MONERO [XMR] REPORT - Scaling New Heights in Blockchain Performance: 2025 Portfolio / Part Two

Part Two / Page 7

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Team, Governance, and Project Organization

Monero is unusual among large crypto projects in that it has no formal company, no CEO, and largely anonymous leadership. Its team and governance are decentralized and community-driven, which has both strengths (resilience, lack of single point of failure) and weaknesses (potential coordination issues, less formal accountability). In this section, we outline how Monero is managed, who the key contributors are, and how decisions are made.

Core Team / Workgroups: Historically, Monero was overseen by a Core Team of maintainers – a group of 7 individuals (some pseudonymous, some known) who had repository access and managed releases and infrastructure. This included figures like:

• Riccardo “fluffypony” Spagni – lead maintainer until Dec 2019, a well-known public figure of Monero.
  
  
• Francisco “ArticMine” Cabañas – core member known for economic analysis.
  
  
• Others: pseudonyms such as moneromooo, dEBRUYNE, binaryFate, smooth, etc., who handled various aspects (coding, community, services).
  
  

By 2020s, many of the Core Team preferred to stay low-profile or anonymous (Monero - Wikipedia). Notably, fluffypony stepped down and later faced unrelated legal issues (an old fraud charge in South Africa); he is no longer involved in day-to-day Monero. The remaining core contributors have kept Monero going. They have often emphasized that Monero is a leaderless project – the core team was more about coordination and trust for sensitive matters (like managing domains or releasing software binaries) than about authority.

In late 2023, there was a proposal initiated by fluffypony himself on GitHub to disband the Core Team in favor of decentralized workgroups (Proposal: Disband Core · Issue #921 · monero-project/meta · GitHub) (Proposal: Disband Core · Issue #921 · monero-project/meta · GitHub). This proposal noted that having a formal “Core Team” was a centralizing element and a potential security risk (if a core member’s account was compromised, etc.) (Proposal: Disband Core · Issue #921 · monero-project/meta · GitHub) (Proposal: Disband Core · Issue #921 · monero-project/meta · GitHub). The suggestion was to break responsibilities into workgroups (like node infrastructure, community, public relations, legal, etc.) each composed of trusted long-term contributors. This would diffuse power and reduce reliance on any single team. As of Jan 2024, it appears this transition was agreed upon, with the aim of implementing it moving forward (Proposal: Disband Core · Issue #921 · monero-project/meta · GitHub) (Proposal: Disband Core · Issue #921 · monero-project/meta - GitHub). Essentially, Monero is moving toward a model where no single entity or small group is “in charge”, and decisions are made more openly by those active in each area.

Developers and Contributors: Monero’s development is very community-centric:

• Monero boasts dozens of active developers. Electric Capital’s 2023 report shows ~26 full-time devs and 86 monthly contributors for Monero (Monero - Electric Capital Developer Report) – the third largest developer community among cryptocurrencies at one point, behind only Bitcoin and Ethereum in certain metrics (Monero - Wikipedia). This is impressive for a project with no corporate sponsor. Many devs use pseudonyms (e.g., “moneromooo” is a prolific C++ dev who has contributed huge portions of Monero’s code; “hyc” was another key dev; “Sarang Noether” is the pseudonym for a mathematician in MRL).
  
  
• Funding for devs comes via the Community Crowdfunding System (CCS). This is a forum where anyone can propose work (code, research, infrastructure) and specify a funding amount in XMR. The community discusses and, if supportive, people donate XMR to reach the target. Hundreds of proposals have been funded this way since 2017 (What Is Monero & How Does It Work? Who Created XMR?) (What Is Monero & How Does It Work? Who Created XMR?). For example, ongoing funding for two full-time developers each quarter is often done via CCS, ensuring key devs can focus on Monero. This decentralized funding is akin to a voluntary tax the community pays to itself for improvements. It has been largely successful – major features like RandomX implementation, Bulletproofs audits, and now Seraphis development have been financed by the community.
  
  
• There is no single Monero Foundation paying salaries (though the community did establish a legal entity in 2022 in Switzerland mainly to hold assets like domains legally on behalf of Monero, to avoid individuals holding them – but it’s not an active “foundation” in the traditional sense).
  
  
• Notably, Monero’s open-source nature has attracted talent without typical monetary incentives initially. Many contribute out of ideological alignment (belief in privacy). This has pros and cons: high passion and quality, but also potential slowdowns if volunteers lose interest. The CCS mechanism helps by providing financial support to keep talent engaged.
  
  

Decision Making: How are decisions (like upgrades, consensus changes) made?

