiding the private key used to create the signature and authorize the movement.

What I'm wondering is: What exactly is created when a new block is found and the Moneros as reward are given out to the lucky miner? Is it just a series of bytes which propably can be represented as a string? And if so, how is the nominal amount (e.g. 25 Monero) attached to that string and how is it possible to only spend a fraction of those Monero?

A brand-new cryptographic key is created together with an associated amount matching the emission formula. That's it. Since the amount is stored as a 64-bit number, we can represent numbers from 0 to 2^64 - 1. The atomic unit is literally 1 bit. We arbitrarily pick where the decimal point will be and call that a Monero :) That's why it can be divided, because we've left enough digits after the decimal point. Fundamentally, it's really 64-bit integer math.

Or to put it another way: What exactly is a satoshi or the atomic unit of Monero made up from?

Bits :)

JollyMort
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Ok, as this question did not let me go after I posted it, I tried to dig a bit deeper and here is what I found:

An atomic unit seems to be nothing more then an integer value, that is attached to a transaction. If you are lucky mining a block, you are allowed to write your public adress into that block and attach a simple number X to that public adress, which is the amount of your reward in atomic units.

If you want to spend that amount or part of it, you will create a transaction which attaches the amount of atomic units to the recievers public key and you will proof the legitimacy of the transaction by signing with your private key.

I would be super happy if someone could confirm that I'm not dead wrong here. :)

greetings

boinkflip
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  • You're quite right :) However, note that technically you always spend all of it and send the remainder back to yourself to another one-time key. Monero move from one-time keys to other one-time keys. Once sent, the old ones are consumed and new ones created, but of course the sum(inputs)=sum(outputs)+fee must check out. – JollyMort Mar 05 '17 at 00:54
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A coin is free speech

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pretty_Good_Privacy

...two federal appeals courts have established the rule that cryptographic software source code is speech protected by the First Amendment

JohnHanks
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