There is currently a fee bug with Monero, that the wallet doesn’t automatically bump the fee when there is a backlog. This fee bug is causing sync issues with many wallets, because a large txpool causes a lot of load on public nodes. Monero official GUI, CLI, feather, and some Cake nodes are affected.
The bug has already been solved with Anonero.io, and other wallets will be rolling out fixes shortly. Also using a self-hosted node or even just less popular nodes is a solution. Monero can easily handle mass spam with its adjusting block size, this is just a minor fee issue.
This link has a list of working nodes.
Who did it?
Unrelated to the minor fee issue, Fiatjaf the creator of the Nostr protocol, is trying to take credit for this Monero issue to promote Bitcoin. In his released Gmail, he asked for grant money to do an open source spam attack on Monero, in order to attempt to force Bitcoin lightning adoption on darkweb markets. He further replied he maybe behind the attacks.
This is completely ludicrous as self-custodial “self-liquidity managed” lightning in its current form is not useable for the average person. You can’t even receive self-custodial self-liquidity unless you deposit a large amount to open channels. And then you have privacy issues with the layer 1 channel. Without Monero you’d need to mix it with drug dealers and hackers to degrade the value of your coins. And many of the custodial wallets such as GetAlby block Tor and use Big Tech.
Nostr’s current weakness
Fiatjaf thinks he can’t be DdoS’ed, and that’s true because most Nostr nodes use Cloudflare and Hetzner. Nostr can’t be DdoS’ed because it isn’t as uncensored as he claims. You’re mouthing off at the permission of the US government because you’re reliant on Cloudflare to protect you from the Monero community’s real response.
The only spam Bitcoin Maxis are producing is the quality of their arguments. The XMR fee bug has nothing to do with Fiatjaf and the patches will be out shortly. The Monero community’s response should NOT be to abandon Nostr. The idea of an uncensored common grounds for free speech is vital to our society to function. Instead of putting massive effort into DDoS or Spam, we should embrace it in our own way.
Solutions
Simplified Privacy, with the help of DegenRocket, has created a Nostr integrated web forum market, Linked-Out.me. It’s a federated forum, think Nostr Reddit/Lemmy replacement with embedded video functionality. Our team stands ready to train the Monero.town admins on how to host an instance and community on how to use it.
Further we’ve hooked direct Monero billing bots up to Session messenger, so influencers can get monthly XMR subscriptions and direct it to the forums. You can see this live by texting “Simple” on Session messenger (without quotes) or going to Linked-out.me in a browser. Please note: Linked-Out.me currently bans US IP addresses for regulatory reasons.
I urge the Monero community to not abandon Nostr from the words of one man or waste massive effort into spam attacks. Instead, let’s take this opportunity for us to truly build a parallel economy. This our genuine purpose.
You know the US government told Coinbase to delist everything but Bitcoin? So ignore Fiatjaf, he’s a Cloudflare Google bitch that takes the side of the oppressor.
Our Video Tutorial: How to use Nostr