• Rough Consensus: Monero follows a rough consensus approach in its IRC/Matrix chatrooms and GitHub. If an idea gains broad support from contributors and community (and importantly, if it’s technically sound and improves privacy/security), it moves forward. There’s no formal on-chain voting or coin voting. Instead, devs often gauge sentiment through community proposals and then implement. Before a hard fork, there will be community alerts and essentially the community chooses to run the new software or not. Historically, upgrade adoption has been near-unanimous – Monero users tend to trust the core devs’ direction.
  
  
• Core Team veto?: The old Core Team had informal veto power to reject risky changes (for example, if someone proposed radically increasing block size or something). But they rarely had to use such authority, as community alignment is strong. With the new workgroup model, likely even this informal veto will be spread out.
  
  
• Community Feedback: The Monero community is vocal. For instance, when talk of increasing ring size beyond 11 came up, there were discussions about performance vs privacy. Ultimately, the community leaned towards “increase it” and devs did (to 16) (Monero: All About the Top Privacy Coin - Chainalysis). Similarly, any talk of changing proof-of-work algorithm or other fundamentals usually goes through community scrutiny.
  
  
• No Governance Token: Monero has no masternodes, no staking, and thus no governance token or voting weight by holdings. Every participant’s voice is ostensibly equal in off-chain discussions. In practice, of course, those who contribute more (devs, researchers) carry weight due to their expertise and trust earned.
  
  

Notable Personnel:

• Riccardo Spagni (fluffypony): He was the most public “face” of Monero for years, often representing it at conferences and online. Since stepping down, he’s less involved. His attempted extradition case in 2021 (unrelated to Monero) briefly raised concern, but Monero’s progress didn’t slow, showing it wasn’t reliant on one man (Monero - Wikipedia).
  
  
• Francisco “ArticMine”: Known for economic insights (he often writes about Monero’s tail emission rationale and fee market). Often speaks at MoneroKon, etc.
  
  
• Justin “rehrar” Ehrenhofer: A younger contributor who led community initiatives (like Monero Community Workgroup). He was involved in Monero Outreach and ran events, now working in broader crypto industry but still a Monero advocate (Monero: All About the Top Privacy Coin - Chainalysis).
  
  
• Others: The likes of moneromooo (an extremely productive coder), selsta (maintains GUI wallet), binaryFate (handles infrastructure like websites), dEBRUYNE (coordinates research and also handles Monero’s StackExchange). Many of these individuals remain pseudonymous. The community, interestingly, respects pseudonyms as identities – trust is built from contributions.
  
  

Monero’s GitHub currently has ~500 contributors in total (of varying activity). Issues and pull requests are publicly managed. The lead maintainer role since fluffypony left is somewhat shared, but developers like luigi1111 and vtnerd often merge code and manage releases.

Community Governance Aspects:

• Monero has set up structures like the Monero Community Council (a group elected by the community to oversee CCS funds in multisig). This is a lightweight governance structure just to add accountability to funds.
  
  
• The Monero Policy Working Group (a workgroup focusing on addressing regulatory issues, providing information to regulators to educate them rather than lobbying per se) was formed to ensure Monero’s voice is heard in policy discussions.
  
  
• Transparency: All Core Team meeting logs used to be published (except when security-sensitive). Now, presumably workgroups will also communicate transparently. Monero is quite open in development – any decision can be traced to forum or chat discussions.
  
  

Strengths of Monero’s Governance:

• Extremely decentralized and censorship-resistant. No central server can shut Monero down, no foundation to dissolve. Even if key devs disappeared, the code is open and the community can continue (as it did in the beginning when early maintainer thankful_for_today abandoned the project, and the community forked to create Monero proper (Monero - Wikipedia) (Monero - Wikipedia)).
  
  
• No single point of failure: This extends to leadership. When Spagni left, Monero went on fine. If any current dev left, others would fill in. The project isn’t tied to a charismatic founder’s fate – which is comforting from a long-term investment view (less “founder risk”).
  
  
• Community alignment: The Monero community is ideologically aligned around privacy and decentralization. This means governance rarely has deep schisms – everyone wants similar outcomes, unlike some projects where some want corporate integration and others want purity, etc. For instance, one could imagine a split between making Monero more regulator-friendly vs staying private – but the community at large has firmly chosen the latter (no one internally is advocating compromising privacy for exchange listings).
  
  
• Adaptive: Monero has shown it can adapt consensus quickly when needed (e.g., multiple PoW changes to stop ASICs in 2018). The community can mobilize to deploy urgent fixes or countermeasures, which is an advantage in fast-evolving environments (Bitcoin, by contrast, has very slow governance, which is stable but not agile).
  
  

Weaknesses / Risks:

• Bus factor: If a handful of key devs (like moneromooo, selsta, etc.) were incapacitated or quit, development could slow. There is a risk that new contributors might not fully replace the experience of core devs quickly. However, the dev base is broader now than a few years ago.
  
