I've spent probably 40+ hours obsessively reading hundreds of pages regarding XMR here on bitcointalk.org in addition to every thread on reddit, every thread on monero.cc forum, the CryptoNote white paper, nearly all of fluffypony, Risto Pietila, and others' posts. I've compiled and ran Monero. I am not an XMR or cryptocurrency expert, but my conclusions about XMR are as follows:
Strengths:
- Fair distribution. XMR's emission schedule and lack of pre-mine/instamine means that newcomers do not need to worry about buying into a coin where early adopters are solely interested in pumping and dumping, leaving the newcomers as bagholders. Someone acquiring XMR today and in the near future will get them at a cost within the same order of magnitude as early adopters.
- XMR, due to its fair distribution and good liquidity, is a strong candidate to occupy the #1 or #2 position in the privacy niche of the cryptocurrency market.
- XMR, due to its completely new codebase, different hashing algorithm, and good liquidity is also a strong candidate to occupy the #1 or #2 position in what I call the "catastrophic hedge niche" of the crypto currency market. (If you would like to read more about my thoughts on XMR as a hedge, you can ready my post here:
https://bitcointalksearch.org/topic/m.9679903 )
- A small proportion of funds in XMR will occupy these two important niches at once (neither of which can be adequately addressed by bitcoin). If we assume that these two niches together should account for 5% of the total cryptocurrency market cap, XMR seems to be an incredible expected value (EV) play at this level (1.5 m
BTC:1 XMR)
- XMR devs, due to their small stakes in the coin and honest behavior thus far do not seem to be interested in pumping and dumping XMR. They are genuinely interested in the technology.
- XMR has drawn positive attention from many respected members of the bitcoin community, including Gregory Maxwell and many hero members.
- XMR has at least one (and probably several) wealthy backers, such as Mr. Pietila who will support the coin over the long haul.
Weaknesses:
Most of these are soft factors. Please do not take offense to any of this. I am not attacking anyone's lifestyle choices or means. These are simply the facts that I've gathered.
- No one involved is working on XMR full-time. (All
core devs are working part-time as they cannot make a living purely off XMR.) Essentially, XMR is a multi-million dollar project with
no one working full-time. At least one dev is working on a coin other than XMR at the same time.
Edit: According to othe, there are other non-core devs who are contributing more than part-time on XMR.
- Due to XMR's fair distribution (which is a major strength), the devs do not own a significant amount of XMR (perhaps fewer than 50,000 XMR collectively) which means that they are inadequately funded. Even if a significant increase in value occurs and they earn 10x their investment, they will still lack the means to work on XMR full-time.
-
XMR seems to be funded by mainly one person, Risto Pietila, Correction: XMR is funded primarily by the core devs.
- Devs were not part of the original CrypoNote team and are admittedly not as familiar with the codebase as the devs of other CryptoNote coins. They therefore experience challenges improving the codebase and making it maintainable.
- Blockchain Bloat. XMR's Ring-signatures are data intensive, and the XMR blockchain will be somewhere between 5-10 times the size of bitcoin's for an equivalent number of transactions. I don't consider this to be a significant weakness. Monero's blockchain will likely be much smaller than bitcoin's anyway.
I will correct and update this list as necessary. Thank you for reading.