Monero Observer Blitz #50 - October 2026

Here’s a recap of what happened this October around the Monero community:

Breaking

• Monero ‘Fluorine Fermi’ versions 0.18.5.3/0.18.5.4 were released with a large number of bug fixes (1,2)
• The Monero CCS website was temporarily ‘disabled’ after a disclosure of critical PHP vulnerabilities (3)

Security

• Binance suffered the largest hack in crypto history and promised to ‘cover all losses’ (4)
• Dread’s main onion private key was exposed (5)
• Keystone was getting ready to destroy 18,835 compromised hardware wallets after a data breach that affected 25,964 customers (6)
• Chainalysis customer data was exposed in a ‘cybersecurity incident’ (7)

R&D

• The Monero Research Lab held 4 meetings in October (8,9,10,11)
• The Monero Tech and Cuprate workgroups also held 4 meetings each (12,13,14,15,16,17,18,19)
• SChernykh released P2Pool v5.0-beta for FCMP++/Carrot stressnet v3.0 (20)
• MAGIC Grants released Skylight Wallet v2.1.0 (21)
• ofrnxmr completed the BasicSwapDEX CCS (22)
• Cake Labs released Cake Wallet & Monero.com versions 6.4.6-6.5.2 (23,24,25)
• woodser released Haveno versions 1.9.0-1.12.0, ‘monero-cpp’ v0.9.10, ‘monero-java’ v0.8.62-0.8.64 & ‘monero-ts’ v0.11.20/0.11.21 (26,27,28,29,30,31)
• Feather fork ‘Biscuit Wallet’ was released - initial version up to v1.2.3 (32,33,34,35)
• Bitcart v0.11.0.0 was released with a redesigned payment flow and support for XMR network fee estimation (36)
• nahuhh released ‘basicswap-bash’ v0.19.1 (37)

Funding

• SNeedlewoods submitted a CCS proposal for Monero dev work in Q4 2026 (38)
• acx submitted a CCS proposal to maintain Monfluo in Q4 2026 (39)
• PyXMR2025 submitted a CCS proposal for 3 months of part-time Monero dev work, which was closed (40)
• Gingeropolous submitted a CCS proposal for ‘Monerosim’ R&D and ‘MRC’ hardware maintenance (41)
• j-berman submitted a CCS proposal for 3 months of part-time FCMP++ & Carrot dev work (42)
• jpk68 submitted a CCS proposal for 3 months of full-time Monero dev work, which was fully funded (43)
• silverpill submitted a CCS proposal to migrate ‘monero-rs’ pacakges to ‘monero-oxide’ (44)

Culture

• Three Community Workgroup Meetings took place on the 3rd, 17th & 31st (45,46,47)
• XMRPod v0.1.23/0.1.24 were released (48,49)

Community Messages (5/39)

• [ANN] Announcing beta.getmonero.org, an official redesign of the monero website. (50)
• [ANN] [PSA] 9.3 Critical ‘PwnEscape’ Linux Kernel flaw enables KVM guest-to-host escape (51)
• [LFF] I’m seeking funding and legal help to fight for the future of Nitter. (52)
• [ANN] Pay in XMR, they receive BTC or USDT (53)
• [ANN] [PSA] Wagyu XMR swap service data leak (54)

Monthly Outlook

+56 Reports (+6 Breaking)
+39 Community Messages
+15 Calendar events & Meeting logs
+8 Resources
+4 Meta reports

Meta

• [Updated] The Monero Observer PGP key expiry date was extended and the signed contact details were updated (55)

• [Fixed: new DNS] The Monero Observer clearnet site experienced intermittent outages for ~72 hours (56)

• [Fixed: new email] Monero Observer communications were temporarily disrupted by a Disroot ‘major hardware failure’ (57)

• Published 15 meeting logs: MRL 261007, MRL 261014, MRL 261021, MRL 261028, Community 261003, Community 261017, Community 261031, Tech 261005, Tech 261012, Tech 261019, Tech 261026, Cuprate 261006, Cuprate 261013, Cuprate 261020, Cuprate 261027 (58,59,60,61,62,63,64,65,66,67,68,69,70,71,72)

• Published Monero Observer Blitz #49 - September 2026 (73)

• Misc: reporting expansion into privacy and security-related breaking news, RSS feeds & menu improvements, style fixes, stale report cleanup; consult the Archive & Changelog pages for more information (74,75)

Credits/special thanks to:

• everyone that suggested edits, sent anonymous news tips and shared my reports
• the cypherpunks for the encrypted messages
• all MO loyal readers and supporters
• the MO Top Contributors: GhostSwap, XMR.ID, SageSwap, Monero Graphics
• hard working people that keep building and maintaining cool stuff around the Monero community

That’s it for the 50th edition of Monero Observer Blitz.

Previous editions can be found on the /tag/blitz page.

Let me know if this was helpful, thanks for reading!

-escapethe3RA

PS: the funding campaing is unfortunately stuck at ~13.6% - consider supporting my continued work on the project with a donation if you would like to see Monero Observer active in 2027.