27 Mar 2024 | Updated 25 Jul 2024 [research] [events]

Monero mean effective ring size rises as suspected spam attack subsides

A significant (~40K) drop in daily XMR transactions was registered1 earlier today, suggesting the suspected black marble flooding incident against Monero that started around March 5th2 is starting to show some signs of stopping.

Rucknium3 has noted that the mean effective ring size is naturally rising and also added that less than 1% of rings have an effective ring size of 1:

The spam looks like it stopped recently. May be temporary. So, mean effective ring size is rising [..] There are more favorable parameters now (higher ring size and lower spam share of outputs), so less than 1% of rings have an effective ring size of 1. The Chervinski simulation had the share of rings with effective ring size one at 12%.4

It is currently unclear whether this is only a temporary pause.

Consult Rucknium’s preliminary analysis5 of the suspected flooding incident and the recent MRL logs67 to learn more about this ongoing story.

This is an ongoing story and the report will be updated if/when new information is available.


Update 24/3/28: tx count down to normal levels (<30K); added direct link to latest Rucknium draft (PDF) for future reference8.

Update 24/7/25: ‘AntiDarknet’ collective claimed responsibility for the spam attack9.