Monero & Crypto on Aquasp's blog

Fastest Monero Wallet on Android in 2025? I Timed All Three With My Own Node

Wed, 10 Dec 2025 22:46:43 +0000

Introduction

One of the major pain points of Monero is restoring an old wallet. Today, I will compare the speed of three popular Monero wallets to check which one is the fastest at restoring.

Test data

Date of test: 2025-12-10 Device: Samsung Galaxy A56 (Exynos 1580, 8 GB RAM, mid-range 2025 phone) Connection: Local Monero full node over Wi-Fi (same LAN, Using Deco S7) Wallet: Legacy 25-word seed created in December 2024 (~1 year old, moderate transaction history) Goal: Full restore + sync from my restore height with each wallet to see real-world performance on a typical self-hosted setup in 2025.

The contenders

Wallet	Version	Restore height method	Notes
Cake Wallet	5.6.2	Legacy 25-word	Official multi-coin wallet
Stack Wallet	2.4.2	Legacy 25-word	Privacy-focused, Bitcoin-first but good XMR support
Monerujo	4.1.7 (Exolix build)	Legacy 25-word	Long-time Android-only Monero favorite

Results

Wallet	Total time to full sync	Behavior at 90–100%	Screen stay-on?	Finished?	Notes
Monerujo	21 minutes 45 seconds	Steady speed, no slowdown	No	Yes	Absolutely crushed it
Cake Wallet	40 minutes and 13 seconds	Very slow after ~90%, ETA broken	Yes (huge W)	Yes	Got there, but it was a bit slow
Stack Wallet	Gave up after ~1 hour 16 minutes	Crawled after 98%, resync didn’t help	No	No	Stuck forever around 98–99%

Detailed observations

Monerujo 4.1.7 – The clear winner

Started scanning instantly
Progress was smooth and predictable the entire time
Never slowed down, even in the final 10%
Just worked. 21m45s from entering the 25th word to “synchronized”.
Does NOT prevent screen timeout → Android kept suspending the process

Cake Wallet 5.6.2 – It gets there… eventually

Restore started fine
ETA counter was not precise (showed 2 minutes for 30 minutes)
Massive slowdown after ~90%
Kept screen on the entire time ← this alone probably saved the sync from dying
Eventually finished

Stack Wallet 2.4.2 – Disappointing

Actually started the fastest of all three
Flew to 98% in ~25 minutes… then died
Speed dropped
Restarting the app resumed at 98.49% but didn’t fix the crawl
Tried using the “Resync” button – no improvement
Does NOT prevent screen timeout → Android kept suspending the process
Abandoned after 1+ hours of no meaningful progress

Conclusion: Monerujo is the fastest in 2025

If you want to restore an old Monero wallet on a phone using your own node in 2025, the answer is crystal clear:

Monerujo is in a completely different league.

Cake Wallet is still very usable and has an amazin UI/polish, but the sync performance lag is real. Stack Wallet unfortunately seems broken/super slow for large restores right now

Shoutout to the Monerujo dev(s) — whatever witchcraft you did with the scanning engine, thank you. Privacy on mobile just became faster.

Tested on 2025-12-10 with a local node. Your mileage may vary with transaction count, but the relative ordering should hold.

How to run your own monero node

Tue, 09 Dec 2025 00:07:50 +0000

Introduction

Monero is one of the most important cryptocurrencies in my opinion. It does not have the same market share as Bitcoin, but it is quite unique in one aspect: privacy. Monero is just like cash — no one needs to know how much Monero was sent or who sent it. It’s the opposite of Bitcoin in this regard. In fact, Bitcoin is worse than fiat money when it comes to privacy.

You can read more details here: https://lukesmith.xyz/articles/monero-maximalism-or-how-bitcoin-is-a-coin/

Obs: I’m NOT recommending anyone invest in Monero. Monero is supposed to be a currency, but since crypto is still extremely volatile, many people treat it as an investment. Do your own research — I’m not responsible for any investments you make.

1. Choose a VPS or set it up at home

First things first, you will need a server. You can use your own home PC if you prefer, or a VPS. A VPS is easier because it stays online 24/7 and you can always open the required ports.

At home, many ISPs block incoming ports, so your node wouldn’t be public (it would still help the network, but you couldn’t easily connect to it from outside without something like ngrok).

I personally recommend Contabo for running a Monero node because they offer excellent prices on storage VPS plans. Check their pricing here: Contabo Storage VPS

The Storage VPS S is more than enough. The Monero blockchain currently uses about 175 GB, less than 2 GB of RAM, and barely any CPU once fully synced (~3 % usage).

2. Securing the VPS

First of all, disable password login.

Then install and configure UFW (if it’s not already set up):

sudo apt install ufw
sudo ufw default deny incoming
sudo ufw default allow outgoing
sudo ufw allow ssh
sudo ufw allow 18080
sudo ufw allow 18089
sudo ufw enable

3. Creating a dedicated user

For security reasons, never run Monero as root. Create a normal user instead:

adduser monerouser

Set a password and press Enter through the rest of the prompts.

