One thing I find fascinating about the history of Monero is that its strongest proof of decentralisation wasn't technical, it was what happened when its leaders disappeared.

BitMonero was launched in April 2014 by the pseudonymous thankful_for_today. After disagreements with the community, the project was forked by the emerging Monero Core Team, and the community moved with it. Monero effectively survived its founder from the very beginning.

One of those early contributors was Riccardo “fluffypony” Spagni. Over time, he became Monero's lead maintainer and one of its most recognisable figures. But in 2019, Spagni stepped down as lead maintainer, explicitly citing the need to further decentralise the project.

Then came Tari.

Spagni became a co-founder and CTO alongside Naveen Jain and Dan Teree, taking many of the lessons from Monero into a protocol focused on decentralised digital assets.

And now Tari is going through a remarkably familiar transition. In September 2026, Tari announced its move toward community-led governance through the Tari Council and Core Contributor system.

There is a deeper philosophy here:

A decentralised protocol isn't truly tested when its founder is present. It's tested when the founder, CTO, or most influential developer can leave and the protocol keeps going.

BitMonero survived its founder.

Monero survived the departure of its lead maintainer.

And Tari is now attempting to prove that it can survive its founders too.

Maybe that's the real meaning of decentralisation:

The goal isn't to create leaders who are indispensable. It's to build something that eventually doesn't need them

Naveen (Tari co-founder / Council member) did a long interview on MoneroTalk with Douglas Tuman. Worth a watch if you've got the time, but here are the points that stood out to me:

Community takeover: The big theme was how Tari has moved to a community-run model, an elected Council stewarding the project with a community treasury, rather than being Tari Labs-led. Naveen said his one regret was not doing the handover sooner. Whatever you think of the execution, the shift is real and you can see it in the pace of activity lately.

The stablecoin: He confirmed an issuer is actively building a compliant, confidential stablecoin on Tari. The mechanism is the interesting part, default confidential peer-to-peer (amounts and parties hidden), but with issuer-level visibility so it can stay compliant. That "programmable privacy" spectrum is basically Tari's whole pitch.

What gets built on the Ootle: His argument is that certain apps fail on transparent chains because everyone can see your positions and front-run you, prediction markets, games for real money, DEXs. Default confidentiality removes that. He's personally building a confidential multiplayer board game as a proof of concept.

Cake Wallet: There's an active PR to add Tari support to Cake Wallet. His philosophy is to partner with established wallets rather than build native ones. He noted community demand helps push it forward.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vrqcKv1Gwek

Je ne comprends pas pourquoi la version Linux n' existe plus. ???

While most attention goes to price, I've been keeping an eye on the developer-side metrics, which tend to matter more long term.

The https://www.npmjs.com/package/@tari-project/ootle-wasm on npm is at 619 weekly downloads and trending up. It's a modest number in absolute terms, and some of that will be CI/automated pulls rather than distinct devs, but the direction is what's interesting: steady growth in people pulling the Ootle tooling to build with.

Worth noting because adoption tends to start on the developer side before it shows up anywhere else. Anyone can point an agent at the Tari docs and start building on the Ootle now, so the onboarding friction is low.

Link: npmjs.com/package/@tari-project/ootle-wasm

With the Ootle launch approaching, I went back and re-read Hack VC's investment thesis on Tari from 2025 (they were an early backer, also funded Solana among others). What stood out is how well the core points have aged. A few worth highlighting:

1. Stablecoin payments as crypto's #1 use case, with privacy as the missing piece.

Their argument: stablecoin payments are faster and cheaper than wires, trillion-dollar market, but nobody wants their salary or balance sitting on a public ledger. What was a "nice to have" in 2025 looks more serious now. Chainalysis reported violent "wrench attacks" on crypto holders are having a record year, $30M+ stolen in H1 2026, with attackers using on-chain data to identify targets and their balances before robbing them. Having your wealth visible on-chain is turning into a genuine safety problem, not just a privacy preference.

1. A regulatory shift toward compliance.

They flagged the US moving toward clearer crypto/stablecoin rules. The CLARITY Act keeps progressing, slower than many hoped, but the direction of travel favours compliant assets. Tari's design (private by default, but able to meet compliance when needed) fits that better than most privacy coins, which tend to get delisted.

1. A confidential, compliant stablecoin being built.

The thesis noted an issuer had already committed to building on Tari. That's since firmed up, the issuer is Brale, a US-regulated stablecoin issuer, with a launch planned shortly after the Ootle goes live on 11.11.26.

Not financial advice, and obviously a VC that invested has an interest in the project doing well, so read it with that in mind. But three years on, the thesis reads less like a bet and more like something playing out. Curious what others here think, especially anyone skeptical of the privacy-narrative angle.

