Opinion: Is MoneroV a Legitimate Hard Fork of Monero?

MoneroV’s upcoming hard fork (scheduled for April 30th, 2018) has been the subject of much debate. Many question the necessity of the hard fork and the reasons behind it.

The MoneroV team claims to eliminate these current issues facing Monero: infinite supply, scalability problems, and centralization. However, many don’t view these as issues and claim that MoneroV’s launch is nothing more than a speculative money grab and attack on the anonymity of the Monero network.
MoneroV claims that Monero has an infinite supply due to so-called “tail emissions”. These are fixed-rate mining rewards that will continue after the main supply of Monero is mined with a target date of May 2022. While technically true, it is theorized that this slowed supply growth rate will be adequately balanced by lost or burnt coins. Furthermore, there are advantages to an inflationary currency such as availability and spendability. MoneroV plans to offer a fixed coin supply, but at ten times the supply of Monero, many question its claim of superiority over Monero’s supply structure.
In regard to scalability issues, MoneroV claims that its implementation of Mimblewimble technology will solve this problem. However, MoneroV does not plan to implement Mimblewimble until late 2019 or early 2020, causing many to question the legitimacy of the current fork date.
Finally, MoneroV claims that Monero’s central leadership is a problem and aims to become a truly decentralized private network. Despite having several prominent figures, most argue that Monero is already a private and decentralized network with no central company or figure having control over the network or its decision-making.
So is MoneroV legitimate?
To begin with, the purported reasons for the hard fork have been questioned. Second, the MoneroV team is anonymous, which limits the trust in MoneroV leadership. MoneroV requires Monero holders’ private keys to receive tokens from the airdrop, leaving many to question the safety and privacy of MoneroV’s launch. To its credit, MoneroV has recommended solutions to these risks, but many are convinced these issues should not have arisen in the first place. Finally, while the MoneroV project is open-source, the MoneroV wallet is not, meaning the wallet source code cannot be audited prior to launch. MoneroV claims this is done to prevent phishing attacks, but some are dubious of this claim.
Whether MoneroV is legitimate or not remains to be seen, but it’s clear the Monero community is not supporting this fork, and it’s recommended that anyone looking to claim MoneroV coins during the airdrop take the requisite security precautions to protect themselves.
This opinion piece is penned by Josh Reif, a crypto enthusiast and CEO of Crypto Launch Media, an ICO marketing firm. With a background in copywriting, sales, and marketing, Josh is focused on educating the public on emerging blockchain technologies and helping new companies communicate their value to the market.