4. Changing settings and syncing the node

Switch to the new user:

su monerouser
cd ~

Download the official Monero CLI binaries (Linux 64-bit):

wget -c https://downloads.getmonero.org/cli/monero-linux-x64-v0.18.3.4.tar.bz2
mkdir monero
tar -xjvf monero-linux-x64-v0.18.3.4.tar.bz2 -C monero --strip-components=1

(Replace the version in the URL/filename with the latest one from https://getmonero.org if needed.)

Enter the folder and start monerod once just to create the config files (stop it after a few seconds with Ctrl+C):

cd monero
./monerod

Now edit the configuration file:

nano ~/.bitmonero/bitmonero.conf

Paste the following recommended settings:

# P2P full node
public-node=true # Advertises the RPC-restricted port over p2p

# RPC settings
rpc-restricted-bind-ip=0.0.0.0
rpc-restricted-bind-port=18089

# Node settings
enforce-dns-checkpointing=true
db-sync-mode=safe # Slow but reliable db writes
enable-dns-blocklist=true # Block known-malicious nodes
no-igd=true # Disable UPnP
no-zmq=true

# Bandwidth settings (much faster sync + better contribution)
out-peers=32
in-peers=32
limit-rate-up=1048576 # 1 GB/s upload
limit-rate-down=1048576 # 1 GB/s download

Save with Ctrl+O → Enter → Ctrl+X.

Start the node in detached mode:

./monerod --detach

You’re done! Now just wait for it to fully sync.

Check sync status anytime with:

./monerod status

The initial sync usually takes a few hours depending on your connection and VPS speed.

Once it’s fully synced, you can connect any Monero wallet (Cake Wallet, Monero GUI, Feather, etc.) to your own node using your VPS IP and port 18089.

Conclusion & Credits

That’s it! Running your own full node is strongly encouraged by the Monero community. It makes the network more decentralized and gives you maximum privacy.

This guide wouldn’t have been possible without these excellent resources:

Thank you for reading! 🙂

Zcash is losing

Mon, 08 Dec 2025 22:11:49 +0000

Zcash is NOT the most important project in the world, and it is losing.

Zcash was born as a project to fix Bitcoin’s major flaw: privacy. But launching a new coin isn’t easy, and it’s not just about technical aspects.

A serious cryptocurrency is supposed to be money, and it needs to be better than what we currently have with governments; otherwise, we should keep using the dollar. This means that while the technical aspects of any cryptocurrency are important, it should also be reliable, trustworthy, and as stable as possible. The main flaw in government money is inflation. Governments typically love to spend money and can charge a hidden tax by printing it. When money is printed, the amount of goods and services in society remains the same, but there is more money in circulation.

This means your money will now have reduced value. The winner in this case is the government or whoever spends the newly printed money first, because the market will adjust itself, leading to higher prices for services and goods.

The issue with Zcash

Zcash sounds good. It deploys zk-SNARKs technology to prove transactions and store them privately, meaning that when you send transactions, everything is hidden (so no one can see the sender, the amount sent, or the receiver). Sounds amazing, right? Let’s buy Zcash then!!

No. And why not?

1. Zcash was launched with a trusted setup

Yes, that’s right. When Zcash launched, it utilized a trusted setup to bootstrap the network. In this event, multiple participants collaboratively created cryptographic parameters without any single party having full control. This assumed that at least one participant destroyed their portion of the secret keys to guarantee privacy. If participants united their parameters, they could, in theory, create unlimited Zcash and trace shielded transactions.

Now, I have to be fair. Zcash is currently running on NU5 (Network Upgrade 5). This upgrade removed the trusted setup, ensuring that after May 2022, Zcash does not depend on trusting anyone else.

But at the same time, as far as I know, there is no way to prove that everyone destroyed their parameters and that no Zcash was generated or traced.

2. Zcash is not private by default.

Considering the latest updates (not using Sprout or Sapling), users can leave Zcash in a public address (t-address) or a shielded address (Orchard, ideally). So if some users want to use Zcash just like Bitcoin, they can.

Zcash aims to fix this by recommending privacy-friendly wallets. For example, Zashi wallet tries to shield your funds by default. The issue with this? Zcash is not widely used, so buying Zcash peer-to-peer or from a decentralized exchange like Bisq or Haveno Reto is very hard.

So you have to buy it from a non-privacy-friendly exchange like Binance or Coinbase. And of course, these exchanges do not support shielded addresses. You need to use your transparent address to receive your Zcash before shielding it.

Zcash somehow believes it can provide full privacy while complying with governments and anti-privacy laws. Zcash community and users are accustomed to buying their coins through non-private means. If the government decides that shielding your Zcash is illegal, you will not be able to buy and shield your coins because the government knows the t-address is related to you, and if you make a shielding transaction, you’ve just committed a crime.

They can even block “tainted” coins, so if a Zcash was ever shielded, it can be considered “tainted” and blocked on exchanges. During the Canada convoy protest, the government tried to seize Bitcoin, but since the wallet was non-custodial, they couldn’t. They quickly realized they could ask all exchanges to refuse those “dirty” Bitcoins.