  
• Lack of formal structure: Some investors might prefer a foundation or company that can be engaged with or held accountable. Monero has none – which means if something goes wrong (hack, major bug), there’s no official entity issuing press releases or compensating losses. It’s truly at one’s own risk.
  
  
• Funding variability: CCS relies on donations. In bear markets, raising funds can be slower (price of XMR down, donors less flush). So far, essential funding has always been met, but in a prolonged downtrend, paying multiple full-time devs could strain community resources. There is no treasury of XMR stored up (Monero has no premine treasury). That said, some Monero supporters with large holdings often step up as donors (almost a pseudo-VC role but through donations).
  
  
• Outreach and Marketing: With no marketing team, Monero’s outreach is entirely community-led. This can be less effective than a funded marketing effort of a foundation. Monero relies on word-of-mouth, media coverage, and the strength of its technology. It doesn’t “shill” at the scale other projects do. For investors expecting proactive market-making or partnerships, Monero’s structure doesn’t cater to that. (It won’t be doing sponsored sports events or signing corporate deals – no entity exists to do so). This could slow adoption in some mainstream contexts.
  
  

Notable Incidents & Governance Response:

• In 2018, a controversy known as the “Infamous MoneroV Fork”: A scam fork tried to use Monero’s code to airdrop a new coin. The core team warned users and implemented a network upgrade to mitigate any replay issues. The community largely heeded, showing trust in the core team’s guidance.
  
  
• Security incidents: a couple of wallet bugs (like the 2019 Ledger bug where sending multiple outputs could accidentally send change to someone else) were handled swiftly by developers with patched releases and disclosure (Monero - Wikipedia) (Monero - Wikipedia).
  
  
• These show that the informal governance has worked; the project navigated issues without meltdown or fracturing.
  
  

In summary, Monero’s team and governance model emphasize decentralization, transparency, and community consensus. This aligns well with the project’s ethos and is a positive from a censorship-resistance and longevity perspective. However, it requires investors to be comfortable with a non-traditional structure – there’s no management team to call up or quarterly report to review. Instead, due diligence involves following developer meeting logs, community forums, and code repositories. The fact that Monero has survived and thrived for 9+ years under this model suggests it’s a resilient approach. It also means Monero is less likely to suffer an internal collapse due to leadership failure (contrast projects that sank after founders left or misbehaved).

For an investor, assessing the team means looking at contributors’ track record: Monero’s contributors have delivered consistent improvements and acted responsibly with no known corruption or misuse of funds (CCS accounting is public and funds are multisig-secured by community members). The pseudonymous nature might be disconcerting to some, but in practice the Monero core contributors have built trust over time through actions. As one observer noted, “Much of the core development team chooses to remain anonymous” (Monero - Wikipedia), yet Monero’s development output rivals that of corporate-backed projects – a testament to effective self-governance.

Additional Sources – Team & Governance:

• Monero Wikipedia – Governance Section: Summarizes the core team and notes Riccardo Spagni’s role (Monero - Wikipedia).
  
  
• GitHub – Core Team proposal issue (Proposal: Disband Core · Issue #921 · monero-project/meta · GitHub) (Proposal: Disband Core · Issue #921 · monero-project/meta · GitHub) – full discussion on disbanding the core team and community responses.
  
  
• Monero CCS site: lists proposals and their funding progress – one can see how funds are managed and what roles are being paid for.
  
  
• Interviews: Many interviews exist with Monero contributors:
  
  
  
  • E.g., Stephan Livera Podcast Episode with fluffypony (2019) – insights on Monero’s philosophy.
    
    
  • Monero Talk (YouTube series) – host Douglas Tuman often interviews devs and community (episodes with ArticMine on tail emission, with selsta on GUI, etc.).
    
    
• Community Meeting Logs: Monero used to post logs of dev meetings and community meetings on their website or Reddit. These show decision processes for upgrades.
  
  
• Monero Outreach articles: e.g., “Who is the Monero Core Team?” (an educational piece explaining the roles) – might be slightly dated now with governance changes.
  
  
• Ars Technica (2017): Article “Inside Monero, the secretive, privacy-focused crypto” – includes commentary from core team members about leading the project (Monero - Wikipedia).
  
  
• MIT Media Lab Report (2020): “Crypto governance models” – might mention Monero as a case of community governance for comparison.
  
  
• Sociological Study: Possibly a paper or blog examining Monero’s community (some researchers study open-source communities; Monero’s anonymity angle might have drawn study).
  
  
• Court Documents (Spagni case): Though not directly governance, his case illustrated that no founder legal issues affected Monero’s operations – could be referenced indirectly.
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• LinkedIn/Profiles: Some Monero contributors like binaryFate have LinkedIn or public profiles describing their involvement, for investors wanting to know the human behind the nickname (though many remain alias-only).

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