I made a website listing the types of data leaked in monero transactions and providing case studies of how these leaks contributed to the arrest and prosecution of various monero users.
Monero users should consider switching to lightning.
https://moneroleaks.xyz/
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Replies (48)
This is awesome!! Thanks!!
Liquid helps?
I think so. But lightning helps even more, if used properly
Thank you for your work to orange pill the monero maxis, they really are team Bitcoin and would be great additions in Bitcoin circles. Monero maxis are the only shitcoiners I really respect... but they're still shitcoiners
@QnA thoughts …?
Is this meant as a joke?
If your are retarded it does not matter what crypto currency you use you will get caught buying drugs when the drug dog at the post office sniffs your packages.
If DNM used LN instead of Monero you will have a bigger list than that yo show 😂
its good to have all these together in one place
I prefer the data without your stupid editorializing though 😬
when you see it all together like in this list
its clear that chain analysis has learned how to do basic poisoned output attacks against targets in the last few years.
everybody knew this was going to happen.
if you have that kind of targeted surveillance threat model,
and particularly if you move in and out of fiat often
you need to learn about the attack and probably churn your outputs.
#monero
Certainly not a subject matter expert here, nor do I have the time to try and become one. I've seen ST's anti-monero tirade from a far and can make one or two fairly big assumptions.
1. It's likely much more nuanced than either side claims.
2. Using self custodial LN privately is a much higher barrier to entry
In the cited document, look at pages 24-25, the section "LIN’s Crypto Account-1 Received Marketplace-1 proceeds." In those proceedings, they show -- through a trace -- that Lin converted criminal proceeds into monero and then withdrew them to a monero wallet and then sent them to a KYC'd exchange to sell them.
They document 4 traces in subparagraphs i, ii, iii, and iv where he did this and they outline the technique they used to perform the trace. Then, in subparagraph vi, they state that they got Lin's identity because the exchange where they traced the money to had his KYC data, namely, his mobile number, his email, and his driver's license.
That is a trace where the identification and arrest of the target happened after, and due to, tracing monero.
> Using self custodial LN privately is a much higher barrier to entry
Of the four UX hurdles I outline on this page (https://moneroleaks.xyz/), monero has all 4 of them and lightning only has 1, which is this: lightning users also commonly reuse the LN-equivalent of a monero address, namely, they commonly reuse the same pubkey in all of their invoices. Not to downplay that problem, but if you just go by the hurdles I mention on that page, lightning fixes 3 out of 4 of them and monero fixes none of them.
If that's the case then it still has nothing to do with the feds tracing Monero, but instead is about using KYC exchanges i.e bad OPSEC.
Even the most anonymous cryptocurrency will not protect you if you KYC yourself.
> it still has nothing to do with the feds tracing Monero
It has everything to do with the feds tracing monero. You know why they knew he used that exchange? Because they traced his monero to it. If you stop them from tracing the money in the first place, they never learn what exchange he uses, and thus they don't know who to subpoena for user info.
Watch "Breaking Monero". Its flaws are well documented for years.
Monero protects the privacy of the user. If you run a criminal enterprise you need to take care of the anonymity as well which means bullet proof OpSec.
Monero can only protect you that far. With FCMP++ Monero gets rid of its currently weakest link. It still means that without good OpSec people are leaking incriminating meta data right and left.
In today's world neither Monero nor LN alone are good enough to protect you. They are mere tools.
If my life was on the line I'd choose Monero with a couple of precautions over LN anytime.
I love that LN is stateless and I am looking forward to see payment channels on Monero. The less permanent data there is, the better.
This also needs to take in account the data that can be intercepted. Only because LN is stateless doesn't mean CA companies and intel agencies aren't running massive nodes collecting data permanently.
How does any of this lead to Bitcoin if Monero gets LN capability post FCMP++ upgrade?
If at all, I want a stateless network on top of a private store of wealth.
I know the real reason why people never get caught selling drugs via lightning


