Monero has released beta stressnet v3, the latest testing milestone for two long-awaited privacy upgrades: Full-Chain Membership Proofs (FCMP++) and CARROT. The stressnet will hard fork from
Monero has released beta stressnet v3, the latest testing milestone for two long-awaited privacy upgrades: Full-Chain Membership Proofs (FCMP++) and CARROT. The stressnet will hard fork from the current testnet on October 5, 2026, at block 3102800.
FCMP++ represents one of the most substantial changes to Monero's transaction privacy architecture.Under Monero's existing system, transactions use a relatively limited set of decoy outputs to obscure which output is actually being spent.FCMP++ is a proposed upgrade to replace ring signatures with membership proofs that span the whole chain. When spending Monero, instead of making a ring signature proving ownership of 1 of 16 outputs, a spender makes a proof of ownership across 1 of the 150 million-plus outputs from across the entire Monero blockchain.This effectively gives transactions a much broader anonymity set while still allowing the network to detect double spending.
CARROT is a proposed upgrade to Monero's addressing protocol, bringing new security, privacy, and usability features while maintaining backwards compatibility with existing addresses.Both FCMP++ and CARROT have been in development for over two years, with research, security reviews, and audits progressing in tandem.
This release is not compatible with prior beta stressnet versions.Participants who ran earlier stressnet versions cannot reuse their existing stressnet database or wallet cache, and must either re-sync from scratch or reuse an existing testnet database. Beyond the core protocol changes, the release also includes wallet updates, transaction relay improvements, and performance optimizations.
The Monero team urged community members to continue participating in the stressnet and report any problems they encounter. The stressnet is a separate testing environment, not a mainnet upgrade, and carries a small anonymity set by design. Developers note that stressnet participation carries its own privacy considerations, as node IP addresses remain visible to peers on the test network.
The October 5 hard fork will be a critical stress test for the combined FCMP++ and CARROT integration before any mainnet deployment is considered.
Sources:FCMP++ and Carrot beta stressnet v3.0 release notes, seraphis-migration/monero on GitHubMonero Releases New Stressnet Version, U.TodayFull-Chain Membership Proofs Development, GetMonero.org
