Monero's development team is making significant progress on its ambitious privacy upgrade, Full-Chain Membership Proofs (FCMP++), while the cryptocurrency faces a sharp market downturn. The team released FCMP++ and CARROT alpha stressnet v1.5, a testing version designed to reduce memory usage and improve node synchronization performance.
The core goal of FCMP++ is to dramatically expand Monero's anonymity set. It aims to replace the current ring signature model, where a transaction is hidden among 16 possible outputs, with a new proof system. This system would prove a spent output is any output on the entire blockchain, potentially increasing the anonymity set per input to as high as 100,000,000 outputs.
The newly released alpha stressnet v1.5, versioned v0.19.0.0-alpha.1.5, focuses on improving stability for testers. Key changes include mitigating out-of-memory failures, reducing the memory footprint for FCMP++ verification, and enhancing multithreaded synchronization. The update also adjusts how nodes download blocks during sync based on real-time performance and fixes issues related to transaction pools and connection stability.
Wallet updates were included to support stressnet testing, fixing false positives for CARROT transactions and improving input selection rules. The stressnet itself is a public testing environment that hard forked from the Monero testnet on October 3, 2025. Developers warn it is still alpha software and lacks support for hardware wallets, multisig, and other features. They encourage detailed bug reporting ahead of a planned beta phase and audit work for the CARROT integration.
This technical progress contrasts sharply with Monero's recent market performance. The privacy coin has experienced a significant price drop, falling over 8% in 24 hours from a high of $648.07 to around $584.22, underperforming the broader market's 2.05% decline. Trading volume sank by 17.16% to approximately $291 million as the price broke below the key $600 support level.
Technical analysis indicates a bearish 'death cross' formation on the hourly chart, suggesting potential for further downside toward $581.64. The Relative Strength Index (RSI) sits at 63.36, indicating the asset is not yet oversold. Despite the drop, Monero maintains a strong market capitalization of $10.81 billion, holding the 12th position among cryptocurrencies. Investors are closely watching the $560 support level, with a break below potentially leading toward $500.