Try to send bigger amounts self-custodially over LN.
I admire your dedication. It's neccessary to understand the flaws of an approach to find safer default settings and work arounds.
I have the belief that some of these things can and will get fixed in the future.
Looking forward to Monero getting LN capability post FCYMP++ upgrade.
At this point we need to encourage some BTC maxi to try their luck with a LNDNM. It'll be a great chance to learn a couple of things.
I know you have a strong detaste of LN, while I am just curious. All things should be tried and potentially competing with each other.
Thanks to tail emission I don't need to worry that any custodial or non custodial off chain transacting will kill the coin. Unlike Bitcoin.
Your wait is over! Shopstr is an illegal drug marketplace that takes lightning
> At this point we need to encourage some BTC maxi to try their luck with a LNDNM
Got ya covered: http://sva5te372puuuyhnp4mrspewm76x2jqnzgctdfde474owrdonu4xyoyd.onion/
by the time you guys get lightning working on monero, who knows how much farther ahead we'll be by then? You bank on playing catch up but it's a losing strategy
> that's a clearnet website that happens to have an onion link
All DNMs can be accessed on clearnet too, thanks to tor proxies
> there are no drugs in it
Then explain this: http://6fkdn756yryd5wurkq7ifnexupnfwj6sotbtby2xhj5baythl4cyf2id.onion/listing/3d4aa39d5d9752477d4344806dfdedfea895bc5816c297d46c7333fe29fcbb63


seems like you need to learn to search better -- people sell drugs on shopstr
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lightning
LN has prisms and atomic tx chaining, so the following scenario is doable: I buy the latest album for $10, not knowing that $5 of it went to the original artist and $5 went to the merchant. Thus, the sender doesn't know how much money went to the receiver and how much went to one or more other folks. Which is good, that's none of his business. But XMR needlessly exposes that private info to him.
He doesn't care, it's astroturfing
You a list collector? I ask because I've been looking for the longest list of wallet addresses that accept donations in different cryptocurrencies
No worries, it's probably the one I'm working on anyway lol
Adding your xmr address btw
IMHO, Monero lacks some key features that make it a viable long term Store of Value, at least in comparison to Bitcoin. Lack of widespread acceptance, decentration, and frequent hard forks introduce significant risks to its SoV status, specifically when it comes to geopolitical risks and long term nation state adoption. Arguably even Bitcoin has risks of developer corruption or capture, so to me, Monero is at even greater risk here.
You should consider being less retarded.
Fountain App is a podcasting service with a feature called Splits where users pay a single invoice to "zap" a podcast they liked and the app automatically splits up the money to multiple recipients:
See also Lightning Prisms: 

Fountain: Podcasts & Music
What are splits? • Fountain FAQ
Splits let everyone involved in a podcast or music release receive a share of listener payments.

dergigi.com
Lightning Prisms | dergigi.com
Thoughts on the automatic splitting of sat flows.
> Sam can happen with Lightning...Now lets talk about this
View quoted note →
> They use your bad OPSEC against you
Yeah, and monero needlessly throws extra opsec hurdles at users
It is monero's fault that your private keys expose your tx history -- thus enabling the tx lookup attack
It is monero's fault that transactions leak the amount sent, amount received, and time of the transaction -- thus enabling the timing analysis attack
Saying "Well the user shouldn't have made the mistakes that exposed that data" is certainly true, but it's also a problem that monero makes this data so easy to expose
Since the LN is affiliated with the WEF, I wouldn't be surprised.
Doesn't work
gfy
Works for me 

Maybe. Maybe not. I use LN today. I use Monero.
The thing is Monero Bros are far more open to use the right tools for the job than Bitcoin maxis.
If Bitcoin doesn't get banned by the state and stays spendable in regulated white markets with LN is perfect for me. Bitcoin onchain or LN is just one trade away from my Monero stack.
Technically, someone just sending something to your address doesn't make you guilty. They can't get a conviction just on that. So what they do is tell you there's a package they couldn't deliver and need you to come to the post office to pick up. If you come and claim it, they consider that to be acknowledging that you expected the package. If you just insist you're not expecting a package and cut your losses, though, there's not much they can do.
Also, use the post office, not a corporate shipper like UPS or FedEx. The 4th amendment only restricts the government, not businesses.
Of course, with the Trump administration flagrantly ignoring the constitution, all bets are off. You should theoretically be safe, but... Maybe don't tempt the racist gestapo if you're not white.