Now you may be wondering how Monero is any different. Well, Monero is private by default, meaning users don’t have to worry about shielding and “unshielding” coins. And every shop that accepts Monero does so for privacy, unlike Zcash, where shoppers and exchanges can accept Zcash only on transparent addresses.

And yes, as you may have thought, some governments and exchanges have banned Monero, which was actually good for Monero. Why? Because it is now miles ahead of Zcash. Monero has an actual ecosystem. You can buy goods and services directly with Monero, you can buy Monero without any exchanges, and Monero knows how to survive in an environment without legal approval.

For example, you can buy gift cards at Coinsbee or Cake Pay directly with Monero, sell services and products for Monero directly at XMRBazaar, find different kinds of services accepting Monero at Monerica, use AI privately with Monero at Nano-GPT, or trade Monero privately with no KYC at RetoSwap.

And this is just the beginning. Monero usage has been increasing, and the goal is to be able to live entirely with Monero to achieve financial freedom.

So, private by default is definitely the superior choice. Cash is private by default, just like Monero.

3. Zcash is very centralized

Yep, that’s right. Perhaps you aren’t aware of this, but one mining pool of Zcash, ViaBTC, has nearly 70% of the mining power.

This means that if ViaBTC starts to act maliciously, they could, in theory, double-spend ZEC or censor transactions.

Zcash has a plan to fix that, but for now, it’s a promise and not something live. They want to create a PoS layer (proof-of-stake) to ensure users have more control over transaction validation.

I don’t have a specific opinion about this PoS layer yet, so I will refrain from talking about it.

The point remains valid, though: Zcash is very centralized. And not only due to the mining pool. We can clearly see that the community on Reddit is not very active; you don’t see people promoting and running Zcash nodes as you do in the Monero community. The community groups are typically made up of Zcash-related institutions.

Zcash has to put effort into marketing and convincing people to use it, while Monero has natural adoption, and users spread the word for free. There are several community-based sites, podcasts, and you can actually see people using it instead of just buying it and hoping for a massive price increase.

There are several guides on how to use a Monero wallet, how to run a node, how to spend it, etc. With Zcash, you typically have promises that “the technology is amazing and it will have more value than Bitcoin.”

4. Zcash has a developer tax

If you were proposing a global money to be used by everyone in the world, do you think it’s fair to allocate 20% of the mined money to pay for its development?

I don’t think so, and most people don’t think so. Zcash did exactly that. 20% of the mined coins go directly to Zcash institutions that are supposed to develop and market Zcash.

With this proposal, developers and the governance of the coin do not need to gain the trust of users. They are compensated by default and will obviously sell the Zcash for fiat since that is basically their salary, and they have bills to pay.

With that in mind, potential investors and users will always fear a massive dump in the cryptocurrency when prices spike.

5. Zcash UX still sucks

Zcash is still somewhat complex for the average user. To fix that, the recommended way to use Zcash nowadays is with Zashi, which tries to shield transactions by default.

Zashi has some serious issues, though. The first issue is the language. Only English is supported. I mean, is that serious? The most recommended wallet only supports English? Is Zcash only meant to be used in America/UK? It’s a shame that a project with a development tax can’t make a multi-language wallet. Cake Wallet, Stack Wallet, and Monerujo didn’t have any development tax, but they support several languages. What is your excuse, Zashi?

The second issue is that Zashi doesn’t seem to be stable, especially with larger amounts of Zcash. Recently, a user reported that he cannot spend his Zcash. That happens because Zashi only allows you to spend shielded Zcash, and the wallet is unable to shield his Zcash.

I know this isn’t specifically a skill issue because not long ago, when I was testing Zcash, I had a similar issue. I received Zcash on Zashi but was unable to shield it. I don’t remember exactly what I did to solve the issue (I was trying Ywallet and Nighthawk), but it definitely wasn’t a good first impression of Zcash. I remember testing receiving Zcash on an older phone vs. a newer phone (both using Zashi), and my newer phone was able to receive and shield the coins easily, but the older phone struggled.

I’m not sure if this was a coincidence, but it seemed that Zashi is heavy on your phone. I never had this issue with Monero before.

Sure, syncing Monero takes a while, but it works in the background seamlessly with Monerujo by just waiting. It runs even faster if you have a local Monero node running at your home, which I suspect 99% of Zcash users don’t have.

Right now, Zashi also needs to be synced to be properly used, and it takes a lot of time and requires you to leave your screen turned on.

Both coins need to be easier to use, but Monero is still better than Zcash for UI. Users don’t need to worry about Sapling or Orchard pools or have issues “shielding” their coins.

6. Price action

Due to the trusted setup launch and the development tax, Zcash is likely destined to be a pump coin. With no real-world adoption, its price can be manipulated to rise, but such gains are unlikely to last.

Cryptocurrency enthusiasts are currently focused on Zcash due to a massive price pump, but I doubt this will sustain. If you zoom out the price graph for Zcash, it still looks ridiculous. In contrast, zooming out for Monero reveals steady and slow growth over time.

Conclusion

Zcash sucks. After studying it better, calling it Ztrash is the right thing to do. Doing otherwise is not honest.

Credits

https://lukesmith.xyz/articles/monero-and-other-privacy-coins/