ɱ Monero at mineracks
A Monero full node and block explorer, operated by mineracks as a technical study resource.
⚡ mineracks is a Bitcoin-only operation. We run this Monero node purely to
study its privacy technology as part of understanding the broader cryptographic and
Bitcoin tech stack. This is not financial advice and not an endorsement of Monero — or any
asset — as an investment. Our interest is strictly in Monero's engineering: the privacy
primitives it pioneered and what they teach us about the trade-offs Bitcoin makes.
What is Monero?
Monero (XMR) is a proof-of-work cryptocurrency whose defining feature is privacy by default.
Where Bitcoin's ledger is fully transparent, every Monero transaction obscures the sender, receiver,
and amount at the protocol level. It's interesting precisely because it sits at the opposite end
of the transparency spectrum from Bitcoin — a useful contrast for anyone studying how these systems work.
Why it's worth studying (from a Bitcoin perspective)
Monero is a live laboratory for cryptographic techniques that Bitcoiners debate in theory:
- Ring signatures — a transaction is signed by one real key hidden among decoys, breaking the link between a coin and its spender.
- Stealth addresses — every payment goes to a fresh one-time address derived on-chain, so a published address can't be used to track receipts.
- RingCT & Bulletproofs+ — amounts are hidden with Pedersen commitments, proven valid with compact range proofs (the same zero-knowledge lineage as Bitcoin's confidential-transaction research).
- View keys — a clean model of selective, auditable disclosure: you can hand someone read-only visibility without spend authority.
These map directly onto open Bitcoin questions (CoinJoin, confidential transactions, Taproot privacy,
the transparency-vs-fungibility trade-off). Running a node and reading the chain first-hand is the best way to understand them.
🔎 Block explorer
Browse the Monero blockchain — blocks, transactions, ring members, network stats — on the open-source reference explorer:
Open a Monero block explorer →
📡 Connect a wallet to our public remote node
We run a synced full node with a restricted public RPC you can point any Monero wallet at —
handy if you don't want to download the ~285 GB blockchain yourself.
Clearnet (convenient)
Node: xmr.mineracks.com
Port: 18089 (restricted RPC)
🪚 Tor (private — recommended)
We also publish the node as a Tor hidden service. Over Tor the connection is
encrypted end-to-end and your IP is hidden from the node itself — no TLS certificate needed.
Node: 4fr54y6z4ro2maqlpyo43vvdyi3idkvvw7gir74uvzqxbvweqiigf2qd.onion
Port: 18089
How to set it
- Official Monero GUI / CLI → set the remote node to one of the addresses above. For the .onion, run with Tor:
--daemon-address <onion>:18089 --proxy 127.0.0.1:9050.
- Feather Wallet → Settings → Network → Node → add the node; Feather routes .onion nodes over its built-in Tor automatically.
- Cake Wallet / Monerujo → Settings → Nodes → Add node → enter the host + port
18089; enable Tor for the .onion.
⚠ Privacy note — and why no SSL on clearnet. A remote node cannot see your
keys, balance, or spend your funds — those never leave your wallet. The clearnet endpoint can
see your IP and which transactions your wallet queries. We deliberately don't dress the clearnet endpoint
in TLS, because a public node's certificate is self-signed (your wallet can't verify it) — that's encryption
without authentication, i.e. a false sense of security. The genuinely private path is the Tor
address above: it encrypts end-to-end and hides your IP. Use Tor if privacy matters, or run your own node.
👛 Get a Monero wallet
Wallet software is published by the Monero project and independent teams — not by mineracks. Always verify downloads against their official sources.