Complete bullshit.
Leaking an address to send monero to? You are most user get fresh addresses to receive on, right? And the transaction is not visible to anyone not directly involved at all. Rather large difference.
Stealth public keys are created continuously NOT a limited supply.
There is no such linkage stealth address and base wallet address that is visible inside a transaction and no transaction visible externally.
And all of this you badly try to make a weakness are part of and partial proofs of the massive privacy advantage of Monero over Bitcoin.
I hope Godzilla is okay
I think that is currently how fountain app does it
There are two possible advantages to doing it atomically, depending on how you do it: you can do it by atomically forwarding the funds to different destinations without telling the sender where the funds end up, which is better for receiver privacy, but allows the "middleman" server to steal by giving the sender an invoice that pays himself, without forwarding the money to the real would-be recipients.
Another way you can do it is, do the same thing except you *do* tell the sender where the funds end up, and include a signature from each recipient confirming that they will only reveal the payment preimage if they get their cut. By doing that, you give up on some of the receiver privacy, because now the sender knows the number of recipients, or at least a number of people who "claim" to be recipients (they could inflate this number), though he still doesn't know what amounts they get.
Whichever way you do it, you additionally break a heuristic that some routing nodes use to guess how much money was received in an LN payment; the heuristic they use is to guess that the ultimate recipient basically receives the full amount sent, minus some routing fees; but if you do an atomic payment split, how much the ultimate recipient gets depends on how the split is done, so the assumption no longer holds.
>arguably even bitcoin has risks of developer corruption or capture
One of few to admit this, now can you admit that it's ALREADY happened?
Maybe. Hard to say for sure though.
A lot of Bitchcoin marximalists sharing this bullshit:
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Ok, here we go.👇
Receiver Privacy
Claim 1: Sharing your address with the sender leaks your identity.
Reality: Necessary step for any payment system. Sharing an address is not a trace, it’s a direct exchange.
✅ Not a protocol leak.
🛡️ Use subaddresses or one-time addresses to avoid any reuse.
Claim 2: Sender learns one of your stealth public keys.
Reality: That’s how Monero payments work, stealth addresses protect receiver privacy from everyone else.
✅ Only visible to sender and receiver.
🛡️ No third-party can observe or link stealth keys on chain.
Claim 3: Sender can link the stealth key to your Monero address.
Reality: Only possible if you reused an address. Otherwise, stealth outputs are unlinkable.
✅ Still not on chain traceable.
🛡️ Use a new subaddress for each sender = Unlinkability preserved.
Claim 4: Recipient sees the amount they received.
Reality: This is expected. The receiver has to know how much they got.
✅ No one else can see the amount due to RingCT.
🛡️ Zero privacy leakage occurs on chain.
Sender Privacy
Claim 5: Inputs can be linked using the “common input ownership” heuristic.
Reality: This is a guess based on multiple inputs being used in one transaction. It’s not proof.
✅ No on chain trace.
🛡️ Modern wallets avoid this by using just one input where possible. Ring signatures still hide which input was really spent.
Claim 6: Ring signatures can have decoys eliminated.
Reality: This is only possible when the attacker controls some decoys, which is rare.
✅ Protocol still provides strong plausible deniability.
🛡️ Monero’s 16 member rings + decoy algorithms minimize risk.
Amount Privacy
Claim 7: Fees are visible and could fingerprint wallet type.
Reality: Fees are public for blockchain function but do not expose who made the payment.
✅ No linkable identity or trace.
🛡️ No amounts, addresses, or parties are exposed just the fee. UX hurdles, not tracing risks.
Claim 8: Some wallets share your view key with a server.
Reality: True for light wallets that sync faster by scanning remotely. The server can see which outputs belong to you.
✅ No on-chain trace.
🛡️ Use wallets that scan locally (like Feather Wallet or Monero CLI Wallet) to keep full control over your privacy.
🛡️ Use Tor (like built-in in Cake Wallet), I2P, or your own node = Full privacy restored.
Claim 9: Reusing your Monero address hurts privacy.
Reality: True, if you give the same address to multiple people, they can tell it’s all going to you.
✅ Still not traceable on chain.
🛡️ Use subaddresses or a new address for every sender. Monero makes this easy.
Claim 10: Rotating Monero keys is hard.
Reality: True, if someone sends to an old address after you delete the keys, you can’t access the funds.
✅ But no data becomes traceable.
🛡️ Just back up your wallet properly. Privacy isn’t broken, it’s just a usability challenge.
Not a single point here proves that Monero can be traced. Every so-called “leak” is either a necessary part of sending or receiving funds, or an off chain risk based on user behavior, or a solvable UX limitation, not a break in privacy. The protocol holds. The math holds. Your privacy holds. None of this proves Monero is traceable. What it does prove is this: Privacy depends on more than just the protocol, it depends on you.
In every news story about Monero being “tracked,” the tracked user has made multiple critical OpSec mistakes. Authorities, seeing this as an opportunity, claim they can track Monero, but they are actually engaging in propaganda to dissuade, discourage and confuse people.


