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In the beta stressnet launch, Monero switched from ring signatures to full-chain membership proofs (FCMP++), it expanded the anonymity set for each individual transaction.
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Cardano founder Charles Hoskinson stated that this upgrade is massive and a very significant upgrade; he was proud of the years of hard work the Monero development team has put into the project.
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The beta stressnet provides an opportunity for the community to test the method before its integration into the mainnet.
Monero has made a significant privacy improvement that has taken over the long-standing concept of using ring signatures that used full-chain membership proofs.
The new technology (FCMP++) provides a substantial growth of the anonymity set for every transaction from 16 possible signers to more than 150 million outputs on the entire blockchain.
As of May 6, this year, the upgrade entered phase two of public testing via a beta stressnet, where community members and developers are able to test new privacy features in real-world scenarios for the first time.
Cardano founder, Charles Hoskinson publicly praised this development, calling it a huge deal and expressing pride in the Monero team for their years of continuous development effort.
The FCMP++ upgrade has been in development for over 2 years, completing security reviews, audits, and extensive testing prior to getting to this stage of stressnet for public testing.
Full-Chain Membership Proofs Replace Obsolete Ring Signature Model
Under Monero’s previous system, ring signatures allowed a sender to prove ownership of one output among a small group of 16 possible candidates. While this offered reasonable privacy when Monero first launched, advances in blockchain analysis gradually eroded its effectiveness.
FCMP++ changes this fundamental approach completely. Instead of hiding a transaction within a handful of possible sources, the new system lets users prove they own one output among every single unspent transaction on the Monero blockchain. This expands the anonymity set from 16 to over 150 million outputs, making transaction tracing exponentially more difficult.
While stronger privacy protections are a technical achievement, research reveals a hidden mental health crisis among dark web users, raising important questions about the human consequences of operating in these anonymous spaces.
The upgrade works alongside another privacy-focused technology called CARROT, which enhances Monero’s addressing system with better security and usability features while maintaining backward compatibility with existing addresses. Both technologies entered the beta stressnet phase simultaneously after years of parallel development.
During the current beta testing phase, Monero developers have asked the community to actively participate by reporting bugs and sharing detailed feedback before any mainnet rollout.
Beta Stressnet Opens for Community Testing as Mainnet Integration Approaches
Monero launched the beta stressnet on May 6 at block height 2,997,100, following the release of software version v0.19.0.0-beta.1.0. The test environment allows users to run the new privacy features using daemon, CLI, RPC, and GUI binaries specifically built for testing.
The developers have warned testers about several limitations in this beta version. Hardware wallet support, multi-signature transactions, watch-only wallets, cold wallets, and transaction proofs remain unavailable in this release. Additionally, transactions with many inputs may take more time to construct under the new proof system.
Monero developers have also issued a privacy warning for anyone running a node on the beta stressnet. On the main Monero network, node operators benefit from an anonymity set numbering in the thousands. On the beta stressnet, that set may only include dozens of participants, making IP addresses potentially visible to other network nodes.
Cardano Founder’s Praise Highlights Cross-Chain Recognition of Privacy Milestone
Charles Hoskinson, the founder of Cardano, publicly commended Monero’s privacy advancements in a notable show of cross-chain support – he described the FCMP++ launch as a “significant milestone” and a “major upgrade” for the privacy-focused cryptocurrency.
Hoskinson’s comments arrived during a significant week for both blockchain networks. While Monero pushed forward with its FCMP++ stressnet, Cardano simultaneously advanced its van Rossem hard fork toward deployment, with the governance action reaching the Preview testnet stage.
The FCMP++ upgrade builds on Monero’s long-term privacy roadmap – this also includes the Seraphis transaction protocol overhaul and the Jamtis next-generation address format.
These future developments will further strengthen Monero’s position as the leading privacy-focused cryptocurrency, especially as regulatory pressure has forced several major exchanges to delist privacy coins in markets like the European Union.
