After you have downloaded the Monero software (GUI and CLI alike), your antivirus or firewall may flag the executables as malware. Some antiviruses only warn you about the possible menace, others go as far as silently removing your downloaded @wallet / @daemon. This likely happens because of the integrated miner, which is used for mining and for @block verification. Some antiviruses may erroneously consider the miner as dangerous software and act to remove it.
A full @node requires a considerable amount of storage and could take a long time to download and verify the entire blockchain, especially on older hardware. If you have limited storage, a pruned node is recommended. It only stores 1/8th of unnecessary blockchain data while keeping the full transaction history. If plenty of storage is available, a full node is recommended but a pruned node still greatly contributes to the network and improves your privacy.
A lightly theoretical interlude (hopefully still gentle, trying to stress concepts more than formalism and selecting the approached topics) to lay the foundations for Bulletproof and other future Zero-Knowledge-related features, if any.
An easy and effective way to help the Monero network is to run a @node. Nodes ensure the network keeps running safe and decentralized. A simple fully synchronized node is enough to help the network, but if you want to go out of your way, you could run an open @remote-node, to allow other people to connect to it.
A new @block is created every ~2 minutes. There is no maximum block size, but instead a block reward penalty and a dynamic block size, to ensure a dynamic @scalability
An open-source command line interface (CLI) wallet developed by the Monero community, completely free to use, best suited for developers, intermediate, and advanced users.
