The Monero ecosystem aims to bring fast, private transactions and financial services to anyone and everyone, regardless of who they are, where they live, what they do, or how they identify. We believe that the freedom to privately hold and use your own money is a fundamental human right, and the core ethos of this project has been and always will be to provide services that are private, free, open, and transparent.
To realize these aims, we are aware that our project must itself live up to these ideals. This code of conduct lays out a pledge by the collective Monero community to its individual members to act in specific ways that uphold these principles. In exchange, this code of conduct holds individual members to the high standards expected of them by the community. Below are the rules of conduct expected of contributors to this project.
Above all else, Monero is a private payment network that requires no disclosure of identity, assets, or transaction details to other users or observers. This project aims to extend the same privacy guarantees of Monero itself to those who contribute to this project.
- Anonymity Guarantee: No contributor to this project will ever be required to disclose identifying information unless they wish to themselves. Anonymous and identified contributors are to be treated in the same way in all cases. Revealing of identifying information (“doxxing”) of contributors is unacceptable and such information will be removed from the project unless affirmatively added (or consented to in writing) by the contributor themselves. Attempts to surmise or link identities of contributors within this project’s code or documentation are unacceptable.
- No De-Anonymization: Anonymity will be provided to all users of this project by default. This project will not implement features to de-anonymize other users unless those features rely explicitly on provided identity credentials and affirmative consent of the other user on a user-by-user basis. (Wallet view keys are a good example of acceptable de-anonymization.) Any ability by a user or observer to de-anonymize activities on or users of this project will be treated as an issue of maximum severity, publicly disclosed immediately, and fixed as soon as possible. Should telemetry data be collected, it will be opt-in and strongly anonymized, in absolutely all circumstances.
- Privacy Comes First: All features proposed for this project will be subject to a rigorous privacy audit before being implemented. In a conflict between privacy and some other feature, (speed, functionality) privacy will always win out and the feature will not be implemented until an audit has been conducted, the results disclosed, and the feature agreed to be privacy-protecting by a functional majority of contributors.
The Monero ecosystem is proud to be free software, in all senses of the word. Monero does not charge beyond what is necessary to maintain the network, and makes its source code freely available for modification and improvement. This project aims to live up the the same ideals of freedom available to all who choose to use Monero itself.
- Monero is for Everyone: Monero is a permissionless payment network that promises privacy, and is thus used by many different groups and people of numerous identities who don’t wish to disclose their activities. There will likely be strong personal and political differences between users of Monero and between contributors to the Monero ecosystem. For this reason, non-technical discussion within the project (official Git and Github repos, technical forums, mailing lists) is strongly discouraged, and contributors are instead encouraged to socialize in Monero’s numerous social community platforms, which vary widely in format and userbase. In addition to being technically irrelevant, harassment of other contributors, for any reason, be it for technical disagreement or any identity components, is unacceptable and will be deleted from this project’s repository. If you have a technical disagreement, be polite and understanding. Do not escalate. Trolling and flaming will simply be considered spam and removed. Those in this project with the authority to remove content are expected to exercise good judgement and act in accordance with the wishes of a functional majority of contributors.
- Free to Use: Core Monero projects (projects affiliated with the Monero organization or otherwise central to the Monero ecosystem, as determined by contributors) will not charge users XMR for the use of their services unless such a cost can be proven to be crucial to the functionality of the product. (e.g. transaction fees) In such a case, these costs will be kept as low as is feasible in good faith. This project will never require payment in other forms of currency (fiat money, other digital currencies) for access to any functionality. Requests for donations are acceptable and encouraged, but the optionality of these donations must be clearly and unambiguously stated to the user. All requests for donations are strongly encouraged to use Monero’s official community development fund. (XMR:
888tNkZrPN6JsEgekjMnABU4TBzc2Dt29EPAvkRxbANsAnjyPbb3iQ1YBRk1UXcdRsiKc9dhwMVgN5S9cQUiyoogDavup3H) - Community Crowdfunding System: All Monero projects are strongly encouraged to use Monero’s Community Crowdfunding System for funding, which handles donations, milestones, payouts and auditability, as well as provides coordination of which features are being worked on and gauges community interest in new proposals. This project will make usage of the CCS public and encourage contributors to use the CCS.