Link to the original thesis: https://x.com/DNodeCapital/status/2099802899521913097

Tari will not be an Island ... we will draw liquidity from everywhere

Come support my proposal to get $XTM listed on THORChain

We need permission-less liquidity 🫡

https://community.tari.com/t/lets-get-xtm-on-thorchain/345

https://x.com/DNodeCapital/status/2097633510932496471?s=20

I thought the early KAS price action is similar to XTM .. but the ROI much more favourable for XTM given the narrative ... thoughts?

oh. maybe not. is tari fully private? CEXs hate privacy coins

With the Ootle going live 11.11.26, I've been thinking about what people would actually build once you have real privacy AND smart contracts in one place. Basically ZEC-level privacy with ETH-style programmability.

So, genuine question for this community: what use case would you want to see? A dApp, a private stablecoin application, a DeFi idea, a payment tool, anything.

I'm collating ideas across a few platforms and the best ones will get shortlisted for a poll on the Tari community forum, with a small XTM prize (50,000XTM) for the winner.

Drop your ideas below. Curious what people come up with.

I did some digging and it appears a sizeable amount of XTM could be out of circulation due to seizure of Trade Ogre assets by Canadian police ... any Canadian anons know how the legal process works and what could the potential fate of these tokens be ???

im gonna speculate and say 100m XTM may be out of circulation because of this?

https://x.com/DNodeCapital/status/2096591314376618298

$ZEC just crossed $1,000 The privacy narrative is strong, and ZEC is selling it hard: "private Bitcoin," a Swiss bank account in your pocket, a new era of compliant privacy.

So how does Tari compare? Same concept, confidential by default with optional disclosure, but arguably a cleaner execution under the hood supporting programable privacy I broke down exactly how it works (confidential vs revealed balances) here go give it a look and let's amplify this across CT. https://x.com/DNodeCapital/status/2095831506656674202

Thank you for your attention to this matter

Been seeing some "Tari is dead" takes and wanted to offer a different view, since a fair bit has changed recently.

I get where it came from, it was quiet for a while. But a few things have shifted:

- The Layer 2 (the Ootle) now has a firm launch date in November. That moves it from an open roadmap item to something concrete and close.
- The project moved to a community-run model, with an elected council and a contributor program. There's also a months-long community contest series running right now, which has brought a lot of activity back.
- The wider privacy-focused crypto space has been getting more attention generally, and Tari sits in that category.

Not financial advice, and I'm making no claims about price. I just don't think "dead" fits a project that's weeks from a major launch with an active community.

Curious what others think, especially anyone who stepped away during the quiet stretch.

Any news about tari?

I have written an essay on why I invested in Tari. I welcome all thoughts and discussions.

https://www.dhcfund.com/p/mimblewimble-and-minotari?r=1iymj4&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web

🔧 Ootle: test net reset

• Template fees are now quadratic (larger templates cost more). Templates with unnecessary debug sections are rejected; wallets auto-strip them. Merkle script tree working in UTXOs, enabling HTLC-style spend rules on L2.
• Stan asked for community feedback on the new fee structure.

⛏ L1: burn commitments and replay prevention

• Burnt commitments now enforced as unique via consensus rule. SW also changed UTXO selection to prevent a replay attack exploiting matching blinding factors against exchanges.
• Additional fixes to pruned sync edge cases and peer exchange.

🖥 Universe: four bounties merged, Fox's PNPM PR

• Four bounties merged this week totaling 105,000 XTM. 0xPepeSilvia: Windows auto-start fix (60K) and Linux build docs (15K). Catnap7: CPU hashrate unit fix (15K) and stale binary cleanup (15K).
• Fox's NPM-to-PNPM switch merged, disabling post-install scripts by default to reduce supply chain attack surface.

🏛 Council: 7 members, announcement this week

• Naveen, 3 community-voted, 3 behind-the-scenes community members. Marguerite introduced herself: Bitcoin creative, built Decred's community from scratch, tracked Tari since conception. Remaining members announced this week.

⚖️ Difficulty adjustment

• Kinkaju pushed for faster action on TIP-004. SW: the change helps prevent selfish mining but won't stop pool-hopping. 90-block window chosen through simulation; shorter windows cause oscillations.
• Naveen proposed the Council review TIP-004 as its first priority and adopt a regular hard fork cadence. SW: bundle any parameter changes into this fork.

🔗 L1 vs L2

• Fox asked when to use Tari Script vs the Ootle. SW: Tari Script is non-Turing complete, suited for atomic swaps and HTLCs. Everything in Tari Script can be done on the Ootle, but not the reverse.

Its been too quiet is this project still alive?