- Open Source Licenses: Monero’s core implementation uses the BSD 3-Clause License, a permissive license which reserves copyrights and trademarks but allows free modification, distribution and commercial use of the software. Monero projects are strongly encouraged to use similar open source licenses, such as BSD, GNU-GPL or MIT. This project pledges to honor the letter and spirit of free software by making the code publicly available for use and modification. Closed-source projects that wish to use code from this project to add Monero functionality are requested to notify this project in writing.
- Free Association: This project promises to never implement hard-coded “blacklists”, “blocklists”, “denylists” or other such functionality designed to prohibit certain users from accessing functionality on any basis of identity. Any functionality added that disallows other users from taking some action must be optional, disabled by default, and limited to the one instance of the software on which the request to deny functionality was made, and must not apply to the blocked user’s interactions with any other user.
- This project further promises to never block access to viewing or contributing for any contributor unless that contributor can be proven to be attempting to maliciously subvert project functionality and such proof is agreed to by an overwhelming functional majority of contributors.
Monero aims to have as few barriers to use as possible. Software in the Monero ecosystem is freely available and does not impose restrictions on its own use. This project aims to be as accessible and easy to use as Monero itself.
- Welcoming: This project pledges to respect and welcome all who wish to contribute, and promises to foster an environment of mutual respect between contributors.
- Permissionless: This project will place no barrier to those who wish to contribute. All contributions will be evaluated and viewed solely on their content, without any prejudice given to the identity or characteristics of the contributor. All contributions are subject to the evaluation and approval of all other contributors. All contributors are promised a fair hearing of concerns or ideas related to the project. Project leaders will be respectful and receptive towards all contributors, regardless of the contributor’s time spent on this specific project. Those who have contributed extensively to the project will be valued and respected as experts on their contributions.
- Contributions Are Paramount: This project pledges to adopt or reject changes based solely on their technical quality or feasibility, and not to take into account any traits of the contributor who proposed them. Contributors will not be frozen out or excluded, nor will they be favored over others, for any reason. Suggestions will not be discarded for any reason that is not solely based on their viability for the project. Likewise, community action against contributors will be based on clearly stated reasons specific to certain contributions and subject to public review from other contributors.
- Off-Site Content: Monero’s community is large and diverse. Many contributors will produce wildly varying content for other projects, or on social media or Monero community forums. This content will be considered as completely separate from this project, and decisions as to which of this content will be brought in (art assets, etc.) will be taken very seriously by all contributors. This project pledges to not favor certain contributors over others based on this separate content, nor to discuss that content in in-project communication (official Git and Github repos, technical forums, mailing lists), and contributors pledge to limit the influence of others’ off-site content on group dynamics within this project.
Monero is completely auditable and the full transaction history of all users is publicly verifiable by both themselves and to whomever they choose to disclose their view keys. This project aims to provide contributors the same transparency-based peace of mind Monero provides to its users.
- Articulation of Changes: All changes, no matter the size, will be publicly disclosed and explained on request. Decisions to implement large changes by those with authority in this project will be made public in advance, and a full reason will be provided at that time.
- Public Comment: Before a large change is made or agreed to, there will be a period for contributors and the general public to ask questions and express opinions and concerns. These will be heard in good faith by those proposing and implementing the change and answered in appropriate detail. All public comments and questions must be respectful and technically oriented. Should a change prove unpopular with a large number of users or contributors, it will be reconsidered and potentially revised. Should a disagreement in project direction result in a fork, all participants promise to remain civil and amicable and to jointly disclose all planned differences between the original project and the fork prior to the fork date.
The Monero ecosystem has ambitious aims and hopes to make a lasting positive impact. In order to realize these goals and continue to produce the tools to empower people across the world, we acknowledge out responsibility to live those ideals as we make those tools available. In exchange for your cooperation and good faith adherence to these rules of conduct, the Monero community pledges to you, the users and contributors, a dynamic, productive and friendly team that will consistently put your best interests at the forefront of everything we do. You are our mission, and it’s you that makes this ecosystem work.
Cheers to you! We can’t wait to see what’s next!
—Best regards,
The Monero Community